Screenshot of QEMU VM showing an ASCII Gentoo Logo + system info
I followed Mental Outlaw's 2019 guide and followed the official handbook to get up-to-date instructions and tailored instructions for my system, the process took about 4 hours however I did go out for a nice walk while my kernel was compiling. Overall I enjoyed the process and learnt a lot about the Linux kernel while doing it.
I'm planning on installing it to my hardware soon, this was to get a feel for the process in a non-destructive way.
Of course, hats why I said bad for the environment. If it was not rolling, maybe. But if you do updates at least twice a week it will consume lots or energy. If you use old hardware or not I think its independend from that.
Even assuming all other factors remain same sure it uses more power but by how much? Best case by how much do you expect the increase to be ? 5-10% of their daily electricity consumption ?
And when you consider the power source, hw efficiency and so on theres no way to assess what the environmental effect an OS has.
Also you are assuming behavior of the person remains the same when using a precompiled packages v. compiling their own. I've installed many sw just to try for a few minutes and remove just to try various options. If it takes hours to compile I'd be very picky on what I install.
Agree on the last. I also try a lot more packages. But its still rolling, in practice how many hours does your PC compile a week? Would be curious.