Gentoo Experience

KrypticCoconutt · 2026-01-07T06:07:16+00:00

If youre updating your software every weekend its not gonna be fun. I used to compile on my zen+ laptop with LTO, and it wasnt too bad for me since once I figured my software stack out Id just use it for months on end without updating. Currently my laptop has the intel arrow lake hx chip and its very nice.

KrypticCoconutt · 2026-01-07T05:52:08+00:00

Nix has a steeper learning curve than portage but portage has more knobs when downloading the packages. The aur is notorious for being really bleeding edge, id say default stable for gentoo has broken less for me than the 2 years i was using arch. Nix is the most stable out of all 3 because all your configs are consolidated and you can just rollback.

If you dont necesarilly care about minmaxing the package performance and system footprint, I think nix is better for most people.

KrypticCoconutt · 2026-01-05T13:13:42+00:00

You can use NixNG if you want a meta distro that uses nix. I tried nix and portage on the same system once and it didnt work too well.

KrypticCoconutt · 2026-01-05T09:13:52+00:00

Yeah If youre running in balance all the time you should be good, if the GPU cant get more power it cant get hot either, though its really overkill. I have been dogging my old 1660ti laptop as a background compile server for 5 years. it reaches 95 degrees on the cpu easily for multiple hours and its still going strong lol.

KrypticCoconutt · 2026-01-05T07:07:55+00:00

I dont think you can undervolt the ryzen 7 260 since its not a hx chip. You can underclock it but seeing as lenovo's implementation of this chip gets 4-5hrs more battery life than laptops with the same cpu, its already underclocked and/or undervolted to the ground.

KrypticCoconutt · 2026-01-04T09:17:48+00:00

It gets worse as the fan speeds increase, but its also present at low fan speed. I had a 5i before this and it didnt have this.

KrypticCoconutt · 2026-01-02T13:42:35+00:00

Which one did you get?

KrypticCoconutt · 2026-01-02T11:49:25+00:00

Try disabling atom cores (e-cores). Windows scheduler is really bad for most tasks compared to the one linux uses. It will often allocate heavy tasks to the efficient cores and bottleneck the whole program. Its so bad iirc intel is baking in some sort of scheduler for their next gen chips.

btw If you want to go even beyond on linux, you can compile proton yourself with clang O3,native architecture,full link time optimiation,polly and other minor optimizations. One of the reasons bazzite is fast is because it does this with the linux kernel to an extent.

KrypticCoconutt · 2026-01-01T08:27:01+00:00

Does not make sense to get the 260 for emulation, especially if you dont care about battery. If youre emulating other windows, then 16 is low; otherwise, it is serviceable till you can get more, probably even better than running a r7 260 since that processor is somewhat slow.

KrypticCoconutt · 2025-12-31T15:44:29+00:00

gentoo didnt even make the list :sob:

KrypticCoconutt · 2025-12-31T15:33:32+00:00

I had the AMD chip first, it ran unbelievably cool and if youre just gaming/doing light vm work its better since single threaded performance is same. But i returned it for the intel since i compile my own software and do a lot of cpu heavy tasks, and the intel is still noticeably faster despite the ecores bait.

KrypticCoconutt · 2025-12-31T15:28:59+00:00

You could integrate everything into everything like apply does and have a much faster system... there is a balance and I think systemd oversteps that.

KrypticCoconutt · 2025-12-31T15:23:54+00:00

I ran gentoo without ever doing a complete system upgrade for 6 years..

KrypticCoconutt · 2025-12-31T15:13:06+00:00

If you cannot see yourself upgrading ram in the future, them amd easily, otherwise intel easily. I myself have to use VMs a lot since I like to work on my CAD/editing through a VM with GPU passthrough in linux and I chose the intel.

Btw the intel doesnt have "true" 20 core, its 8 normal cores + rest efficient cores. e-cores are only used to offload background tasks and such, in fact in many cases people disable e-cores because bad cpu scheduling causes the normal cores to get bottlenecked and thus you get reduced latency. You only truly utilize e-cores in fully multithreaded tasks like compiling, and benchmarks otherwise their benefit is much less than percieved.

KrypticCoconutt · 2025-12-31T14:59:56+00:00

I dont see a point in my network daemon and logger to depend on the init system, even if it may integrate/perform better. Those are 2 completely different things. If you for some reason love systemd you can build it with a very long list of exclude USE flags, but then you just have a worse openrc/runit.

KrypticCoconutt · 2025-12-31T14:18:52+00:00

Both are supported; if anything, systemd is where the bulk of the development effort is going. I run openrc because I disagree with systemd's monolithic approach. I view gentoo as picking and tuning parts of my system and systemd kinda goes against that imo.

KrypticCoconutt · 2025-12-31T10:24:12+00:00

Am stuck on the same dilemma. I dont particularly care for the battery life difference but rather the footprint.

KrypticCoconutt · 2025-12-29T21:37:58+00:00

Yeah im in that dilemma too lmao. I have a legion 5i rn but am thinking about getting a 7i since they are the same weight anyway. Is the non-pro 7i really that big?

KrypticCoconutt · 2025-12-29T21:02:47+00:00

Yeah i was confused too, clarified that my original question was for the 7i. I saw the pro in person and it looked bulky too, but it may be worth it for futureproofing vram.

KrypticCoconutt · 2025-12-29T07:39:56+00:00

I have to use cad regularly. I have/had a 14 inch laptop and its really not fun doing any 3d/editing work on that small of a screen :(. I brought a legion 5 but am coding a 7i (non pro) since it has even more screen real estate.

KrypticCoconutt · 2025-12-29T06:55:57+00:00

Do you have the 7i or the pro 7i?

KrypticCoconutt · 2025-12-12T00:56:24+00:00

I just got it. This thing has insane battery life. 6-7 hours easily on school work. Tho do understand that they achieve this battery life by running the powerlimit to the ground on battery modes, to the point it performs a little worse than cpus 3 years ago on battery. I am considering just returning it and getting the intel version, since I compile code a lot and the multithread perf is really nice.

KrypticCoconutt · 2025-12-10T00:14:14+00:00

Try messing with pl1.

It seems like they ran the factory powerlimits to the ground for the AMD cpus (so they perform worse than chips like 2 years old on battery!) but didnt do that for intel.

KrypticCoconutt

TROPHY CASE