So you use gcc to compile the code, right, or is it that you use gcc with pgo?
Various compilers supports pgo. In general, if you donât understand what that is, you can safely ignore pgo. Because the optimisation may not be significant for many cases. It relies on a good profiling, which may not be feasible. And without pgo compiler can use static analysis to optimised a lot.
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I run both Clear Linux and Gentoo. For different reasons.
Regarding the Gentoo comparison and to stay on the thread subject, you can achive pretty much the same result with Gentoo but with 100 times the effort and you really need to know what to tweak or not. Iâm not bashing Gentoo, just being honest.
Clear Linux is the only distribution that I know of which does optimization right, straight out of the box.
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Just out of curiosity, was it difficult to learn how to build Gentoo and custom taylor it to your PC?
Iâd have to say yes. But it really depends on how much Linux experience you have in the past.
The installation process is similar to Arch Linux but all else is different.
On your PC, did you properly optimise Gentoo or did you keep things generic?
Thereâs no magic flag to make everything optimized but I run gentoo-lto overlay and I compile everything with -march=native. I also use âpgoâ USE-flag for those programs that supports it.
I also opt out stuff i donât need with USE-flags, for example -cups -nls -systemd.
I like gentoo because it supports OpenRC, so you can skip systemd entirely if you wish.
Thatâs the easiest answer I can give you. I donât recommend Gentoo if you donât like compiling stuff, whichâs time consuming, especially on a laptop/desktop due to all heavy graphical stuff like Xorg, Chromium/Firefox, KDE, Gnome, whateverâŚ
But you do learn a lot from Gentoo, nothing is really served on a plate.
Of course, you have to run specific flags for your specific PC to get the best performance.
That is one nice thing about Gentoo, through its package manager it gives you the complete control.
I heard that runit init is faster (and is used in Void Linux), why not use that over OpenRC?
How long does it take for you to do a full system update (as you have to compile any package that needs an update)?
Yes true, I know you learn a lot about linux by trying to do everything yourself.
Have you done some benchmark test when you installed Gentoo and with Clear Linux?
Have you tried Solus as i suggested in the Gentoo forum , perhaps that will bridge the gap between CL and a ânormalâ distro ?
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From the wiki, âWhile Gentoo does offer a runit package in its official repository, it is not completely supported as an init system.â
If you update daily it usually doesnât take that long. But compiling chromium takes about 6 hours on my laptop. So it depends on what sort of updates you get. Firefox compiles faster thoâ, I think about 2 hours.
No, I need two installations on the same machine for that which I donât have.,
I forgot one thing in my previous reply, I also use the linux xanmod kernel, custom compiled.
See here for some benchmarks and info.
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Nah I didnât have the time to test or install anything. But for sure I will give it a try once when I do get some spare time 
Edit: One thing mate, over at the Gentoo forums I was told by a user that CL has all the optimised binaries for each specific CPU so during runtime CL determines which specific binary to use for which specific CPU, whereas for Gentoo you compile one optimised binary for the CPU that I would use for my PC.
So with Solus, do they avoid the bloat or is it similar to CL?
Ah I see.
If you have a more powerful PC, why not compile it on that more powerful PC and send the binary to the laptop, isnât that possible anyways?
Very interesting benchmark scores, is xanmod better then the zen kernel?
Iâm just a regular Linux user, no way an expert !
You would need to ask those in the know at the Solus forum.
I tested the latest Solus version with Gnome 3.36 in a VM on my desktop and it seemed very responsive with a memory footprint that wasnât too dissimilar to other distros using gnome.
If the Solus desktop is just as snappy as CL and windows using Firefox, then perhaps itâs the disto for that particular machine of yours ? 
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Using distcc I guess, I havenât really bothered.
Zen wasnât that amazing from the benchmark i read, it was basically even with the generic kernel in the end.
Judge for yourself.
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Hopefully so I am just about to boot into Solus
Ok so I did try out Solus in live mode, while it was better than other distros such as Arch-based and Debian-based, it had a bit of issues still. I would say CL is the winner over here.
Just out of curiosity have you benchmarked Gentoo and CL on the same hardware?
Ok youâve given it at least a go 
Now you have to decide weather to stick with CL and itâs potential limitations or bite the bullet and try to optimize Gentoo to potentially the level of CL. Asking questions can only get you so far !
Benchmarks donât tell the whole story with regard to real world performance. Ultimately youâre going to be the judge at the end of the day to see if itâs worth the effort to meet your desired goals.
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No benchmarks, Iâve ran both CL and Gentoo on the same hardware thoâ.
Performance wise Iâd say theyâre about the same for general use, you might start noticing differences if you run games or other heavy programs.
Iâm not sure of the status of hardware video acceleration in Clear Linux right now but when I last tried, CL lacked somewhat in that department.
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I know Gentoo has other good things going like you have a lot more control as to what dependencies you want from an application and what to ommit using the USE flags, You can really control as to what components you really want, so I think it is worth a try to install it. I hope I do learn something out of it