GENTOO is Rice

--USE-flags

A man, his /etc/portage, and 400 lines of personality.

A USE flag is how a Gentoo user tells the computer who they are. -gnome +kde is not a build option; it is a worldview. +hardened -systemd is not a preference; it is a hill, and they will die on it, slowly, during a four-hour emerge.

Sample make.conf personality test

  • USE="-* minimal" — wants you to know they suffer.
  • USE="X gtk qt5 kde gnome" — has never finished an install.
  • CFLAGS="-O3 -march=native -funroll-loops -fomg-fast" — that last flag isn't real, and they have it set anyway.

The binary-distro user types apt install firefox and is browsing the web ninety seconds later. The ricer would never. The ricer has standards.