3 Things to MASTER in Gentoo Linux

In this video, I discuss the top 3 things I feel that a person needs to understand in order to get a good grasp on Gentoo Linux, now you don`t need to fully understand them but it does help to have a basic understanding of what each thing does and how it works. Feel free to leave me a comment down below and tell me if I missed anything or if you feel I didn`t explain something fully and i`ll get back to you. Thanks for watching.. I will add chapters.

00:56 - Intro
1:00 - Use Flags
18:05 - MASKED Packages
31:07 - MAKE.CONF

[pretoasted]

Gentoo was my very first distro and the handbook taught me tons in a very short period of time. It took a few days as I was also reading the entire handbook at the same time, but it was well worth it.
I'm still using the same install from 2002 that started on an SATA HD, and now resides on an NVMe; Never had to do a fresh/re-install...I always managed to find a way to fix anything I broke, which was a lot.

[donaldmickunas]

I’m just getting started with Gentoo. I’ve used Linux since the early 2000s and I’m comfortable on the cli. This video along with others I see on your channel are going to make my Gentoo journey so much easier. Thank you so much! ❤👏

[AnantKumar-xfpw]

Just a heads up to anyone new viewing this video. euses is deprecated or unmaintained so stick with equery u <pkg> that will provide all uses flags and their description for the pkg

[JohanJohnsson]

I am on the verge to install Gentoo for the first time, this was a very nice video to watch.

[thmtrmnd]

last time i used gentoo i got confused with these little things like masked packages, but now i think i will try it once again as things have become a little clearer now. great stuff keep making videos like this...👍

[seancondon]

19:42 - masking... there are 3 types of masking. License, Arch, and Explicit masking.
An example of a license-masked ebuild is app-arch/unrar. It requires you to add unRAR to your package.license.
Arch masking is usually used for testing and unstable packages. This can be ~arch masking as is the case with, say, wine-vanilla-currentversion, or ** masking as is the case with wine-vanilla-9999 (or any other git repo ebuilds)
Explicit masking is used on very few official ebuilds. I'm fairly certain it's only if the ebuild has some sort of MAJOR security concern. Explicitly masked packages can be unmasked at your peril using package.unmask, and non-masked packages can be explicitly masked using package.mask.

[mwont]

Awesome video. Thanks, I just started my gentoo adventure.

[_BLANK_BLANK]

Idk if anyone mentioned this. Its not something that really matters much, but is just good info i think.

When you are installing a package froma binary distro. They don't actually have all features built into them. Some packages might, others won't and the maintainer decided which options to enable or disable.

The main thing is what you said though. Which is true. You don't get any choice on what is included. Unless you go and compile the package yourself with that option enabled or disabled.

[seancondon]

20:50 - they used to be files. If I'm not mistaken, you can still have them as files, but emerge will complain as this is deprecated. Not to mention file bloat. I usually have my files as package.whatever/package-category, so, for example, I have a file app-emulation under package.accept_keywords, and a file app-arch under package.license.

[marekmatej]

you can use the version numbers in the file, you just need an equal sign (or equal greater) sign in from of the package atom name. That way you will unmask the specific version! Or, you just remove the version suffix and unmask the package globally. EDIT: you have covered this later in video :)

[scottb]

May I humbly offer the suggestion of using Herbsluftwm. Easy to use and configure

[JamesSmith-ixjd]

18:11 you should not do this, you essentially installing unstable libraries on stable branch, eventually your system will be broken. The solution if you really need that package is to enable global unstable ~amd64 branch in make conf and rebuild the system. Or use other package managers wich are not distro specific - nix package manager, flatpak, distrobox.

[amizednix]

I love Gentoo! But one honest question here, how much time it takes you to compile firefox?

[relaxdmj]

Very usefull information, thank you very much!
Regarding the "package.accept_keywords" directory (or "package.use"), could you regroup all your individual files under one unique file (including all your conditions for all your packages under one unique file)?

[lockaltube]

11:30 interesting, you have "X" in global USE flags, but when you emerged links, it was "-X". Also links had no GUI, but it somehow was compiled with jpeg support.

[niki]

Quick question, what WM are you using?

[damianateiro]

I don't use gentoo and it is very unlikely that I will because I don't have that much time to do it, but I am someone who is open to knowledge and I am always willing to learn new things (and at the same time to know why femboys like it so much XD)

[mementomori]

gentoo now have binarys and you can choose

[JamesSmith-ixjd]

Why are you always typing ./ for every file, it is not necessary for non executables.