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> Yeah, but if I’m not customizing it, Linux is just worse in every way

I strongly disagree.

You can customize Linux, but that's not its only benefit.

> If you are going to do that why not just buy a Mac

Because I don't want iOS. I want Linux.

Well that’s a personal preference, but objectively (and I use that word very loosely here), apple sillicon is equivalent to portage in terms of efficiency, since the software is fully integrated with the machine, to extract as much compute as possible out of it. The problem is that this can’t be configured for every operation on the machine. You can install other people’s software, and the machine has one universal preset basically that governs all the alternative customizations, so other people’s software is not as efficient as it could be if you optimized for it directly, like you can do with Gentoo. But if you just installed a random linux distro without customizing it, it would not even be necessarily well integrated with the hardware, in fact it could not be, since Linux is by its nature reaching towards a universal that no particular machine could possible land totally within. And its true with Gentoo as well, except you can squeeze out far more edges, and arguably go further than apple silicon. But an apple silicon machine will always be more efficient in its preset condition than one running Gentoo in its active use: the problem is that you can’t even know the computer is working unless you start using it, and then all the sudden Gentoo is possibly infinitely more efficient in every actual use case.

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