From: vaeth@mathematik.uni-wuerzburg.de   
      
   Aragorn  wrote:   
   >   
   > more or less mirroring the parent */usr* directory, i.e. */usr/local/bin,*   
   > */usr/local/lib64* et al.   
      
   Oh, that's different - these directories are just made for convience:   
   In case you want to put something in /usr/local you do not have them   
   manually. But I can hardly imagine that these empty directories take   
   the 288kB which you talked about.   
      
   > (1) Am I to understand that UTF-8 is still not used per default in Gentoo   
   > 2007.0?   
      
   It is not easy to define what means "used per default".   
   Most programs will honour the values of the environment   
   variables LANG and LC_* which can be different for every user   
   (you can see the current value of these variables by typing "locale"   
   in the shell). Only the values which you see by typing "locale -a"   
   make sense for these variables. This list (which you see by locale -a)   
   depends on what you have selected in /etc/locale.gen before you   
   emerged glibc. Typically, you will have en_US.utf8 (or some other language   
   with .utf8) in this list; in this case, your "default" is utf-8.   
      
   However, several kde and gnome applications do no honour these variables;   
   their language has to be configured with the corresponding kde/gnome   
   control centers.   
      
   Another such case is keyboard layout (your second question):   
   For this the above settings is uninteresting. The keyboard layout is   
   (for the standard console) determined by your entries in   
     /etc/conf.d/keymaps   
   and for X determined by your settings in xorg.conf (KDE and Gnome also   
   have other means to change your keyboard layout).   
      
   > (3) Can somebody explain to me what the difference is between the "Linux",   
   > "server" and "desktop" profiles?  I can understand the difference between   
   > the latter two, but then where does the "Linux" profile come in?   
      
   You mean why you should set a symlink to   
     /usr/portage/default-linux/...   
   It is in contrast to e.g. default-bsd. (Yes, although gentoo is known as   
   a linux distribution you might also run bsd instead with gentoo if you want).   
      
   > I'm afraid the manual doesn't quite give me an exclusion on what to   
   > do... :-/   
      
   Well, gentoo is about choice...   
      
   > In addition, Daniel Robbins already has new   
   > stages ready, so I might as well pick the newer tarball, which saves me   
   > from having to download a lot when sync'ing.   
      
   This is not worth the trouble of reinstall. Over time, you will download   
   a lot anyway: Probably already now Robbins distribution contains outdated   
   packages...   
      
   > Hmm...  I'm already wondering whether I shouldn't be going for a stage 1   
   > install instead, given that I need to recompile everything anyway for my   
   > Xen set-up...   
      
   There is no reason to use stage 1 (except for some embedded systems or so   
   where it is impossible to use stage 3). It is the same reason as above:   
   Over time, you will have recompiled your whole system anyway. so it doesn't   
   matter with what you started: after some time, both systems will be   
   identical. Starting with a more complete stage 3 just saves you from more   
   trouble in the beginning.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)