Thanks that answers my question as to how Gentoo avoids the problems that PPA and AUR have. They take a bit of time and test things.
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Hi Neville, 
thanks for your opinion on it.
I even found an article regarding eopkg commands on itsfoss:
I´ll have a closer look at Solus and Artix.
In theory my main goal would be having access to a rolling release distro which is as stable as can be achieved.
I know nothing beats a fixed release stable distro like e.g. Debian. But still: having to install the system just once has its apppeal. 
Cheers from Rosika 
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Hi Rosika,
Best choices on that criterion would be Solus or Void.
They are both rolling and rock solid.
In my opinion less problems than a fixed release Debian… because they dont try to support 50000 packages… they choose the best two or three packages for each task and maintain those.
Regards
Neville
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Hi Neville,
A huge thanks to you, Neville. 
I´ll definitively look into both of them.
“Rock solid”, that´s quite a statement. I´m impressed, especially in view of the fact that they are rolling releases. I suppose it can´t get better than that.
Thanks again and cheers from Rosika
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Gentoo has stable packages and they are tested, then there’s ~amd64 which means it’s “unstable” or “testing” which means it is not yet accepted as stable. You can mix and match these or go wild and accept ~amd64 globally (not recommended). The PPA/AUR on Gentoo is guru and it’s maintained by users. You can also make your own repository and publish it. At the moment there’s 433 repositories. These aren’t considered stable.
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I can confirm that Void is solid. It’s a bit behind bleeding edge so devs have tested packages more. It doesn’t have all the stuff you can find for other distroes.
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Thanks, I did not know any of that. My Gentoo experience is elementary and guided by @Daniel_Phillips . I have never gone outside the stable area.
I have never been able to follow Gentoo repos. Do they even keep copies of packages in a repo, or do they just maintain links to the sources.
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Thanks @ihasama for your opinions as well.
O.K., I get it.
One of the important packages to be available would be anydesk.
It doesn´t seem to be available for Void. Neither is firetools…
Thanks again and cheers from Rosika
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Manjaro is alright, but their update philosophy is two weeks behind, or at least the last time I used it. Plus you have to install Package dependencies, to install from the AUR, at least you had to, the last time I used Manjaro Xfce Edition.
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Hi Mark,
thank you for providing your views.
That wouldn´t be too bad.
Main thing is the system remains stable. That´s not to be taken for granted with rolling-release distros.
Thanks also for the info on AUR.
Many greetings from Rosika
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There’s ebuilds. Just a file with build instructions for portage. You can write your own ebuild too and ask portage to build the package for you.
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On Void you can build with xpbs-src. I have never tried it.
Gentoo has anydesk
And at least firetools is on one of these repoes we’ve been talking to:
There’s 9999 and ~amd64 version, “9999” is upstream, “~amd64” is tested but not marked stable.
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Hi @ihasama,
thank you very much for the info and for providing the links.
As I tend to evaluate potential distros with respect to whether anydesk and firetools are installable (among other aspects, of course), Gentoo looks interesting.
On
its says:
“Welcome to the Home of 19,091 Gentoo Packages”
Great. I´ll have a closer look at Gentoo.
Thanks for your help.
Many greetings from Rosika
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Hi Rosika,
It has firejail. You might find firetools is bundled with firejail in Void.
You should find it has an equivalent package to anydesk… I will check
Same will apply to Solus… it has fewer packages than Void.
Often Void packages will have a different name to the equivalent .deb package, or be bundled differently. Same applies to Solus and Gentoo… things can be hard to find.
They will both listen to package requests.
Regards
Neville
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@ihasama @nevj
I always build Gentoo with the “amd64” set in “/etc/portage/make.conf”!!! If I chose otherwise,
I will set “~amd64” in the “etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/package.accept_keywords”!!
One will spend more time updating Gentoo, other than using Gentoo, if the “~amd64” is set in
“make.conf”, but it will make Gentoo, more Arch like!!!
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Yes, stable is the normal and if needed ~amd64 in the package.accept_keywords. With my Pinebook Pro I need to use a lot of ~arm64 keywords because ARM64 it’s not tested so much.
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Well I wish they would choose a more meaningful name for that flag
It seems to mean
arm64… tested for arm64 cpu
~arm64 … not tested for arm64 cpu
nothing to do with compiler options?
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Hey, all
Thought I would chip in with my own list, only based on experience with those I have used. Some I never got to use for long, but if I kept running into issues, like Wayland only (rules out Anydesk which is a must for me) and other things I could not easily remedy, I usually decided against the distro and went on to something else.
Although I use MX non-systemd as my daily driver on my laptop and have had no issues, I have not tried most of the others in @nevj 's list.
MX
PepperMint (Devuan)
Antix: I used it on my mom’s old i-5 core duo but I found it much more difficult than the other 2 above.
System D:
Linux Mint (has been on my desktop for 3-4 years)
Pop OS (still on my old Surface Pro 7) it pretty much runs itself and despite being more Gnome-like, it is easy to navigate.
Vanilla OS: very GUI oriented and immutable so I feel it is good for beginners in Linux as you can’t mess up the system to where it won’t boot. It does lock down the internal drives, so installing over it had to use GParted and a “new to me” command just to unlock it before I could reformat the drives.
Debian 12 (running on my old desktop used now solely as my Mom’s computer)
Sparky Linux: am using now on my mom’s old core duo.
Bodhi: tried it for a week on my mom’s core duo and did like it, did not have any issues, but it is definitely different from all these others. Only reason I put Sparky over it, was to see if it ran any faster or cooler. So far, not much difference. I may go back to it.
Fedora (Server): for a while on my mini pc, using it as a home server, but there were too many conflicts with all the other distros; plus DNF. And I do not care for Gnome.
Solus: still have it as a dual boot on the old desktop with Debian 12; have not had many issues that I could not resolve, but it was a learning curve compared to the others before
Endeavour OS: my first foray into Arch-based distros. I liked it a lot. Used YAY and some AUR but it did have a GUI app much like the package managers in MX/Debian where once you chose something to install, all required packages were automatically selected. So I did not feel it was that difficult.
Garuda: Have it dual booted with MX on laptop; did have it on Lenovo but replaced it with Nix. At first, having only used Endeavour, it was a bit harder. I did not like some of the limitations, but it was my first and only rolling release.
Nix OS; I am having so much fun with this one. I like to think of it as baby steps before the likes of Gentoo or LFS. Definitely not for beginners.
Manjaro: did not get to spend much time with it as I had to give my mini PC to my mom for a while, but it was definitely more of a learning curve than Solus.
Other than looking at a few other distros along the way or maybe installing and immediately not liking them, and specifically if there is not a live version, can’t say I have any experience with others.
Sheila
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Both are tested, ~ means it’s not yet marked as stable. Gentoo works with many processor architectures and you need to tell which one you have (AMD=x86_64, x86= older 32bits chips , ARM 32/64bits/MIPS/PPC/Sparck). With Intel/AMD chips you can also build only 64 bit system or 32+64 compatible if you need spice/steam.
You should have the architecture in you make.conf and only allow ~ for some packages (in your package.accept keywords file) you need to have the newest one or there is no stable package.
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Thanks, that is what I am seeking… rankings based on experience
I will try and match it up with the current list, and maybe make some mods.
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