emerge system

[erik]

I am a RH person, and just recently decided to try out gentoo. I even
bought the CD to donate to the cause ( I was feeling nice).

But my question is this:

What is 'emerge system' actually doing. Is it grabbing every package
under the sun. I might not want all this stuff? Can someone explain why
we need to do 'emerge system'?

[Kevin Martin]

I can relate, for I have been in the whole RH/Fedora side of Linux for
a while before switching to Gentoo. Welcome to a fabulous distro, and I
hope you enjoy the incredible userbase for supporting it. That said,
the Installation Handbook is a completely invaluable tool. Check out
the following part of it:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=6#doc_chap4

[Scott Abbey]

'emerge system' installs the essential system utilities needed by
Gentoo in order to function as an operating system. Most notably kernel
headers, C/C++ headers, gcc, bash, etc. You can see a list of the
packages to be installed by entering 'emerge -pv system'. The flag 'p'
(for pretend) tells emerge to list the packages to be installed, and
then exit. The 'v' flag tells emerge to turn on verbose output.

You can add and remove some things from the list by altering your USE
flags in /etc/make.conf. There is a very good explanation of the USE
flags available at http://www.gentoo.org/dyn/use-index.xml. The purpose
and configuring of USE flags is described at
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=2&chap=2.

I would recommend leaving the USE flags as is if this is your first
install of Gentoo until you feel comfortable doing things "The Gentoo
Way". It will install the packages needed to get the system running,
and not a whole lot more. (I can't remember exactly what is on that
list; I haven't done a default install in a long time.)