Gentoo:Portage Frontends

From Linux 101, The beginner's guide to all things Linux.

Although most interaction with Portage is done through use of the command line, there are numerous GUI tools that may be used to install, uninstall, and configure its packages. The following is a listing and minor explanation of a few of them.

1 Kuroo
2 portageMaster
3 Porthole
4 Himerge

[edit] Kuroo

Previously called Guitoo, this GUI frontend is written for KDE and uses QT. It has rather nice functionality in that it displays the Portage tree for easy browsing, allows for installation and removal of packages, has the ability to display the emerge logs along with length of time the emerge took, and allows for updating any configuration files that might need it using etc-update. For more information about this tool, visit the Kuroo Homepage. It's development was halted as of 01-01-2008. Portage list it as masked for removal, broken and abandoned.

[edit] portageMaster

This frontend is written in java and therefore outside of requiring a Java VM, it is very lightweight and has few dependencies. Since it is just an interface to the emerge command and executes it in the background, it contains all the functionality you want out of emerge and nothing you don't. For more information about this tool, visit the portageMaster Homepage. Last release was in 2003. Not available in portage.

[edit] Porthole

Porthole is a nice frontend utilizing GTK. It is by far the most popular Portage frontend for Gnome users and for those who prefer the GTK widget set. Although somewhat less featured, this GUI has most of the same functionality as the aforementioned Kuroo and is an excellent alternative for those who do not wish to use KDE/QT. For more information about this tool, visit the Porthole Homepage

There are other Portage GUI frontends available, however they seem to have been abandoned by their developers and are therefore rather outdated. More information regarding Portage can be found on its Wiki Page