I used to install tools using --user, but now I install all tools using my package manager (emerge) so I don't have to worry about maintaining a ~/bin etc. So I

I used to install tools using --user, but now I install all tools using my package manager (emerge) so I don't have to worry about maintaining a ~/bin etc. So I basically never run pip outside of a virtualenv. Portage is written in python, yes, so you can't just change your system python at will, but that's not a problem really.