It has now been about a year or two since I made the switch from Funtoo to Linux Mint. The main reasons were

1. Funtoo went directions I did not like and was ultimately discontinued
2. after Funtoo, Gentoo just felt outdated
3. I am closer to my friends/work environment and am native to the ubuntu based linuxes

That being said, here is some documentation for future me on what to do when installing a new computer and a general rant about the state of things.

Time saving with consoomer distributions is a lie

It really goes downhill.

I never understood why people said using Funtoo/Gentoo would cost them too much time. Since they often were people I generally respected for their linux skills, I did not think about it as them being bad at linux and to be fair, still do not think that way.

With a few years of professional linux use under my belt at least now I can say, that I am very good at computer and most of my understanding comes actually from using distributions which are more transparent with their inner workings.

Possibly there actually is a skill issue at play, but how would I know.

Crypto works, but needs terminal when installing

I tried to replicate the default setup of LVM on LUKS with the Mint installer, but I had to do a little work around, because the GUI installer just does not have the capabilities:

1. start installer to switch keyboard layout to your locale one
2. open terminal to unlock crypto and activate lvm groups
3. use GUI installer to properly asssign partitions (make sure to not format those you want to keep)
4. add the crypto devices to /etc/crypttab
5. proceed normal install

The normal installation then parses the crypttab and creates an appropriate initrd image and it kinda should work.

Pulse audio is still the mistake it always has been

No good fix there. If it works ootb, yay. If it doesn't work, well, have fun. Managing multiple audio outputs is a pain.

Vim plugin manager

Installing vim plugins is now different because there is some fancy "userfriendly" layer in between. After installing a plugin via apt, it still has to be activated using the vim-addon-manager: - vim-addon-manager install <plugin> before you can use it as a user - vim-addons enable <plugin> to actually enable it

Locale in DE != locale in terminal

The GUI does not really expose all the LC-settings, so you need to edit some file. Sadly I have not documented what actually helped me to set the locale as I want it. Possibly it was just dpkg-reconfigure locales, but it was definitely insufficient to only populate the env.

Editor

For some reason nano fuckbois still exist. Fix it by running update-alternatives --config editor.

Network manager cannot consume wpa_supplicant.conf

Another abomination that should be purged from earth.

You can disable the device being managed by Network damager in network settings and then go back to proper wpa_supplicant:

Use systemctl edit wpa_supplicant to change the unit file

[Service]
 ExecStart=
 ExecStart=/sbin/wpa_supplicant -u -s -O /run/wpa_supplicant -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -iwlp2s0

and then maybe systemctl enable but what do I care.

I miss tiling

Many applications came to expect things like window borders and task bars, so using a desktop environment like Cinnamon does make many things ... less janky. However, I just can't find shit anymore since I switched from xmonad to cinnamon.

Recent documents is fucked in Cinnamnon

There are only 20 recent files hardcoded in Cinnamon, across all applications that share this buffer. No solution yet.

Steam works fine

Unbeknownst to most of the population, Steam is relies on 32bit libraries, which made it a PITA on pure 64bit installations (such as Funtoo).

Well, it does work fine on Mint, can't complain here.