The lowdown on "portage"

[Hamking]

Well, I don't personally have it installed(not enough harddrives), but I do have the stage 1 install on a disk. I will get a system up and running when I can, but I would like to know more about the portage system.

After reading about it on the gentoo site, it seemed similar to Debian's apt-get... but 10x better.

I'm just starting this post to get the lowdown on it. If you've used it tell us about it, or if you just got gentoo installed(like jimH, for example ), test it out and tell us what you think.

oh, btw...

GENTOOOOOOOOO!! ;D

[JimH]

I haven't played with Gentoo much since I installed it. I am typing this out from my Gentoo install. ;D Still using my Red Hat install most of the time.

Portage is pretty cool. Still trying to get used to what it can do. Seems to be very easy to use. Everytime I boot it I usually do an "emerge rysnc" to update my portage tree. Then I check for any updates with "emerge --pretend --update world" This checks for updates to any of the packages I have installed.

It is easy to install new packages just use "emerge <packagename>"Iit will .automatically downloads and installs any dependancies there might be first.

If you are going to do a stage 1 install I hope you have a FAST box. I have a pretty fast box and a DSL connection so it didn't really take that long to get a basic install done. You might want to print out the installation instructions on Gentoo's website before you start. They are really eay to follow. I didn't install grub, I already had it installed from Red Hat, I just edited it so I could boot Gentoo. After you get a basic install done you will want to grab XFree86 then either GNOME or KDE. Unless you use something else. They have quite a few window manager available. I installed Gnome only. I might give KDE a try later, but I am only using a small 8.4GB hard drive for Gentoo.

Gnome2 is available, but I haven't been daring enough to try it out yet. When you get it installed let us know what you think. ;D

Jim H

[sujoki]

i did a stage 1 install and found it quite easy, if you installed from the ISO then you do not need to print it out seeing as you can do a alt+F2 and press enter for another console and just type less install.txt to get the install notes right in front of your face

once i got into my gentoo linux partition i didnt quite know how to use the protage system, i didnt know to do a emerge rsync, and i am not as lucky as jimH, i do not have another computer or another HD for anything else at the moment, so to even see what i was doing wrong i had to reinstall slack and waste all my time doing the stage 1, i may try a stage 3 to see if i can even get X working, i couldnt get it working for the debian install but maybe just maybe i am more knowlageable now and it will work, if not i gotta research my configuration more thougholy, i know i have the proper monitor info, but i do now know if i got my proper vid card because ati radion doesnt appear on the list =C, and the mouse should be proper.

[babbing]

maybe it is worth the time to make up a quicky reference OMP for GLO on portage, i know i could use a guide to reference quickly to. *Babbing scribbles it onto his list*