A Three Hour Tour

For anybody out there who uses Gentoo Linux, try using emerge -atv package if you don’t already. It will print out all the packages that will be merged, including dependencies, and ask for your confirmation first. This is good for checking out USE flags.

Here are some packages to try it out on:

eix

A package database, very fast, and useful to see what’s available, what you have installed, and what use flags are in effect.

gentoolkit

Contains euse, a simple but incredibly useful script to update your USE flags.

euses

Ever wondered what that USE flag does? This program will tell you.

pciutils and usbutils

Two very useful programs that tell you what devices are attached to your computer. Indispensible for kernel configuration.

This is probably old news for longtime Gentoo users, but for anyone getting started with Gentoo they help a lot.