Daniel Quinn

I started using it 'cause I was working with a lot of Linux nerds and they convinced me to try it out. I liked the politics of the GPL and the potential in the Free ecosystem.

25 years later I refuse to use anything else. Windows & Mac are built to take options away from you, to force you do use your hardware their way, and I hate it. My machine does exactly what I want it to, with hundreds of keyboard shortcuts and a solid UI built atop transparent subsystems. Windows ties my hands while pushing ads and AI into my eyeballs. Mac only “Just Works” if you’re using it precisely the way that want you to and exclusively with other iShit. No thanks.

As this is your first go, I’d recommend not tinkering with USE flags at all. Take the defaults, find what you don’t like, and consider tweaks later. USE flags can end up like a sort of “dependency hell”, with one package not working correctly because it expects another package to have something you’ve excluded. It’s uncommon, but frustrating when it happens. It’s best to start with the defaults.

I suppose the most important thing to have post-apocalypse is a copy of Wikipedia.

You might want to look into Gemini (not Google’s “AI” offering, despite the name). It’s an internet protocol for sharing text-only communication. There’s a whole community out there working with it.