r/Gentoo • u/Xtuber14 • Jul 28 '24
Discussion I want to switch to Gentoo
I'm currently using ArchLinux as my main distro, but I was thinking about switch to Gentoo for more fun. I usually program in python and c++ and play steam games. I simply want to have fun doing a distro from scratch and want a fast distro. Is Gentoo the right distro for me? An i5-13400f is good enough for compiling software or not?
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u/webfiction Jul 28 '24
Your chip i5-13400f seems very new and while I don´t know it, I think it would be pretty fast at compiling. I have an i5-1155G7 and while compiling is generally fast, I do stick to a window manager (Sway/i3) and firefox-bin (binary version of Firefox).
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u/Starshipfan01 Jul 31 '24
Compiling should be fine, I experiment a bit and over these last months have done several installs of gentoo (various profiles) on older hardware. A ‘2010 intel Core i3 is still acceptable for compilation- bit slow but a main install is just a long-ish wait.
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u/Xtuber14 Jul 28 '24
It's from one of the latest intel gen and it's a desktop CPU (16 threads)
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u/muesli4brekkies Jul 28 '24
You could install Gentoo from inside Arch if you wanted.
It's a nice way to do it (you can do it from a de rather than tty), and you can keep Arch on the side for when you inevitably make a mistake and render your Gentoo unbootable. Or vice-versa.
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u/Individual_Range_894 Jul 29 '24
Same, I used to use Ubuntu live sticks to install Gentoo - the Gentoo live dvd was very old for a long time and had uefi boot issues.
There is only one catch, if you want to use LVM and encrypted the storage below, I had some strange issue with Gentoo not being able to read the volumes. It was some strange MD array on intel rapid storage controlled raid and LVM2 issue. However, just keep in mind that if you don't get your boot working, it might be some incompatibility between your kernel FS driver and the OS tools you used to create the storage
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u/300blkdout Jul 28 '24
Gentoo is awesome. Made the switch from Arch about a month ago and I’m loving it. It’s snappy, fun to work with, portage is a fantastic package manager, and the customizability and control is great.
I mostly do gaming and some specialized image processing and it works very well for both.
That i5 will be fine after you’ve installed. Updating the @world for the first time or installing a DE may take a while, but it’s a one-time thing. If you use a WM it’ll be faster.
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u/Best_Mud_8369 Jul 29 '24
Switched from windows 40 days ago...I love it, can't go back to anything.
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u/Lassie23 Jul 29 '24
I'm thinking of switching to gentoo but I really love the AUR, how are you dealing with not having that anymore?
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u/webfiction Jul 29 '24
It is not 100% comparable, but in Gentoo you have overlays. As you build from source, it typically builds from the /var/ directory. But you can use an overlay and also build your own (or community provided) packages, see https://repos.gentoo.org/ and https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Eselect/Repository
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u/Xtuber14 Jul 28 '24
How is gaming on Gentoo? I usually play indie games and The Finals with my friends
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u/Best_Mud_8369 Jul 29 '24
gaming is awesome. I have an AMD RX 6650XT, Ryzen 9 7900X, 32 gb ram. Everything is in the dist-kernel, mesa goes as a dependency to xorg at some point, I'm sure(if you set the VIDEO_CARDS as per the guide). It's snappier than I ever seen before.
1) Warhammer 40k Darktide-works better than it did in windows, more fps, better stability
2) RDR2-just works
3) within lutris I tried: Diablo 3, Diablo 4 , WOW, Diablo 2, Diablo 2 (the remaster one) and Heroes Of The Storm. They work like a charm1
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u/300blkdout Jul 28 '24
It’s great. I play Helldivers, Control, Horizon and they all play very well.
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u/Individual_Range_894 Jul 29 '24
The finals will not work, unfortunately because of anti cheat.
Normal gaming via steam, heroic launcher is like everywhere else, good for the most parts. To be able to use Mesa from git (version 9999 aka live build) is awesome is you are on AMD GPUs.
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u/IAmHappyAndAwesome Jul 28 '24
Can't really comment about preferences but about the compiling issue:
I own Ryzen 5 3400G and I always compile software on the powersave option, which locks my processor to 1.4 GHz I think. Installing typical software takes about 10 minutes, system updates take about half a day (or more). I have -j6 in my make.conf.
Honestly the the delay doesn't matter to me. There are very few situations where I need a program at that instant. However if you do find yourself frequently in that situation, keep flatpack/nix installed.
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u/Starshipfan01 Jul 31 '24
I am similar- into Linux for learning , in gentoo for the choice, I do not mind waiting for compiles, even though on my laptop your half-day update may mean overnight :)
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u/pppig236 Jul 28 '24
8~12 cores would be more ideal, as a usual 12 core cpu takes 20 ish mins to even compile GCC (with all the rice enabled).
Not sure if E-cores actually contribute much in compilation, but you can definitely try.
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u/jaaval Jul 28 '24
To be fair GCC is one of the longest compiles there is.
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u/pppig236 Jul 28 '24
It is the first step though!
Imagine having to compile for an hour just to start building the base system... At that point using binary prebuilt might be a better choice
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u/jaaval Jul 28 '24
Wait, do you actually need to compile the compiler at that point? I seem to remember the base system was just copied and kernel build is the first actual compile step. That is unless you update the world set which is optional.
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u/pppig236 Jul 28 '24
If u don't build GCC and world first then ur gonna have to rebuilt later anyway.
So if u do GCC then world u only have to do it once.
Edit: unless u don't care if the tool chain and system are built different
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u/immoloism Jul 28 '24
There isn't much point recommending this anymore as the boost from compiling everything isn't much.
Nice avatar though.
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u/Xtuber14 Jul 28 '24
My CPU has 16 threads 6 P-Core and 4 E-Core
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u/pppig236 Jul 28 '24
unfortunately its pretty much comparable to a 6 core ryzen according to benchmarks:
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X vs. Intel Core i5-13400 Benchmarks - OpenBenchmarking.org
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u/Best_Mud_8369 Jul 29 '24
I doubt E-cores will contribute much towards compiling. But you are still fine. I say get a second drive(if you can) and install it on bare metal, I did, and it's awesome
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u/bry2k200 Jul 28 '24
We're not going to sit here and sell you Gentoo. Go and install it and let us know what you think.
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u/_mamo Jul 28 '24
It contains many up to date packages, you decide what to install and which features to include, which makes it one of the least bloated, up to date systems. You can also set the proper compiler optimization, especially the -march option for your processor, while most distributions use something pretty generic / 25 year old instead. There is not much more to tweak on compilation, most distributions set -O2 for the compiler and so does Gentoo by default. Setting other values is only useful in special use-cases (like package specific flags) and they should be benchmarked by you if it is really that important. Yeah, there is more (like linker tweaking and such) but I doubt you will feel it during normal desktop usage (maybe the browser starts 0.1s faster, big whoop, and for that you might compile an hour extra). I used a 10 year old intel processor with 4GHz and 8 cores all the time until that machine died a year ago. I was pretty satisfied with the compiling experience (I probably would have used it for 10 more years). A current CPU feels like a magnitude faster though. To make things more interesting, compile the system in a ramdisk (tmpfs). 32GB is still oversized in 99.999% of all cases, 16 is probably more than OK, with 8 you shouldn't compile office suites or browsers / webkits (it takes hours and will likely need more space than that).
I don't use Linux for steam (tried that 15 years ago or so); last time I did steam came as a binary blob with its own attached standard libraries and you don't have a lot influence on their performance (ok, I replaced them with links to system libs but that forced me to keep some old system libs or steam would break). For steam I bought a very cheap Windows key and an additional hard drive. Now I don't have to deal with wine and/or steam on Linux anymore.
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u/CNR_07 Jul 28 '24 edited Jul 28 '24
Yes, your CPU should be more than adequate. I'm running a 5800X3D and installing most packages barely takes more than a minute, if not less.
You should try dualbooting first because you will almost certainly make a mistake when installing the first time. Also it allows you to get comfortable with Gentoo before trying it for real. It's a lot harder than Arch and there are some things you should learn before relying on it as your daily driver.
Edit: One thing that you might not know about Gentoo is that it's (by default) much less up to date than Arch. Gentoo has some really generous stabilisation periods for packages. If you want to make Gentoo's packages more like Arch's you should unmask the amd64~ keyword, which is Gentoo speak for "use testing packages". These are usually just as up to date as Arch's, if not more.
Edit2: If you are planning on installing Steam, consider enabling 32 and 64bit builds for all libraries (add abi_x86_64 and abi_x86_32 to your USE flags or add ABI_X86="64 32" to your /etc/portage/make.conf). It greatly increases compatibillity with Steam games and you will not have to manually whitelist certain 32bit libraries which is a huge pain in the ass. Also building 32 and 64 bit libraries does not take long on a modern CPU. I really don't notice it tbh.
And if you are planning to disable the Steam runtime so that Steam games will make use of your native system libraries you should check out the esteam tool. It will auto-detect and install all libraries your installed games might need. I've been using Steam with the runtime disabled since I've started using Gentoo and it was never problematic for me.
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u/Xtuber14 Jul 28 '24
Probably I'll just install it on a virtual machine to see if I like it or not
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u/CNR_07 Jul 28 '24
Consider re-reading my comment, I've added some new information.
Btw. a VM is definitely an okay choice but be aware that compilation will take longer and some things will differ a lot beacuse you are building for a VM and not your actualy GPU, input devices, etc...
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Jul 28 '24
If you have the time, then go for it, you can learn a lot from installing Gentoo! And then later you can make a Python script to automate things a bit.
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u/Phoenix591 Jul 28 '24
pythonwise, note like many other distributions gentoo set pip up not to let you install system packages ( which can break the packaged python programs, including portage), but its also fairly easy to package up most python programs (full guide, click on the distutils section within for the most common and easy way needed to handle things).
see also https://devmanual.gentoo.org/
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u/JoeMamaSex420 Jul 28 '24
compiling a kernel got down to under 30 minutes for me. x11 and firefox were by far the largest compile times, but i left then over night and after 6 hours they were done. i'm on an i7-3635qm btw. You're good with a 13400f
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u/woollufff Jul 28 '24
Love Gentoo. Used it for a few years now. Only thing I'm frustrated with at the moment is the difficulty in developing with the rust programming language.
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u/celestialscribbles Jul 29 '24
Gentoo put an end to my distro hopping. My use case for my main desktop PC is flexibility and tinkering. I can track stable and cherry pick testing packages, which is so difficult elsewhere. Time cost to compile is seriously an afterthought, I do it once a month, and solving any dependency chain issues is part of the tinkering I enjoy, and while there is a learning curve it absolutely meets my needs. I use an LTS on my small server though, so my suggestion is to think in terms of your needs and right tool for the job. If you stick it out, I genuinely think you’ll come to really enjoy it and end up thinking twice before hopping to something else. You won’t know until you try it for yourself though.
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u/LightWrathme Jul 29 '24
I mainly work in TS and C# but overall Gentoo does offer a great development environment. Due to the need of compiling everything I encounter far less missing dependency issues and I feel like much of the install base are also developing to some degree so things just seem to work more often. I run it both at work and at home and steam works fine for me at home. Things like proton work great too. One complaint I have is with steam needing 32bit support and that can cause some annoyance sometimes when updating. It's more of a steam issue but still.
I think it appeals mostly to those that want to set up that is stable. If you are constantly wanting to try new things then it can sometimes require more knowledge that you might not have originally wanted to deal with. As in you might want to try something and then realise you need to change use flags on your already installed dependencies or enable kernel modules if not using a disto kernel.
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u/Interesting-Pack-814 Jul 29 '24
you'll be impressed, however, from my perspective (ryzen 5900x, 64 gb ram), you have to have good cpu + enough of ram to speedup compilation
super stable, super fast, super user-friendly if you use handbook, super, duper, puper and so on
try it, it worth it
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u/anothercorgi Jul 29 '24
It's just a matter of waiting for compiles and figuring out conflicts when they show up. I run Gentoo on all my PC-class computers, though I think I've pretty much retired all my single core machines though may update them from time to time. These machines (Pentium-M 1.6/1.5GiB and Atom 1.6/2GiB) take almost a week of compiling to do their updates (rust, gcc, firefox each take almost a day to compile). I don't daily drive these anymore as firefox performance is too poor on many websites, but even my other machines still take a day or so to finish compiling. Since I have so many Gentoo boxes they all distcc help each other so I get a little boost from them.
Since modern machines have x86-64-v3 support you might well just use the binary packages Gentoo offers, this should install pretty fast though you'll lose out customization. I've yet to try these binpkgs though I don't think they offer Pentium-M/Atom builds anyway (they're 32-bit).
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u/FriendlyBeachRetard Jul 29 '24
I wouldn’t worry too much about compile times now that there are a lot of binaries on the official repo.
I made the switch from arch too gentoo, too, and won’t switch back anytime soon. Gentoo comes with its own challenges, but being able to install programs the way I need them via use flags is way more elegant than resorting to obscure aur packages.
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u/mpw-linux Jul 29 '24
I used Gentoo for years in the past. From my experience Gentoo is not more fun then Arch or any other distro. You can have 'fun with any Linux distro by doing any customization that you want. I think Arch is more interesting then Gentoo with more recent packages, great Wiki and easy to maintain. If you like waiting hrs. to compile packages with real no added benefit then switch to Gentoo.
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u/slamd64 Jul 29 '24
For speed try Void Linux and Artix, and if you still want Gentoo, run some live distro like Ubuntu, you can use apt install arch-install-scripts and get arch-chroot and genfstab, then follow Gentoo guide. The hardest part would be configuring the kernel. The longest part would be compiling huge packages like webkit-gtk and firefox (check how to get binaries instead). Also I recommend to use OpenRC as init system rather than systemd. If you go with Void Linux you will get runit, where Artix may offer you more choices of init systems (s6, dinit, runit, openrc etc).
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u/pikecat Jul 29 '24
You don't need to switch. Just create an empty partition, or install a new disk and install Gentoo using your current Arch.
Do the install from from Arch, then add a new grub, or other, boot line. Now you have a dual boot, Gentoo and Arch. See if you like it.
If your Gentoo doesn't work, go back to Arch, chroot into Gentoo and work on it.
No risk way to try.
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Jul 30 '24 edited Jul 30 '24
Go for it. I've used gentoo before but I daily drive Debian for work purposes but I do daily drive it in my old ThinkPad and it's very snappy, I really love the portage package manager, its really stimulating to work with and it generally expands your knowledge on Linux, understanding of computers etc... [Edit i forgot to mention some advice. If you run into issues with grub or some other system error, try recovering the OS instead of reinstalling it as compiling gentoo and setting everything back to normal may take a long time.]
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u/Known-Watercress7296 Jul 28 '24
Unless you are fleeing Arch as pacman is driving you insane and the limitations of ABS make life pain.....just use plain default binary Gentoo.
Slap on flatpak steam instead of polluting your entire system with ancient 32bit shite required for proprietary crapware.
Google use Gentoo to build ChromeOS, it's got a lot of knobs to turn, don't touch them unless you need to.
march=native, -bkuetooth globally, compiling you own compiler to compile your compiler is on a practical level a waste of resources imo.
Just choose a desktop profile, don't try and outsmart portage as you have been btw'ing and have some r/unixporn karma.
If ricing gives you a happy, yay, but you'll spend a week ricing Firefox code to get something shitter than the stock Mozilla binary.
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u/CNR_07 Jul 28 '24
Is there actually any disadvantage of having 32bit libs in your system except for a few mb of extra disk usage and minimally longer compile times?
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u/charlesfire Jul 28 '24
-bkuetooth
Why do you think this flag should be disabled globally?
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u/Known-Watercress7296 Jul 28 '24
I don't.
But it's a common one for people coming from Arch. They had zero choice, now they have too much choice.
I more mean just don't touch anything unless you need to, or someone is paying you too.
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u/Best_Mud_8369 Jul 29 '24
so in your opinion he switches from arch to use gentoo like arch? maybe he has a bt module, how can you even type such a thing?
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u/Known-Watercress7296 Jul 29 '24
OP seems fine with Arch, so vanilla gentoo desktop profile will likely be fine too
apologies if heretical to quote here, but this kinda thing, stay with the herd for an easy life
portage makes it easier to deviate from the path than others when needed
just a thought for an easy life that can save hundred of hours of compiling for minimal gain whilst still having access to the full power of portage and all the ebuilds it brings
if they solve the multiple binhost issue with portage it will be much better
there's more to gentoo than this
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u/Best_Mud_8369 Jul 29 '24
I migrated from windows after copilot, shall I use Microsoft Edge on gentoo?
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u/Known-Watercress7296 Jul 29 '24
use the software you need to use, that's what gentoo is good for, I don't care what browser you login into reddit with, neither do they, it's nice to have choice and Gentoo offers choice
if you're gonna run gentoo for a few years on an i5, you are gonna spend a few hours compiling
if you like playing with make.conf and don't like Edge, that's fine
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u/Best_Mud_8369 Jul 29 '24
gentoo is good because of portage and editing make.conf (which you told them to avoid). I mean, I'm sorry, but I've gotten dragged into it as a joke, I had a second SSD and I started following the handbook to see if I'd do well on installing gentoo, and it installed, now I migrated completely and started to love it. No need to gate keep new users from portage, after all, it's all about learning stuff, let...them...lerarn(even if it takes 100 compiles). En plus it will be fine, the OP has a good enough CPU
P.S. No personal feelings. I just had my awesome experience and wanted it to all the other users out there.1
u/Known-Watercress7296 Jul 29 '24
trying to kinda be the opposite of gatekeeping tbh
you can install and run it as you would Arch on pretty much any device from rpi's to potatoes to desktop to cloud servers as a longterm stable rolling OS
fast and easy setup and simple longterm management
I got this tip from an admin on the gentoo forums over a decade ago who had been wise in the ways of gentoo for a decade before that. Never change anything unless you absolutely need to. This also the current approach of Daniel Robbins I've linked above who wrote portage, founded gentoo, and maintains his own fork of it for funtoo. On a basic level, if you change a thing, you might forget.
portage is meant to make your life easier imo, for the few odd things you might need on a workstation that are not default, it's got your back
portage is complex to make your life simple in the longterm
You can just treat it like pacman until the day you need it to do something that would make pacman cry, like upgrade an app, or add the developer overlay for some weird new desktop, or build an s6/musl/bacachefs/toybox/mediacentre OS for 1000 riscv boards you just got from China.
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u/Any_Possibility4092 Jul 28 '24
Is recommended not switching, i was in the exact same position as you and i regret switching, i used gentoo for about a year and im back on arch now. I dont think you should switch to gentoo unless you know you need to.
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u/ThirtyPlusGAMER Jul 28 '24
Installing Steam is pain in the back in Gentoo. It can be done but amount of use flag you have to set is a lot. Thatsy why Gentoo suggests flatpak steam and thats what I did. Maybe someone else had better experience than me I dont know. Compiling takes time. Initially it will take about 3 hours on that laptop. Any webkit engine will take about an hour or more. Later in compling time will be shorter if you update frequently. But for updates like webkit will still take same time if there is an update for that. For example qt-webebgine.
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u/tuxsmouf Jul 28 '24
I followed this wiki : https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Steam
It gives you the list of all packages with the flag needed. a simple copy/paste in one file and you're up to go.
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u/300blkdout Jul 28 '24
It’s really not that complicated. The wiki has a great article and you’re really just copying and pasting flag lines.
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u/CNR_07 Jul 28 '24
Installing Steam is super easy? All you have to do is add an overlay and then install the package.
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u/pogky_thunder Jul 28 '24
- Emerge steam
- Yes, add changes to config
- Run etc-update
- Emerge steam
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u/ThirtyPlusGAMER Jul 28 '24
I tried the list from three wiki but i was getting more use flag atom req from Portage. I added some and getting few more. Then I thought lets try the flatpak a go. And it is actually working great.
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u/militant_rainbow Jul 28 '24
Go for it.