Hey there, > > IMO, if you only want to update a system once or twice a year, Gentoo > is not a good choice
What really helps is not to pollute your world file with crap you installed just for fun or you are not using anymore. A while ago I started organizing my configuration in various sets in `/usr/portage/sets/$set_name`. And only the `real` system packages I need to get my system running are allowed into the world file. And I make heavy use of the -1 flag to keep portage from writing everything into world. I don't know what the current policy on sets is, but if you make use of it you can easily reinstall whole subsets of your system without having to spend too much time. Then, if you run a world-update and you run into trouble you have the possibility to "bisect" your problem and either update certain sets seperatly or even unmerge whole sets (of course you still maintain already existing packages to reduce installation time). This puts me in the position to upgrade only once in a while. Avoiding dependency hell software (e.g. KDE) also helps a lot. And if you want to to a complete reinstall. Just unmerge your additional sets. Update @world (which has only the most nessecary bare bone system packages). There you go. A freshly installed Gentoo with your flavour. Cheers, Andrej
