Finding Software Packages
Part of the Gentoo installation process includes installing the Portage directory tree in the
/usr/portage directory. You can step around that directory to see the packages that are available.
As I mentioned earlier, several thousand are available.
Most software packages fall into the following major categories:
app??”Applications software packages, such as editors, antivirus software, administrative
tools, accessibility tools, CD writing applications, and many other packages.
dev??”A wide variety of development tools.
games??”Dozens of board, arcade, first-person-shooter, puzzle, and strategy games, and
games servers.
media??”A variety of audio, video, and other multimedia tools.
net??”Communications, server, firewall, and other network tools.
sys??”System configuration tools.
www??”Web communications servers and related software packages.
x11??”Miscellaneous tools for the X Window System graphical interface, along with
related themes and window managers.
Simply step through the /usr/portage directory structure to see the software packages you can
install, information about how each is built, and patches that are available.
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Choosing and Installing a Linux Distribution Part III
New Gentoo Features
Because the emphasis of Gentoo is on providing the infrastructure to make the kind of Linux you
want, many of the features recently added to Gentoo resulted in support for new computer architectures
and in the tools for installing Gentoo systems.
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