i'm using ubuntu now because i'm used to it and it's simple to install.
i've tried installing gentoo several times on different computers, but in the end i always go back to ubuntu, fedora, or suse.
one of my main complaints is how the software in the ubuntu repos is several months old. does portage have the same problem, or is it for the most part brand new software? and while i'm at it, does anyone know about how long a gnome compile takes on a C2D 2.26?

The software can be put into the repositories quite quickly, but you won't be able to install it unless you're using the testing branch or manually unmask it. As an example, gimp 2.6.5 is in the repository, but the latest version that's available to users of the stable branch is 2.4.6.

so how can i make it always install the testing versions unless said program isn't available in the testing repo?
and another thing, how can i uninstall software that i downloaded and compiled, not through portage?

Putting ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" into /etc/make.conf will install packages from the testing branch.

As for removing packages you've installed outside of portage, it's as simple as going into the source directory and typing make uninstall.

and by source directory you mean...?
there's several directories named "src" that i've seen.

Hi,

I suggest that you take time to read some documentation on the gentoo site.

goto http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handboo...l=1#book_part2

and find chapter "3.a. Using One Branch".

You will have some explanation about the stable and testing branch as well as other important notion about portage.

If you want to switch to testing you will have to recompile all of your system since every version of any of your software will have to be recompiled... It may take a long time to do that... And I would recommand that you get some "know how" about portage first if you want to be able to resolve eventual version conflict that this change could bring.

Having last version of everything is cool but it haves its toll too... Think twice!

Good luck,

Bernard

By source directory he means that when you compile software it's always a good idea to keep the directory containing the source code that you used to compile/install the software. If at any time you wish to uninstall the software just cd into the source code folder that you used to install it and run:

Note: I've never used Gentoo so I don't know if sudo comes pre-installed, but if the above doesn't work just become root with the "su" command and then just run make uninstall.

With Gentoo, we don't run manually make to install packages, we use the emerge command.

I use make only to compile and install my kernel actually.

This is something I wouldn't recommend at least at the beginning. You'll be much happier if while learning you don't have to deal with the annoyances of testing ~arch. Of course, that depends on the skills of each given person.


Look at this three posts. If you compiled it by hand, you compiled it from source, and the source should be into a directory, shouldn't it? If you deleted it after compiling and installing, the only way to run "make uninstall" would be to get the sources again, prepare them and tne do "make uninstall" on the directory containing them. Note that you must use the same set of configure options, particularly those involving paths, like --prefix= that you used with ./configure the first time you made these sources. That's why you should always save the source directory when you are compiling by hand outside your package manager so you don't have to remember that.

Though to be frank, I disregard this practice unless you know what you are doing.

In Gentoo, it's better to learn to create ebuilds and build the package using portage instead. That way everything is under control.

In addition to portage itself you also have the layman repositories. Sort of a testing addition to portage.

In my 3 years with Gentoo, I have never had to install from outside portage and layman. I presume most people won't have to do that very often either.

Difficult to say how long a large compile like gnome would take. Not only does it depend on your systems hardware, it also depend on how many other dependencies needs updating. On my single-core 32 bit AMD +3200 system I leave it overnight to compile large things like gnome, openoffice etc.

Mons