Porthole: Package Management the Easy way

v0.2 (en), xiando

Porthole is a front-end for Portage, the Gentoo Package management system. It allows you to browse through available software packages and install them easy as pie.

Vidalinux Desktop OS is a popular Gentoo-based Desktop distribution. It's main attraction is Porthole, a GTK based front-end for portage. Gentoo users can also use this elegant tool.

Porthole is masked and must be installed with ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge porthole. It must be run as root. If you started X as a normal user you can xhost +localhost to let root use the screen and start it with su -c 'porthole'.

You can emerge (install), upgrade and unmerge (remove) packages with a click when selected.

Porthole does not have advanced features like editing use flags, these must already be set correctly using ufed (manual) or by manually editing /etc/make.conf. Porthole is not a complete replacement for emerge and the rest of the command line utilities, but it does provide a clean interface for unexperienced. It makes the most basic functions accessible.

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Porthole: Package Management the Easy way