[Frodo] but I am the first to admit, it is not nearly as powerful as the
     [83]Debian site.

     [Robert Krig] There is a link to this on the main page. Although it is
     easily overlooked.
            ____________________________________________________

Gentoo: check your package versions

   Robert Krig ([84]rkrig from gmx.de)

   If you want to know what version of a package you have installed, just open
   a terminal, and type

emerge -pv packagename

   The -p tells portage to pretend to emerge and the -v tells it to be verbose
   about it. In effect this will show you the package version it would like to
   install,  and next to it in brackets it will show which version of the
   package  you  currently  have  installed.  It should also show you any
   dependencies that need to be upgraded in case there is a newer version. And
   of course the -v option will show you possible use flags.

     Thanks to everybody who wrote in with this one :) -- Heather
            ____________________________________________________

Gentoo: searching with emerge

   Robert Krig ([85]rkrig from gmx.de)

emerge -s packagename

   This will search for anything with "packagename" in its packagename, i.e.
   emerge -s mozilla would list mozilla, mozilla-bin, mozilla-thunderbird,
   mozilla-firefox, etc. You get the picture.

emerge -S packagename

   will search the descriptions for the word specified, however this tends to
   take quite a while.
            ____________________________________________________

Gentoo: speedier emerge searches

   Frank Rodolf ([86]The LG Answer Gang)

   Gentoo's package query tools (equery and qpkg) aren't complete. They'll list
   the files a package contains but several other features are marked "not
   implemented". There didn't seem to be a way to quickly see which version of
   a package is installed: something equivalent to "rpm PACKAGE" or "dpkg -l
   PACKAGE". "emerge search PACKAGE" does it, but it takes several seconds,
   and you have to page through other information and entries for any other
   packages the substring matches. 

   You might want to emerge app-portage/esearch - it provides about the same
   functionality as emerge search, but uses a search-index, which makes it a
   lot faster. (Of course, the index has to be built, which takes time, but can
   be done with a cronjob.)

   Grtz,

   Frodo
            ____________________________________________________

Gentoo: rpm fans, take heart!

   Klavs Klavsen ([87]klavs from EnableIT.dk)

   If you are used to rpm - you can use the tool epm which emulates rpm's
   features. To list all packages installed (incl. versionnr.) do epm -qa. to
   list info of one package - do epm -qi packagename etc. etc. It even does the
   epm -V (verify md5sum etc. from install-time is still the same - ie. a
   "small intrusion detection" tool).
            ____________________________________________________

Gentoo: pointers about nvidia cards

   Robert Krig ([88]rkrig from gmx.de)

   As far nvidia gfx cards are concerned, seems for some it works without a
   hitch, for others there seem to be problems. Although it seems to me that
   proportionally many more users have no trouble with nvidia cards than the
   ones that do.

   Just a few pointers about nvidia cards under gentoo:

     Whenever you recompile your kernel, you need to re-emerge nvidia-kernel
     AND nvidia-glx

   you should then also always run

opengl-update nvidia

   Also in the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, in the "Device" section, the driver is
   called "nvidia" and not "nv". Xorg's nvidia driver is used if you define it
   as "nv", nvidia's binary driver is used if you define it as "nvidia".

   Also,  if you are using a 2.6 kernel, make sure that you dont have "4k
   stacks" option active. I think its somewhere in the basic kernel config. The