 Okay, so how you doing there? I am Matt, I go by Linuxcast on the YouTube and I haven't made a video in like, I don't know, like three weeks it's nuts. I don't even know if I remember how to do this but we're gonna give it a good old fashioned try as you can tell I'm still recovering from COVID so that's where I've been over the last three weeks. I'm slowly getting back to where I'm supposed to be and I'm gonna start making some videos again. We'll see if we can't salvage this thing. So today what I wanna do is do a little bit of a recap over my time with Redcore Linux. Now, if you haven't been following this series you'll not know that I have been on a six months Linux challenge and the idea here was to use a distribution for six straight months and not hop away from it on my main machine. Now I have used other Linux distributions on other machines so if you consider that cheating then I guess I'm cheating but I do have to, you know, test other distros for the channel and stuff like that. So the idea was on my main machine I would daily drive Redcore and I have been. Now I'm about a month and a half into this challenge now and I have some thoughts. Now like the previous two videos that I've made in this series I'm gonna split this up a little bit into talking about Redcore specifically and a little bit into Gen2 more broadly because Redcore at its heart is Gen2 Linux but it's also not Gen2. So I wanna kinda separate them out and kinda give my thoughts on. Now I will not be making another video in this series until the end because I'm at the point now where I don't have a lot more to say but I have some things. So let's go ahead and jump in. The first thing we'll talk about is Redcore itself. So overall Redcore has been very good. I have had some, I did have those issues early on where because it's more stable, it's more based on a stable branch of Gen2 than on testing despite what it claims on its website. I wanted more up-to-date packaging so I ended up switching to the next branch of the Redcore repositories which is more closer to Gen2 testing and I messed up my system that way. You know, that was something that was more my fault than Redcore itself. But since I switched to the next branch and did that reinstallation, I haven't had any problems at all. I get the most recent packaging that I want. It's basically Gen2 testing as far as I can tell. I'm not sure what the delay is. I think there's just like a small delay between Gen2 testing and Redcore Next. I'm not exactly sure, but it's not a big one. So I do my updates every four days or so and it's just worked really well. I haven't had any problems whatsoever. Now I've still had some plasma problems so I've pretty much abandoned plasma at this point. I've been using Qtile. I do have an X-monad challenge coming up that I'm still resisting. I should eventually get into that and I promise I will. But right now Qtile has been treating me really well. Good. So overall Redcore has been very stable. I update it every four days or so and it just works really well. Now the overall thing that I want to say about Redcore is this. The idea behind Redcore is from my understanding is to help people understand the workflow of using Gen2 Linux without actually having to go through the process of installing it. But I don't think it achieves that. And from my experience over the last six weeks, the reason why I don't think it achieves that is because it has its own package manager. It has a package manager called Sisyphus and they expect you to use Sisyphus to update and install packages and all this stuff, right? And that's the idea behind Redcore. You're supposed to use its own package management. And because that's true, it means that you're not getting the Gen2 experience. You're not using a merge like a regular Gen2 user. You can use a merge, but you're supposed to be using Sisyphus. And that's a issue if what you're using Redcore for is to get acquainted with Gen2, right? If you're using Redcore in the hopes to someday move on to actual vanilla Gen2, you're going to have a problem if you're using it the way Redcore intends you to use it. If you're using Sisyphus, if you're updating through Sisyphus, if you're installing applications through Sisyphus, how many times can I say Sisyphus because it's still kind of fun to say? You know, it's just if you're using it that way, you're not experiencing the Gen2 way of doing things. And that means that you're not going to be able to take that knowledge with you afterwards and actually move it to vanilla Gen2. Now, another thing about this whole Sisyphus thing is that when you are using it because Emerge also does exist, and technically Sisyphus is just a front end for Emerge, you can mix and match the package managers and use whatever you want to use. And that's the way I've been using it. And I think that eventually, that's going to cause me some problems because the way Sisyphus works is that it's built to prefer binaries. It's built to always prefer the prepackaged stuff in the repositories. It does have the ability to compile basically anything from the repositories that you want. There's a flag to do that, but it's meant by default to prefer binaries, right? And if you are going to use that update, it's going to look for the binaries of the packages that you've installed. And it's going to mix and match. You know, if you've been mixing and matching, they don't really go together from what I can tell. It's worked so far okay. But I've been using Sisyphus only to update the system. I've been using Emerge for everything else. And I think that eventually, that's going to cause me some problems somewhere online. It just feels like something that you're not supposed to do. And I'm not sure quite how to fix that. I could go through and just use Emerge to update the system because you can do that. And maybe I will give that a try and just see how that goes over a period of time. I'm not sure if there's a difference between the updates that Emerge gives you and Sisyphus gives you. I haven't actually checked that out or not. So my biggest takeaway with Redcore as I said is that the package management is so different if you're going the way Redcore wants you to go that it doesn't achieve its goal of being a stepping stone towards Gen 2. I don't really feel that it is that. And I don't think that that opinion is going to change over the next, what is it, four months in a week or so, whatever I have left of this challenge. I think that if you are looking for something that is a stepping stone towards Gen 2, Redcore is not a good option for you. It's just not. I would suggest something like Calculate Linux or one of those other Gen 2-based distros that is closer to Gen 2 than Redcore seems to be. Now, all of that being said, because of the way that I've been using Redcore, I do have some, it feels like I have some experience for Gen 2, simply because I have been using Emerge for basically everything updating the system. So I've learned some of the packaging tools that you need to learn in order to use Gen 2. So things like EIX, things like eQuery and Lists, things like that in order to search through the Gen 2 repositories to find packages, to find use flags and all this stuff. I've been messing around more as I've been installing some more applications on actually using use flags in the way that Gen 2 means for you to use them, which has been an interesting experiment because you can very much control how a package is compiled. So if you don't want anything to do with Wayland when you download, say, Alacrity or Kitty or something like that, you can take that into your use flag file and subtract Wayland from the ability for it to compile, right? I didn't say that right. But the idea is that you can add and subtract use flags and have it compile for the features that you want it to compile. And that has been an interesting experience. Now, Redcore sets it up in the way that most Gen 2 users do set it up and that every application that you download has its own package.use file that you put your use flags in. Now, in more general sense, a lot of people still put all of their use flags in one file. Redcore separates them all out, and I know a lot of Gen 2 users do that as well. So that's the way I've been doing it. And it's just been a very interesting experience. And I say interesting because I don't... It gives you a lot of power, right? It gives you a lot of control over your packages, over your system. And I think that that is very, very useful for a certain number of people. But I don't think that it is useful for everyone. And I don't think that it is useful for me. Despite the fact that I like to have control over my system, you know, I was a big Arch Linux guy for a very long time. I've gotten to a point in my Linux usage where I don't really need all of that control. I just want my system to work. And basically the use flag idea just adds more responsibility to my usage of my computer that I don't really feel like I need. And it's not that it's hard or even takes all that much extra time. And there have been situations where I have enjoyed having that control but it's not something that I feel like I need all the time. And it does add that extra breakage point. Like if you make a package.use file for it application you wanna download and you misspell something like I'm known to do, you know you're gonna have some issues, right? It's gonna break. Now it doesn't mean that you can't go back and fix those, it's very easy. But it adds an extra level of things that you have to do in order to do the things you wanna do. Now obviously if you wanted to use Redcore you wanted to use Gen2 and never mess around with use flags past installation of Gen2. I mean the installation of Gen2 you have to use some use flags in order to compile the kernel and install Xorg and things like that. But once you have it installed you could theoretically use Gen2 without messing around with use flags all because every package that's in the Gen2 repository has a default set of use flags set up for it. So if you just wanted to stick with the defaults you could do so. But if you're going to do that you're kind of diluting the reason to use Gen2. The reason to use Gen2 is because of that ability to have full control over how packages are built. And if you're going to ignore that you might as well not even use Gen2. And I think that's where I'm at right now with this entire experiment, this entire, I can't really talk today. I think that's where I'm at with this entire experiment is that I don't feel like the power that Gen2 gives me is something that I actually need or really want to use. And I don't think that in the next four months in a week or whatever it is that I'm going to be changing my mind. It just doesn't feel like some, I don't think that there's going to be some point two months from now where I think, oh yeah I really need this control all the time. Therefore I'm going to continue to use Gen2 because it gives me that control. Now is it a good thing to have even if you don't use it all the time? Maybe, I don't know. I think the disadvantage of having to install Gen2 in the way you have to install it would turn me away from wanting to use Gen2 after this is all over. Because if you were to install vanilla Gen2 it is a process that you have to go through. It's not easy, okay? I've tried it three times. I've successfully done it twice. Both of those times have been with significant amount of help from friends and trying to do that on my own scares the Bajibus out of me. I don't think that I could do it on my own and have it be successful. And because of that hurdle that you have to get through in order to actually use Gen2 installing it is a huge hurdle. I don't think that Gen2 for me is going to be something that I look at seriously after this challenge is over. The control that it gives you is not something that I really need and the installation is so hard that I don't think that I'd actually want to go through all of that before benefit that isn't really there for me. So as of right now, one month, two weeks, six days into this challenge I would say that it's very unlikely that I go to Gen2 after this as my main distro. I don't know where I will go but I doubt that I will continue to use Redcore or go to Vanilla Gen2 just because again, I don't really need the power that Gen2 gives me and if I were to install Vanilla Gen2 the process is just so tedious that I don't think that the benefit that Gen2 gives me is really worth it. So those are my thoughts on Redcore and Gen2. So far, like I said, Redcore has been very stable. I'm gonna knock on some wood here and hopefully that it continues on because I really wanna finish this challenge. I've done way better than I thought I would, given the fact that I'm using a very niche distro but it's just been very good but I don't know that I would stick on it after six months. We'll see where I am in another four months in a week or so. So that is it for this video. If you have thoughts on this challenge or whatever you can leave those in the comment section below. If you are doing the six month lens challenge I'd love to hear from you. How are you guys doing in the comment section below? Leave me a note. I'd love to hear from you. You can follow me on Mastodon or Odyssey. Those links will be in the video description. You can support me on Patreon at patreon.com slash linocast, links for Liberapay and YouTube will be in the video description. I cannot believe I remembered that outro. Like, I basically got it word for word. It was pretty damn good. Anyways, thanks to everybody who does support me on Patreon. You guys are all absolutely amazing. Without you, the challenge would not be anywhere near where it is right now. I think that I've managed to get everybody who signed up in my absence onto the end screen credits. So if you have signed up on Patreon and YouTube and I haven't gotten you on here, let me know. Also the Discord server went haywire and removed a whole bunch of roles. So if you are on Discord and you no longer have your Patreon role let me know in the comment section below or DM me or whatever. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see ya next time.