Useful Stuff

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Coming to Gentoo from Other Distributions

Coming from Windows

Coming from Windows will be difficult (but by no means impossible), I personally suggest you go to one of the easier distros first, Ubuntu is an excellent and user friendly distro with a large community. But don't let that put you off though, by all means give Gentoo a try, doing the install would definitely teach you some things immediatly.

Coming from Ubuntu, Debian and other Debian based systems

If you are coming from Debian you will probably find that most things come quite easy. If you are comfortable at navigating using the command line then you'll be fine.

Ubuntu has some good programs for helping the user carry out the tasks of installing programs: the "Add/Remove programs" section in the menu, Aptitude and Synaptic are three examples. All of these programs are what's known as "front-ends", in other words they are programs that call certain commands, the command in question here is apt-get. If you are used to installing programs at the command line with apt-get and searching with apt-cache then you'll be fine with emerge. Some apt commands and their portage counterparts:

apt-get install foo ---> emerge foo
apt-cache search foo ---> emerge -s foo
apt-get update --> emerge --sync
apt-get upgrade --> emerge -u world

Portage, Gentoo's package management system has some front-ends if you dont feel too comfortable with the command line. Porthole is the main one but there are others like Portato.

Coming from Fedora, SuSE and other RPM based systems

Fedora and SuSE both use the same package management system - RPM, but while Fedora uses the add/remove applications in Gnome and YUM SuSE uses Yast. RPM, Yum and Yast commands and their Gentoo equivalent are:

yum install foo ---> emerge foo
yum search foo ---> emerge -s foo
yast -i foo ---> emerge foo
rpm -Uvh foo ---> emerge foo