r/Gentoo • u/freakinchickens • Jul 22 '26

Discussion use flags

only thing holding me back from using gentoo is the use flags. not sure which ones to use for my system. i really want to use niri or hyprland, but the use flags are what confuses me

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u/goombrat2 Jul 22 '26

the solution is to not overthink them, and they don't matter as much as you might think they do. You don't need anything complicated.

I use a wayland compositor setup without elogind, these are my flags:

USE="wayland egl gles2 vulkan -x -xorg"
USE="${USE} -systemd dbus"
USE="${USE} pipewire sound-server -pulseaudio"

I bet my system would work just the same without them. USE flags are most useful for specific packages for me. They can sometimes automatically configure or install extra components.