[Solved] Suggestion USE Flags to build Gentoo Workstation

minsoehan · Last edited by minsoehan on Thu Mar 17, 2016 12:13 am; edited 1 time in total

I am planning to install Gentoo on one of my Laptops. I will use it seriously as my main workstation.
I want it supports as much as possible.
My choice for DE is "Plasma". Of course, I will set profile to desktop/plasma.
But I want a little suggestion for USE Flags setting.
I think

krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

it enable nothing, you have disable something, but didn't ask to enable anything.
some flags will be enable by the profile you will use. Per example, a desktop profile will certainly enable the "X" use flag.

so even when you pickup a profile, that profile will enable some flags that should logically be enable, but any other flags will not, it's your choice to enable what is not.
your gtk question, if your profile need gtk useflag it will enable it, if it doesn't enable it and cannot work with it, it will blacklist it.
if it doesn't care about it (no use of it, but could use it), it's up to you to know if you will have any usage of gtk or not.

you have list of use flag desc in your profile to see what they will do, or you can use equery (emerge gentookit) to see what a use flag will do an a package (equery u package)

szczerb · Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2016 11:46 am Post subject:

That's for my work laptop (OpenRC, XFCE):

charles17 · Advocate Joined: 02 Mar 2008 Posts: 3664

arnvidr · l33t Joined: 19 Aug 2004 Posts: 629 Location: Oslo, Norway

At least remove the asterisk from the USE line. Activating all other use flags WILL pull in packages that needs systemd, gnome and pulseaudio. Add USE flags as you need them, as charles17 mentions above.
_________________

minsoehan · Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2016 5:15 am Post subject:

thanks for all suggestions.
I have installed Gentoo on my laptops.
I just set to profile to /desktop/plasma and left USE Flags as it was.
I mean,

The Doctor · Moderator Joined: 27 Jul 2010 Posts: 2678

I don't think your question is well formed.

Without knowing what you intend to do no one can actually give specific advice. I've used gentoo as a primary workstation in several situations. As a student I needed LaTeX, libreoffice, mathematica, and a web browser with javscript and flash support. As a research scientist I needed a laptop with a gcc compiler, pythia8, root, ssh, and a functional terminal. I emphasis "functional terminal" since there are many examples of Quake-style terminals which close unexpectedly or transparent terminals which are hard to use for anything production related. As a pilot and general nerd I need openfoam, blender, eclipse, and a web browser without flash and javascript because reasons.

The key is to know what you need and what you want. For example, you want plasma but you really could use fluxbox or i3. You need X.

The software you have to run is going to determine what use flags you must have or use flags you don't want. Install the software with whatever features you need and the rest should fall into place.

Another personal anecdote. As a pilot I must have the Foreflight app. This means I must have an ipad running iOS. My tablet would be useless to me if I bought a run of the mill tablet and installed Gentoo no matter what use flags I selected.

As a side note for the CPU flags mentioned above, you want to install emerge -1v app-portage/cpuinfo2cpuflags, run cpuinfo2cpuflags-x86 and put the result in your CPU_FLAGS_X86 variable.
_________________
First things first, but not necessarily in that order.

Apologies if I take a while to respond. I'm currently working on the dematerialization circuit for my blue box.

C5ace · Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2016 10:31 am Post subject:

My /etc/make.conf and /etc/portage/repos.conf/gentoo.conf ised on my AMD Phenom II 3Ghz Quad Core workstation with Xfce DE and 5 disk RAID 5 array:

/etc/portage/make.conf

arnvidr · l33t Joined: 19 Aug 2004 Posts: 629 Location: Oslo, Norway