One of the reasons I’ve enjoyed using Gentoo Linux for the last 15 years is its version-less release model, which is similar to the BSD Ports system. Early in my career, I tried many different Linux distributions, where managing versions and updates was almost always a frustrating experience.
Living with Gentoo is a completely different story. Since I installed it on my laptop roughly four years ago, I haven’t had to perform a single full operating system upgrade. All packages are periodically updated and built from source using the excellent Portage package management system.
That said, Gentoo does have the concept of Profiles. Each profile defines an architecture, a set of default USE flags, compiler settings, and other configurations for the Portage system.
Profiles do get updated occasionally, and as you might expect, such fundamental changes require a rebuild of all installed packages. Fortunately, the last major profile update occurred back in 2017. However, the 17.1 profile was officially deprecated in 2024, making the switch to the 23.0 profile unavoidable – a perfect project for New Year’s Eve.
The process of upgrading profiles is straightforward, with the only downside being the time required to rebuild all packages. On my four-year-old laptop, rebuilding all 971 packages took about one day, and that’s insanely fast given that applications like Firefox and LibreOffice are being built from the source code. That would have taken many days 15 years ago.
Amazingly, the system remains fully usable while packages are being built, and as a bonus, the laptop becomes a cozy heating device – keeping me warm during the cold winter season.
Long live Gentoo!
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