What is a Gentoo system?
What is Gentoo? Gentoo is a free operating system based on Linux that can be automatically optimized and customized for just about any application or need. Extreme configurability, performance, and a top-notch user and developer community are all hallmarks of the Gentoo experience.
Is Gentoo still supported?
It is officially supported and considered stable on IA-32, x86-64, IA-64, PA-RISC, 32-bit and 64-bit PowerPC, 64-bit SPARC, DEC Alpha, and both 32- and 64-bit ARM architectures. It is also officially supported but considered in-development state on MIPS, PS3 Cell Processor, System Z/s390,.
How does Gentoo portage work?
Portage will provision software from the Gentoo ebuild repository, and from any additional repositories, as necessary. Portage includes many commands for repository and package management, the primary of which is the emerge command.
What package manager does Gentoo use?
Portage
Portage is a package management system originally created for and used by Gentoo Linux and also by Chrome OS, Calculate, Sabayon, and Funtoo Linux among others.
What is Gentoo good for?
Gentoo allows users to configure which software features they wish to install, instead of the “one size fits all” approach of many binary-based distributions. Gentoo can run in a wide range of environments, from embedded systems and virtual containers (LXC, OpenVZ, etc.) through to large cluster machines.
Does Gentoo use apt?
APT is a tool used exclusively by Debian based distributions. Sabayon is based on Gentoo and therefore supports Portage (the emerge command mentionned in another answer).
How do I set up Gentoo to cache distfiles?
When several machines are running Gentoo on the same local area network, it is a good idea to cache distfiles on one of them and let the rest download from that one. This saves bandwidth for both the network owner and the public source mirrors. Select the machine that is going to serve the local distfiles cache and set it up.
Does apt-cacher-NG support Gentoo source mirrors?
Apt-cacher-ng includes support for the Gentoo source mirrors, but some configuration is still needed. Since it is designed primarily for use with the Debian package management system, there are some types of files used in Gentoo distfiles which by default it refuses to download.
What is the default distfiles location in Linux?
Previously the default was $ {PORTDIR}/distfiles which resolved to /usr/portage/distfiles by default. This location, which is also often referred to as the distfiles location, will host the source code archives of all software installed (or attempted to install) on the system.
What does local distfiles cache do?
Local distfiles cache. When several machines are running Gentoo on the same local area network, it is a good idea to cache distfiles on one of them and let the rest download from that one. This saves bandwidth for both the network owner and the public source mirrors.