[donio]

> Gentoo linux is essentially made specifically for people like this, to be able to optimize one’s own linux rig for one’s specific usecase.

That's true but worth noting that "optimize" here doesn't necessarily refer to performance.

I've been using Gentoo for 20 years and performance was never the reason. Gentoo is great if you know how you want things to work. Gentoo helps you get there.

[kennysoona]

If it wasn't for performance, what was gained in using it over something like Slackware and building only the packages you needed to?

[CamouflagedKiwi]

USE flags. You can build packages with specific features enabled or disabled, which can further reduce your dependency tree.

[stakhanov]

Reducing the dependency tree gets a bit more complicated once you consider that now you have to satisfy not only runtime dependencies for all packages but also build-time dependencies. There may be ways of cleaning that up after a build, but next time you want to emerge a new package you'll just end up having to re-build the build-time dependencies, so in practice you'll just end up leaving them there. There is an ability to emerge packages to a separate part of the filesystem tree (ROOT="/my/chroot" emerge bla), so that you have one build-time system act as a kind of incubator for a runtime system that gets to be minimal. But you'll end up encountering problems that most other Gentoo users wouldn't encounter, having to do with the separation between build-time dependencies and runtime dependencies not being correctly made in the recipes. Personally, I had been relying on this feature for roughly the last 10 years, but there has been steady deterioration there over the years and I eventually gave up late last year.

[cb321]

This is a good point. I've been using Gentoo since early 2004 (the dreaded Pentium IV era, Lol). Lately, I run into this with dev-lang/tcl only being need to build dev-db/sqlite. I actually think it's pretty weird that software intended to be as widely used as sqlite with as much of a free base of supporting devs doesn't just do the extra effort to use a Makefile.

[kennysoona]

For building specific packages with particular flags, wouldn't slackbuilds have been sufficient?

[xlii]

Long time ago when I was using it I preferred Gentoo because of ergonomics and better exposition to supply chain.

Slackware was very manual and some bits were drowned in its low level and long command chains. Gentoo felt easy but highlighted dependencies with a hard cost associated with compilation times.

Being a newb back then I enjoyed user friendliness with access to the machinery beneath. Satisfaction of a 1s boot time speedu, a result of 48h+ compilation, was unparalleled, too ;)

[0xbadcafebee]

> If it wasn't for performance, what was gained

A new hobby

[kennysoona]

That's very fair, I've certainly tinkered with stuff for the fun of it when there were easier or more suitable alternatives.