Hello forum,

I am new to Gentoo based operating systems such as Sabayon.

I installed the tarball version of VmwareWorkstation 6.x on Sabayon 3.4e x86 and it seems to work okay but afterwards I read an article http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_install_p...ithout_portage

This article said I need to create a separate user and add a directory for the installation called /usr/non-portage.

But I installed VmwareWorkstation directly, the usual way, without following the above procedures.

My question is, did I mess up?

Cheers,
Roy

This has what exactly to do with Slackware?

I apologize if I posted on the wrong forum. I didn't see a forum for Sabayon or Gentoo. I just thought Slackware was the closest choice.

Roy

Slackware and Gentoo/Sabayon are very different. May want to try here: http://forums.gentoo.org/ or http://www.sabayonlinux.org/forum/

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Linux-Software and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Sure you can compile and install software the way you like. However, Gentoo has something called portage to handle installation, upgrading, configuring and deinstalling software in a much convenient yet still flexible way.

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/list.xml

Scroll down to Portage and Related Documentation.

That /usr/non-portage stuff doesn't sound right.
Check this:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handboo...ap=5#doc_chap3

It should work correctly. If I understand this correctly you should list the corresponding Gentoo/Sabayone package in the package.provided file. This is used by portage for dependencies etc, i.e. it will only make a difference when you install other things with Portage that have some sort of relationship to those separately installed packages. I think I saw something somewhere that this is like saying to portage: "presume these packages are installed already".

I have never been in this situation myself, but this is how I understand it...

package.provided is useful if you installed a package yourself and want portage to know it because other packages depend on it.