>>106702890
if you know what you're doing, it's the most efficient distro
for 99% of people it's useless

>>106702898
What exactly is efficient about it though?

>>106702900
it's a blank canvas. not only you install the dependencies you need and /only/ the ones you need, but you also compile them to meet your specific hardware.
in theory that means a lean system that works like a swiss watch with no quirks because everything is tailor-made. in practice nothing works because turns out those 2000 packages mint installs aren't actually bloat.

for nerds who love running the compiler and optimizing their kernel

bleeding edge source code hackery.

>>106702938
Kek so does this include binary blobs and or proprietary software?
>>106702947
Sounds wrong

for those who a rolling release like arch but want to eek out more performance and want people to test more before releasing packages for release.

>>106702890
install gentoo

>>106702890
Main usecase is for people obsessed with systemd/wayland/rust/etc. to ensure they don't have it on their system.

>>106703190
i use systemd in gentoo
>>106702938
if something stops working then you did need it. your last sentence doesn't make sense

>>106702890
Convenience for maintainers.
It's the closest you can get without going full LFS/KISS and gives you a reliable toolchain to build upon with little hassle involved.

If you aren't into maintaining your own system than it most likily won't serve you any practual purpose, especially now-a-days where theres so many "just werkz" distros that have thousands of maintainers pre-configuring everything in the most used and common ways.
Unless you are really going for some massivily niche setup or are trying to develop something without having to worry about the base system, than theres pretty much no reason to use it honestly.

I myself am considering moving to KISS since my configuration has pretty much been set in stone for awhile now, i don't really need all the useflag configuration options and i've been using my own ebuilds to avoid a fair bit of unnessesary dep bloat that has slowly moved it's way into the main tree over the ages.
But the convience factor is pretty much the only thing keeping me around these days.

>>106703351
>If you aren't into maintaining your own system than it most likily won't serve you any practual purpose
This but it's a slippery slope from installing niche software to maintaining it yourself then finally deciding you want control over the whole system.
I have a bunch of AUR packages I compile and install but sometimes I have to go into the pkgbuild and fix a dependency myself. Recent example was a package that wanted to compile and install a specific version of chromium. I didn't want to wait 12 hours to let it finish so I edited the dependencies to use a chromium-bin package instead.
I could've also compiled it without the minor feature flag that needed chromium, I can't remember what it was. Probably some webgui integration.
For now AUR is more convenient but I'm seriously considering gentoo now that I see I'm installing a fucking web browser for a feature I never use. I don't want to deal with custom pacman repos either.

>>106702890
Honestly it sounds like a pain in the ass to use if you don't have a build server.

>>106702890
It's a stable distro that lets me still use the latest nvidia driver. I also really like SLOTs, I can install multiple versions of packages, letting me pin dependencies for my projects while apps can still use newer versions. The build system is really nice, lets me make packages for anything I can't find in the main tree or an overlay easily, and it feels more integrated with the package manager than the AUR does on Arch. Other than that, I mostly just find it fun.

>>106703199
are you autistic?
>i use systemd in gentoo
no, just retarded

>>106703533
i use the best tools for the job, and for me that's gentoo and systemd

>>106703533
gentoo has greater official support for systemd than it does for musl libc. and you can do either one on gentoo. you can also use pieces of systemd alongside openrc, like elgoind and systemd boot.

>>106703190
>Main usecase is for people obsessed with systemd/wayland/rust/etc.
So you spend weeks everything from the source only for it to not work? Great distro

>>106703813
>So you spend weeks everything
your sentence seems to be missing a dependency.
no wonder you think things dont work.

nah more like a few hours on a quad core
minutes if you're adept and got 16 or more cores.
works fine without any of those specific programs you mentioned.

The only time i ever spent weeks on a gentoo install was on a single core mobile IBM powerpc what a ride.

>>106702890
Personally, I just like it because the portage design clicked for me a lot better than anything else. Every time I learn something new about how it does dependencies, or how I can customize it myself or "package" something myself or whatever else, I always feel like it makes sense and is clean. Something about how other distros do packages feels very opaque, convoluted, obscure. I'm sure I could get over it if I read enough docs, but I'm already comfy with gentoo and have no reason to switch. Also, mostly no systemd for now.

>>106703436
Gentoo has a build-server and they make binary packages available from it. Of course you lose some of the flexibility of USE flags and custom compiler flags by using these but if your laptop/desktop is anything modern then it'll have no issues compiling from source.

>>106703486
>it feels more integrated with the package manager than the AUR does on Arch
Because it is more integrated. Also the GURU project is a textbook case of how a user-currated repository should be run like.

Users have to request access and can only commit to a development tree and a trusted user has to merge it into the master repository. This stops almost all of the malware cases that have happened in the AUR in its tracks.

>>106704072
There are no binary packages for gcc, llvm, clang or glibc, and those need to be updated regularly. They're also significantly larger than most normal software, so a large chunk of your compile time is going toward build tools. Even more if you don't use rust-bin.

>>106704086
They do provide packages for all of those:
https://distfiles.gentoo.org/releases/amd64/binpackages/23.0/x86-64/sys-devel/gcc/
https://distfiles.gentoo.org/releases/amd64/binpackages/23.0/x86-64/llvm-core/
https://distfiles.gentoo.org/releases/amd64/binpackages/23.0/x86-64/sys-libs/glibc/

>>106704115
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Gentoo_Binary_Host_Quickstart

>>106702890
NixOS depreciated Gentoo back in 2003.

>>106704115
I stand corrected then

>>106704139
The binary host is pretty new so you could be forgiven for not knowing about it to be honest. They have binaries for most software now, even the desktops. You could use it like you'd use Arch, for example, if you wanted to, although you do lose some of the advantages of being able to customise the system and only install exactly what is strictly needed.

>>106703097
in make.conf, a file where you define the behavior of the portage package manager, you can choose to only allow packages in your system that have a non-proprietary licensing status.

>>106704181
This is the default behaviour by the way. You don't have to opt-out of proprietary software on Gentoo, you opt-in to it by accepting the licenses. The @free licenses are accepted by default.

>>106704124
i use both. its good to keep a backup in case nixos turns to shit. i kind of use nixos like i use gentoo anyways. i have a few patched apps and i like to overlay my nixpkgs so i build a lot of stuff from source.

>>106703436
just get a good ryzen CPU

>>106702890
nothing unless you're on some weird architecture like sparc

You don't need more than Slackware
>b-b-but old!!!
We didn't need people born past 1993 either, but here we are

How do you avoid circular dependencies (like with qt)? How do you do correctly transition python version updates (just wait a long time?) without being stuck in between?

Gentoo users boast having stable but bleeding edge machines. I suck at using portage but I want to learn since this is the only distro that interests me. Is the secret to always use --keep-going?

>>106703190
OpenRC Gentoo still has some systemd

You can compile a 4.2MiB package without a couple of its use flags to reduce bloat, in about 15 minutes on an old thinkpad.

>gentoo
More liek nothantu

>>106703174
>want people to test more before releasing packages for release
this is the real reason gentoo is the best. it's a "stable" rolling release distro that you can configure any which way you'd like and even supports and offers binaries for most packages

>>106707516
>it's a "stable" rolling release distro that you can configure any which way you'd like
This is, hands down, my favorite feature of Gentoo. Some packages I keep on the bleeding-edge side of things, others I just want them to work and not brick my system.

>>106707801
unstable packages usually have unstable deps which has the side effect of rebuilding a bunch of packages as unstable.

>>106702890
There are many use cases but not for the regular user. In general it's so you can have a distro específically for your hardware. Chromebooks use Gentoo for that reason.

>>106702890
Also it's not necessarily the best way to do this. Something like NixOS that compiles first if the package cache doesn't exist would maybe be a better solution, being the best of both worlds. Nobody does that in NixOS though or at least I don't think so.

I'm going to switch to Mint until I build an AMD machine. Gentoo on a nvidia laptop is cringe.