Gentoo Package Manger

[ibowtotux]

Greetings all,
I have some time to kill now that the semester is over and I was considering installing Gentoo on my spare hard drive to see if I liked it. My question concerns your package manager. Whereas I have never used it, how does it entail to the likes of pacman (Arch) or apt-get (Debian)? Is it stable? quick?
Another really quick question...is gentoo i686 optimized? -Thanks

[lakerdonald]

Gentoo is handled by the Portage system. You can read all about it at http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/index.xml
That will explain portage, what gentoo is, how to use it, etc.

[jaboua]

Just in case you don't want to read everything first (but it is advicable):

Since you're using arch, Portgae is kinda like an easyer version of ABS, it fetches tarballs or .bin-files over the internet and compile+install them if they are tarballs, or just install if they are .bin-packages. How stable gentoo is depends on your choices, for example if you have an x86-processor you can either run ~x86 (unstable) or x86 (stable). I prefer mixing the two by changing the package.keywords-files since I want bleeding edge software in gimp, inkscape and some movieplayers, while I want all the system-utilities to be stable. If some packages are unstable in your eyes, you can also add them in a package.mask-file to make portage NEVER fetch that version of the package.(described VERY good in the gentoo-wiki). And about quick, yes it is, since you compile it yourself you optimize it for your processor and simply strip off any unwanted features (like kde-support if you use gnome, and visa versus). If you want you can optimize it for i686, but its reccomanded optimizing it for pentium4 if thats what you're using, since that'll remove support for running the binaries on other processor-architectures, but it'll run smoother on your architecture.

[loft306]

hehe if you have ever 'emerged' anything (and i cant see how you have not since u have gentoo installed) then you have used the pkg manager we juust call it 'emerge' or sometimes 'portage'

[ibowtotux]

Just a quick thought, in case I win a lottery or buy a ski mask. I noticed gentoo has support for AMD64. I haven't used linux on a 64 bit machine, so I don't know how it fairs, but in case I end up getting an Opteron or Athlon64, how does Gentoo operate in a 64-bit envrionment? Is it still in "developmental" stages? Thanks for all your help so far....

[jaboua]

I don't have an amd64 so I cant test myself, but I've heard that the support should be relativly good but there can be some troubles with flash-plugins and such...

[gentoo409]

It runs fine. I've run it on dual Opterons at work before.