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Cake day: February 17th, 2026

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  • This. USE flags are the real strength of Gentoo. There can be benefits with various C(XX)FLAGS, LDFLAGS, etc. However, most of the time1 those changes are at best moderate, and sometimes outright dangerous.

    With Gentoo, if $PKG has a choice to require $LIBKITCHENSINK, you can choose not to. This, sometimes, can mean saving a TON of compile time. Also, the kernel is arguable more secure2.

    1. One time I recompiled either Opera, or some lib it depended on with some magic LDFLAGS and got a notable speedup on startup. However, this is fairly rare.
    2. IIRC, a certain part of the kernel can rerandomize the kernel stack in memory, meaning that, unlike a Debian kernel or Fedora kernel, no one can be entirely sure what a certain data structure would be in memory.



  • In a proper PnPRPG/Tabletop RPG game, a truly spectacular blunder feels like a success to the person who failed. Walk into a bar and critfail both your Communications check, and the “Oh crap, I failed that badly. Can I save this by doing ______?” follow-up Communications check? You think you did fine, but now the entire bar thinks you are a truly crazy person, and treat you with respect only because they think you’re going to shiv them in the neck if they get out of line.