How many of you /g/uys have actually installed gentoo? I just

If you didn't bother to look/read/disable not needed for your use case use flags, then yes — don't bother, you'll likely never see any difference for your use case.

>>59260900
I just started learning today, still trying to get my head around which flags are necessary for me. Do I need to edit my make.conf file for each different package I am trying to install? And does it make a big difference in emerge time to have the use flags really finely tuned

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You're on a pretty slow processor, compiling Chromium or Libreoffice would take several hours.

You will fuck up this system pretty bad most likely. Learn to set use flags correctly. Do not dirty your world file with packages you don't explicitly want installed, for example do not put dependencies in there, you would only want applications like "firefox" or "nautilus" in there.

Use the -1 flag to emerge packages without adding them to your world file.

Show me your make.conf and package.use, do not put USE flags that shouldn't be global into make.conf, add them to specific packages in package.use

Use

equery u <package>

to see a list of USE flags and what they mean for a package.

Learn how to use equery in general.

Learn about portage.

https://packages.gentoo.org/useflags

I use this to check if I should have a USE flags globally set in make.conf or not

>>59260969
> Do I need to edit my make.conf file for each different package I am trying to install?
Yes, it's usually done by something like

echo "app-editors/vim -X" >> /etc/portage/package.use

if it's a local flag (i.e. applied only for package) or by editing USE= line in /etc/portage/make.conf. Or just by using something like euse, quse.

> And does it make a big difference in emerge time to have the use flags really finely tuned
Well, yes, depending on which features you're enabling or disabling.
In example above, if you are building vim for first time, and doesn't have xorg yet, but need to edit something with vim, there is no need to build it with X support, cause it will first build xorg as dependency.

>>59261008
holy shit are you the guy from the thread the other day who was compiling and running dolphin at the same time in the desktop thread? if so you were actually what inspired me to do this lol. My make.conf is pretty basic, and I just added my first file to package.use, for layman.

>>59261008
make.conf:

# These settings were set by the catalyst build script that automatically
# built this stage.
# Please consult /usr/share/portage/config/make.conf.example for a more
# detailed example.
CFLAGS="-march=native -O3 -pipe"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
# WARNING: Changing your CHOST is not something that should be done lightly.
# Please consult http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/change-chost.xml before changing.
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
# These are the USE and USE_EXPAND flags that were used for
# buidling in addition to what is provided by the profile.
USE="bindist"
CPU_FLAGS_X86="mmx sse sse2"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
DISTDIR="${PORTDIR}/distfiles"
PKGDIR="${PORTDIR}/packages"
MAKEOPTS="-j5 -l5"
INPUT_DEVICES="evdev synaptics"
VIDEO_CARDS="intel vesa fbdev"

GENTOO_MIRRORS="rsync://rsync.gtlib.gatech.edu/gentoo ftp://ftp.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/gentoo http://www.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/gentoo"

>>59261245
USE="bindist"

Get rid of that, bindist disables features from software that might cause theoretical legal issues. For example it removes all official branding from Firefox, because Mozilla doesn't like people redistributing Firefox with it's official branding. Sometimes it disables actually useful features from packages like mesa. Keep it enabled if you actually care about stuff like that.

>VIDEO_CARDS="intel vesa fbdev"

Change this to what is recommended in https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Intel#USE_flags, you don't need vesa/fbdev

Let me give you quick rundown of graphics stack, GPU drivers are actually contained within the Linux kernel, these can only be updated by updating your kernel.

In userspace you have of course Xorg (xorg-server), a 2D xorg driver for intel called xf86-video-intel, and your OpenGL/3D support is contained within a package called mesa.

If you need a compositor to stop tearing from your bare WM, compton is the best choice.

>>59261415
>xf86-video-intel

Well actually this is considered deprecated and not recommended now.

They recommend using the generic xf86-video-modesetting

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holy shit and piss, there are people here who unironically use something else besides gentoo!
only bsd is a sufficient replacement

>>59260739
don't worry bout the compiling time. Only the initial setup will take a while
look on the bright side, you now have virtually limitless options and are pretty much in complete control of your system

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>>59260739
Been running it for months now. For me, the point of gentoo is to reduce dependency hell. No, I do not need pulse audio to install gimp. No, I do not need systemd in order for XFCE to work. Gentoo is not for beginners. You will spend weeks tweaking things after the initial install. But it can be nice.

>>59260739
Distros like Arch and Gentoo are made for people who use their operating systems as toys. They like to tinker and rice and fix shit all the time. The rest of us (somewhat) normal people use Debian based distros because they just work.

>>59262470
I am coming from arch, which in my opinon besides the install (and even that isn't really that hard) is just as easy as debian or anything else. the aur basically makes it so you never even have to fiddle with PPA type stuff as you do on ubuntu and friends. Compared to that this is so much more in depth. to all those in the thread who are well versed, what are some good resources for better understanding what use flags I do or don't need? I understand the concept but I have no idea what is and isn't necessary

>>59260739
Been using it for over ten years now.

> installs sudo
> complains about compiling
You want Ubuntu, I think. This is a distro for people who want or need to compile software. There is no point using it if you just want Ubuntu.

>>59262551
You pick whatever flags you yourself want...? There isn't really a necessity beyond that, except meeting dependency requirements of course.

>>59262628
I'm doing this to learn, so if it's unusual or incorrect to use sudo on gentoo, I'm learning that now. My question is why would a person want to compile software, there must be a benifit to it, gentoo exists and many people love it, I just wanna find out why.
>>59262673
And I fully understand that I am asking retarded babby questions, but where can I find out what all the flags mean? I can't determine which I want without knowing what they represent, and I don't, beyond like gtk and obvious stuff like that.

I understand that learing this stuff is part of the point of gentoo, which is why i'm here asking questions

Gentoo is impractical for beginners or as an enviroment for a network of corporate Linux desktops (yes, such a thing exists, at every place where I worked since 2002). For those things, Ubuntu or Debian are great, and Fedora/CentOS/Scientific/... are quite adequate.

However for someone who really needs a customized environment, where he can configure any combination of options that software allows, Gentoo is either the only option, or the only one that allows it in a straightforward way. For example, my primary desktop at home runs Gentoo. I wanted to see how KDE/Plasma will work without Pulseaudio. On Gentoo it was possible to actually remove Pulseaudio and all its traces, and see that it's actually a pretty viable option as long as all software is compiled without it (and Skype runs with apulse wrapper). After seeing it working on Gentoo, I was able to set up functionally the same environment on my media player box (running Ubuntu and using nothing but a single HDMI output for audio). Using Gentooo as a reference I was able to disable Pulseaudio even though it and all its libraries still had to be present, thanks to inflexible dependencies in Ubuntu (Debian has the same problem) pckages. I had to not only rename/dvert puesaudio executable but also remove a configuration file, /usr/share/alsa/pulse-alsa.conf that caused ALSA, low-level audio subsystem, to still try to call Pulseaudio when it was supposed to do everything on its own. Without Gentoo as the testing ground, I would have hard time even determining if PulseAudio can be safely removed.

>>59262826
>My question is why would a person want to compile software, there must be a benifit to it, gentoo exists and many people love it, I just wanna find out why.

You can tailor your software to your needs. In theory, you can secure your system a little better since you can disable software features at compile time instead of having a generic binary like most distributions use.

Yes, the learning curve is steep, but on more recent hardware, compiling stuff like sudo takes just a couple of minutes.

>>59263238
>>59263238

I forgot to mention

>And I fully understand that I am asking retarded babby questions, but where can I find out what all the flags mean?

equery u <package>

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>>59260739
I started my Linux journey around 2006 with Debian, but somewhere around 2008 I took /g/'s advice and installed Gentoo. It was nice, especially since my computers back then were incredibly low-spec'd, having the low memory use and cpu optimizations was a measurable plus.

By 2011, however, I had transitioned significantly in life (mostly making more money, having concrete project goals beyond ricing my desktop) and that has come with two consequences:

1. My time is worth a lot more. This was especially clear back when I was freelancing. When I charge clients $150/hr for my time, spending two hours configuring or upgrading some package is two hours I could have worked instead, and billed to the tune of $300. So I began to want something closer to a "just works" setup.

2. I have more money for nicer parts, and by 2013 decide to just buy, as my business partner put it, "so much RAM I wouldn't have to care", which at the time was 24GB.

Now I'm back to Debian-based (or occasionally Ubuntu-based) systems depending what I'm doing. My main desktop is currently an experiment in using Linux Mint, and while my feelings are mixed, so far I don't hate it.

Using Gentoo is decent for a year or two in order to get familiar with a bunch of the minutiae of desktop Linux (and probably the same for Arch). Think of it like a university course in a topic like algorithms. You spend 5 or even 10 months on something you don't need to think about ninety-nine percent of the time. In fact, you make it a *goal* to not re-implement shit like quicksort or red-black trees yourself on every new project. Once you understand HOW they work, you skip the grunt-work and just use a library.

But when it finally matters, that 1% of the time, the knowledge pays off because you have the background knowledge and confidence to face the sort of problem head on.

However this is not the only way to acquire that knowledge.
It can also be incidental to your daily use.
This was just the path I took.

>>59260739
Yeah I got paid to install it on government systems and tweak it for maximum real time performance

>>59260739
I ran it for a few months and then went back to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

Portage and flags did teach me a bunch about compiling but little about code (which was my goal). It's all there if you want it but there was nothing compelling in my mind. It does stand out as one of the only things I've ever seen max 4C/8T for an hour actually "doing" something and I might have stuck with it if the compiling didn't constantly break my workflow.

Like >>59262628 said, if it doesn't feel right after a fair trial period move on.

>>59261008
what's that font?

>>59260739
just stick to windows 10

>>59263943
you're right I should
the os in my picture
windows 10
best os
>thanks for the helpful advice

>>59263960
after hours of gentoo installation i saw you put an anime girl background which proves you are a pathetic faggot. therefore windows 10 is best for you.

>>59263986
ya got me guy, ya figured me out
back to windows ten i go

>>59260739
>xe fell for the gentoo meme

install a non-autistic distro you silly

To everyone else in this thread, thank you for the advice! I know I'm verging on tech support, but is there any less vague documentation on how to get audio/wlan working? I've been at it for a while and the gentoo wiki seems pretty scattered about it

>>59260739
No, I run NixOS like a sensible person

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>>59260739
install arch, gentoo is a meme

>>59264236
currently on arch, wanted to try out the king of complicated-to-install distros

>>59263935
faggot regular 6

>>59262826
>where can I find out what all the flags mean?
https://www.gentoo.org/support/use-flags/

>>59264278
couldn't find that, do you have a link?