soulsource @ soulsource @discuss.tchncs.de

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2 yr. ago

DOSBox-staging has fluidsynth built-in. So, unlike vanilla DOSBox, there's no need to install a separate MIDI synthesizer.

(I was so positively surprised by this, I even wrote a very lengthy blog post about Dosbox with MIDI on the Steam Deck.)

I've used Debian Stable some years ago at University on "my" office PC. For a work PC it was the perfect distribution. The "stable" in the name is well deserved. It's so stable, it's a bit boring, to be honest. However, that's just what one needs at work. The PC has to run (a crash equals lost work), and maintenance burden needs to be low.

Yeah, it's not fully "rolling", as new (non-critical) updates can get delayed for quite some time while packages are getting stabilized for a Stable release.

Yeah, and most of the customization you can do on any other distribution too. The main advantage of Gentoo is that it's Rolling Release, so there won't be any distribution upgrades breaking the cusotmizations.

The same is true for Debian Testing or Arch too, though.

The compile times are quite OK on relatively modern hardware. I've been using a Ryzen 1700X up to last week, and except for WebKit I had no reason to complain. On my slightly dated Haswell laptop (from 2016) they are now starting to get on my nerves, but it's still tolerable.

The only exception is WebKit, which takes forever to compile and which also tends to get installed multiple times, in slightly different versions (one version for Evolution, one for Liferea, one for Epiphany - and yes, those 3 programs all belong to the Gnome desktop). I've now set up ccache just for WebKit, but haven't had to install a WebKit update since, so I have no idea how much the ccache helps...

Sorry for going on a tangent here. Back on topic: The setup for Gentoo takes as long as you are willing to invest time into it... The more time you invest, the more customized the system gets.

I'm currently running Sway window manager, with a ton of other not-so-usual tools (some of which I wrote myself, like my status bar application), and I'm really happy with how my PC currently feels. My desktop looks like it just escaped the early 1990s, but it's so fast and just doesn't get in the way ever...

I'm running Gentoo on my gaming PC, and would not want anything else.

It's very customizable, as it allows to tweak packages' optional dependencies at compile time. It's also rolling release, so no stress with distribution upgrades. Despite that, it's also very stable (most of the time...).

So far the only downside I've seen is that updates can take a while, as almost all packages get compiled from source.