Published: April 28, 2010 - Pageviews: 54833

An In-Depth Look at Gentoo Linux

Available Software

Now that we covered how the Portage System works, we will now cover various ways to install software and what software is available on a Gentoo Linux System. Basically to install software using Portage, you simply issue the command:

	emerge packagename

And with adding the "-vp", option to the emerge command, you can see exactly which software packages will get installed and what USE Flags are available and enabled for each software package that will get installed (you may want to adjust the USE Flags before compilation and installation).

An easy way to locate software that you may want to install on your system is by using a graphical program called "Porthole". The Porthole software package is usually masked, so unmask it by adding "app-portage/porthole" to the /etc/portage/package.keywords file, then "emerge porthole" to add the software to your system.

Using Gentoo's Porthole Application to install software

Although Portage doesn't include every software that is available for GNU/Linux Systems, it has the majority of the most popular software used. Below is a chart showing some of the software (with versions) available through the various software channels available with Gentoo Linux.

Available Software Versions as of April 28, 2010
	Stable	Masked	Overlay
GNOME	2.26.3	2.28.2	2.30.0
GTK+	2.18.7	2.18.9	2.20.0
KDE	4.3.5	4.4.2	-
QT	4.5.3	4.6.2-r1	-
XFCE	4.6.1	4.6.1	-
Linux Kernel	2.6.32-r7	2.6.33-r1	-
GCC	4.3.4	4.4.3	-
Samba	3.0.37	3.5.2	-
OpenOffice.org	3.2.0	3.2.0	-
KOffice	2.1.0	2.1.2	-
Evolution	2.26.3	2.28.3.1	2.30.0.1-r1
Firefox	3.6.3	3.6.3	-
F-spot	-	0.6.1.1-r3	-
Gimp	2.6.8	2.6.8	-
Inkscape	0.47	0.47	-
Scribus	1.3.5.1	1.3.6	-
Blender	2.49a	2.49b	-
gLabels	2.2.4	2.2.7	-
GNUCash	2.2.9-r1	2.2.9-r2	-
HomeBank	-	4.2.1	-
Planner	0.14.4	0.14.4	-
Banshee	1.4.3-r2	1.6.0	-
Rhythmbox	0.12.6	0.12.8	-
Amarok	2.2.2-r1	2.3.0.90	-
Kino	1.3.1	1.3.3	-
Pidgin	2.6.6	2.6.6	-
Empathy	-	2.28.2-r1	2.30.0.1
Xorg	1.7.6	1.8.0	-
Glibc	2.10.1-r1	2.11.1	-

As you can see, the stable branch sometimes has quite a bit older software versions. For instance, both KDE and GNOME usually lag one major version on the stable branch. Historically, KDE has been released in a quicker manner than GNOME has on Gentoo Linux Systems, although with the GNOME overlay, GNOME can pretty much be updated very shortly after the GNOME Project releases an update. KDE usually has immediate releases through the "masked" channel. As for most software, the masked channel usually has the latest and greatest, while the stable channel has the "known to work" versions.

It is extremely nice that the Gentoo Developers have given it's users the ability to decide what software versions they wish to run on their systems.

Our Gentoo Testing

During our tests, we tested both the 32 bit and 64 bit architectures and neither one had any noticeable shortcomings, so if you have a 64bit processor, we recommend using the amd64 arch installation media for the added performance you may get. (Note that even the Intel dual core and similar processors use the amd64 arch installation media).

We followed the installation handbook while installing Gentoo Linux and upon finalizing the installation we then followed the Xorg installation guide to install the X Server. Make note of adding the appropriate drivers (video and input) to /etc/make.conf to ensure only the drivers you need get compiled. Also, when compiling the X server, we recommend that you do not touch the USE Flags until you get Xorg compiled first, then adjust the USE flags and run:

	emerge -u world --deep --newuse

This way you avoid compilation errors where Portage may try to compile libraries that require X before X is actually installed. Once we re-adjusted the USE Flags and re-adjusted the system to use these USE Flags we then compiled both GNOME and KDE and both compiled and installed without any incident. We then installed all the applications that we use on Linux Desktops.

Even though we only tested our systems for about 5 weeks, we were able to test 3 different major releases of the GNOME Desktop (2.26, 2.28 and 2.30) and 2 different versions of KDE (4.3.5 and 4.4.2). We also tested multiple releases of other popular software by unmasking the packages and updating the system. Under all of this testing, our Gentoo Linux Systems continued to be extremely stable and very responsive.

Below are some other hints and observations that may benefit those who may wish to try Gentoo Linux.

Build a custom Kernel optimized for your hardware. A few of our testers had quite a bit of trouble getting certain features working properly (WLAN and Audio), and once they compiled a custom Kernel fine tuned to the hardware, these problems went away. Here is a Kernel Config file for one of our test systems (An Intel Core2 Duo Laptop).
Get the Xorg Server working before you adjust the USE Flags – this aided us immensely on later installs and actually improved our installation time for various hardware. Also remember to add the appropriate HAL policy files to ensure the Keyboard and Mouse will work correctly, otherwise you may be hard resetting the system to get back to a terminal.
Use the "stable" versions of most software and only unmask the software packages that you want to use the latest versions of. This will avoid many configuration issues that may occur when you use a fully unmasked system.

Final Thoughts

Gentoo Linux provides one of the most highly configurable Operating Systems around. Although the time spent installing and configuring Gentoo can turn out to be days instead of hours, the final installation will be totally optimized and customized to how you use your computer.

Gentoo Linux is not for everyone, if you don't like to manually adjusting your system and instead simply use the default settings of the software provided, then the time spent installing Gentoo will probably not be worth it for you. However, if you like to have total control of your system and want to ensure that you know every aspect of your computer and want to ensure that you have the latest versions of software available without having to re-install the system every 6 months, then Gentoo Linux is probably one of the Distributions that you may want to look at.

As for us, we are planning to at least keep a few Gentoo Linux Systems running to use as a reference for building software for other Distros, and one of us is planning on running Gentoo Linux as their main Operating System for the immediate future. Good Luck and happy Gentoo-ing.