Holly Bostick wrote:
The first thing you need to understand is that USE flags enable/disable
*optional* support for supplemental applications. USE flags will never
affect anything that you "need" (to run the system), though it may
affect things that you "want" (for your own ease and comfort).
That I knew but the global settings may enable support that I do not
need/want, gnome being one of them.
<snip>
So, add "-gnome" to your global USE flags-- oh, I see you already do--
and then do an emerge -uaDNtv world (to recompile all apps compiled with
"gnome" support without it), and then an emerge depclean -p and then an
emerge depclean (or unmerge various packages individually) to remove the
now-unnecessary GNOME libs that were previously installed. You might
also want to disable "gtk", and "gtk2".
When you say you "have a lot of gnome stuff installed", what precisely
do you mean, anyway? You seem to have -gnome in your USE flags, so it's
not as if you have applications installing unnecessary (for you) GNOME
libs and such. And surely you did not explicitly install GNOME-- or did
you? If so, unmerge it (if you emerged gnome or gnome-light, this will
only unmerge the meta packages, not the applications installed by the
meta packages), and then do an emerge depclean -p (and then an emerge
depclean, or unmerge the packages individually) to remove the
now-orphaned GNOME dependencies.
I just recently added that -gnome. I didn't have it in there when I
emerged everything else on my system. Since I didn't know any better
before, I want to correct that now. I was going to just do a quick
reinstall but I seemed to have it removed by seeing what depclean
returned and removing things I didn't need manually, mostly gnome
stuff. If I did a reinstall, I was going to copy the kernel, kernels
config, world file, and a few config files that I changed over and let
it do its thing. I did that a while back when I changed drives.
Make.conf was one of those config files too.
But you may have a number of packages that depend natively on GNOME/GTK
libs; and if so, then you're just stuck with those, in the same way I'm
stuck with kdebase and qt if I want to use K3b. If that's a real problem
for you, investigate what programs those may be and see if you can find
a KDE or generic X-based alternative (for example, if you use gcolor2, a
GTK/GNOME color-chooser, you may want to switch to kcoloredit, the KDE
color chooser).
<snip>
This means nothing to me, since I have no idea what your system does or
what you do with it.
Do you need optional "java" and "javascript" support globally, for
example? Do you develop java or javascript? Maybe you do; I don't know--
at least then having the "gcj" USE flag enabled would make sense (since
"gcj" is the gcc support for a java compiler, afaik).
Myself, I don't, so I disabled that globally, and only enabled it in
/etc/portage/package.use for those programs I know I want java and
javascript support for (firefox, basically).
I just know I use java so I stuck it in there. I don't develope java
stuff though. Java works so I'm not beating it up. It may break for
spight. (sp?)
Do you do desktop publishing? Do you even use scribus? Do all
applications you may or may not have installed that *can* use Scribus
actually *need* to have *optional* "scribus" support enabled?
I do use Scribus on occasion. It's easier for me than OOo on some things.
And if you don't use a database, why do you have the innodb USE flag
enabled?
I did install mysql once and then removed it. I guess I missed that USE
option when I removed mysql. Thanks for pointing that out. See, you
did know something about that USE line. LOL
USE flags customize your system to your personal needs, and I cannot
know your personal needs-- only you can.
So I would suggest reading through /usr/portage/profiles/use.desc and
/usr/portage/profiles/use.local.desc to understand what the USE flags
you have enabled actually do. Myself, I have an alias in ~/.bashrc,
"stolen" from this list, to quickly scan USE flag definitions:
alias useflag="grep /usr/portage/profiles/use.*desc -e"
So if I do an emerge -uaDNtv world and see a USE flag I don't
understand, I can just do a
(taken from the k3b USE flags above):
useflag sndfile
/usr/portage/profiles/use.desc:sndfile - Adds support for libsndfile
and make my own decision about whether I want libsndfile support enabled
or not.
I've gotta say, that when I install Gentoo, the longest part of the
installation for me is in fact not the kernel compilation (that's the
second longest), but the scanning of the USE flags and reading of the
notes, to make sure I disable what I don't want and enable what I do. I
could, of course, just leave everything be, and then fix it all later as
you are now doing (that's easy enough), but I'm a recovering
perfectionist as well, so I like to take the time and get it closer to
right the first time.
I do regularly use the -v option and then look up the options for it.
If I don't need it, I remove it or disable it one. I'm learning.
My USE flags are pretty generic
USE="-kde -arts -eds -esd 16bit 3dnow acpi -apm audiofile -berkdb
bigger-fonts caps cddb dbus dga dv dvd fbcon firefox font-server
gimpprint glut gtkhtml gnutls hal iconv inkjar -ipv6 jack jikes
kdeenablefinal kdexdeltas lcms libcaca maildir mmx mng -mozilla mpi nfs
nptl offensive openexr -pam pic portaudio povray sndfile socks5 sqlite
sse -sse2 svg threads toolbar unicode v4l wmf xprint xvid yv12"
but my /etc/portage/package.use is 115 lines.
Holy crap, that's a lot to keep up with. Me not as genius as you are.
o_O I would have a lot of commented lines in there to help me remember
what I did it for. I'm getting to old I think.
I'm happy with that because even looking at it now, I can see that my
global USE flags really */are/* global, enabling support for things I
don't want to have to worry about (I want everything that could have
unicode support to actually have it enabled without me worrying about
it) and disabling support for things I know I don't want (if any package
I may choose to compile could have KDE
support, I know I don't want it, without having to worry about it, and I
don't think I even have ipv6, so I know I don't want that), and
so I know the reason that my package.use is so long is because it
enables/disables *specific* options in *specific* applications, which is
what it's supposed to do.
Such as
media-video/ffmpeg -mmx
Globally, I want mmx support, but ffmpeg won't compile on my system if
such support is enabled, so the support is disabled for that particular
program.
On the other hand, "extra" documentation support (the "doc" USE flag) is
usually disabled by default if it appears at all, but I've enabled it
for imagemagick:
media-gfx/imagemagick doc
because I consider imagemagick complex enough that I want to have the
docs available (because I will surely need them).
I use Samba, but I don't necessarily want everything that can have Samba
support to have Samba support, so for certain packages, "samba" is
specifically enabled in package.use, but not globally.
That's the way it's supposed to work, afaik. It does mean you have to
buckle down and think about what you specifically want/need, but
"customization" always requires that, whether it's because you're
detailing your hotrod (I've clearly seen too much "American Chopper",
"Pimp My Ride" and "Wheeler Dealers" this week, damn boyfriend, damn
Discovery and MTV) or because you're fine-tuning Gentoo.
HTH,
Holly
I have watched those shows too. I do want to start to learn my rig and
how to configure it correctly. That package.use file has a line or two
in it but it was because a package would not compile for me too.
I'm tired again. Looks like I'm going back to bed. I think my skin is
going through a cycle again. I get up, fiddle around then go back to
bed. < sighs > This sucks.
Dale
:-)
--
To err is human, I'm most certainly human.
I have four rigs:
1: Home built; Abit NF7 ver 2.0 w/ AMD 2500+ CPU, 1GB of ram and right now two
80GB hard drives. Named Smoker
2: Home built; Iwill KK266-R w/ AMD 1GHz CPU, 256MBs of ram and a 4GB drive.
Named Swifty
3: Home built; Gigabyte GA-71XE4 w/ 800MHz CPU, 224MBs of ram and a 2.5GB
drive. Named Pokey
4: Compaq Proliant 6000 Server w/ Quad 200MHz CPUs, 128MBs of ram and a 4.3GB
SCSI drive. Named Putput
All run Gentoo Linux, all run folding. #1 is my desktop, 2, 3, and 4 are set up as servers.
--
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