lars_the_bear wrote:That's not true. I've tried -- I've tried very hard, over several months. I just can't get binaries that match the USE and CPU flag settings I have. I chose a profile that excludes Pulse and Wayland, and most binaries seem to expect these things to be enabled.
My apologies. I should have been more specific. I don't dispute your past efforts. I was specifically referring to the idea in this thread about using settings that worked with Gentoo built binaries.
Based on your preferences, the only remaining option appeared to be compromising on what you could install or choose to not install. Thus, use Gentoo's binaries and slowly try to eliminate some of the things you don't want, realizing that you can't have everything, given your preferences.
So when I wrote that I didn't think you'd tried yet, I was specifically referring to that scenario, and I believed it to be accurate based on when you wrote this:
lars_the_bear wrote:don't let me distract you with my VM settings -- I just set this one to test the effect of USE flags on compilation. won't be using it for anything beyond that
I read that to mean you were only looking at the output from within the VM to determine that you couldn't get the exact specific thing you want, and had not yet tried to install the binaries to see what compromises you had to make.
lars_the_bear wrote:I tried using the desktop/gnome profile, and that got me all the binaries -- but it also got me a load of Gnome that I really don't want. And Pulse, which I really, really don't want.
It seems to me that it would be a lot easier if you installed it, then slowly tried to back away from things. Also understand that software including support may not necessarily mean you have to use it.
lars_the_bear wrote:I understand from the preceding discussion that I might be able to enabled USE settings on a package-by-package basis and hope/test that this still works.
That is how it works.
lars_the_bear wrote:Honestly, all I want is to use Linux on my old-ish laptop and have it work as well and with as little hassle as it did in 2014.
It isn't 2014, so that's almost certainly not going to happen,. Accept that you might be able to do something pre-2024, and you'll only know that that looks like when you get there (or decide it isn't worth the journey).
lars_the_bear wrote:When I naively embarked on this effort, this didn't seem like an unworthy or unreasonable goal. I'm not seriously thinking about going back to DOS but, frankly, I'd go back to Windows 7 if it wasn't such a security risk. That old laptop worked great with Windows 7 and, with Cygwin and MinGW it was a serviceable development platform.
I'd rather use Linux; it's just disheartening how difficult it seems to be.
It's not difficult at all, even on your hardware. The difficulty comes with your apparent unwillingness to accept that you'll have to make compromises.
Do what you will, of course, but I'd try to forget about the ideal you want and instead slowly try to peel back the pieces and discover how close you can get to it.
And I'd be remiss if I didn't also add that you keep an eye out for a used, cheap (or even free) PC that has better cooling for only occasional use on some of the things you'd like to have. That solves most of your issues. You get to use the old hardware, including such a PC.
Good luck!
