Gentoo Portage
Hacker ApprovedRanked 17 of 35 package managers by recommenders
Gentoo's package manager, praised for automated updates, easy patching and a kernel-agnostic design; the most common caveat is slow dependency resolution.
Gentoo's package manager, praised for automated updates, easy patching and a kernel-agnostic design; the most common caveat is slow dependency resolution.
19 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 15
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 79%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 15 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Favored over other package managers
“Portage is far-and-away the best traditional package manager I've ever used.”
Comment from 11 Jan 2026 in “Gentoo Linux 2025 Review” “apple sillicon is equivalent to portage in terms of efficiency”
Comment from 30 May 2026 in “Why Gentoo?” “there's nothing like Portage on BSD so far”
Comment from 16 Nov 2025 in “Why use OpenBSD?” - Comment from 29 May 2026 in “Why Gentoo?”
Automated updates needing only confirmation
“Portage/emerge is very much automated and once you set it up it runs updates with just a confirmation”
Comment from 12 Jan 2026 in “Gentoo Linux 2025 Review” “My maintenance burden is limited nowadays compared to 10y ago”
Comment from 11 Jan 2026 in “Gentoo Linux 2025 Review” Easy to patch and tweak
“With portage all it takes is to have the patch sit in /etc/portage/patches. It doesn't get better than that.”
Comment from 29 May 2026 in “Why Gentoo?” “Gentoo portage is probably the easiest package manager to tweak into creating accounts and groups”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business” Kernel-agnostic toolkit with good documentation
“Portage and all other Gentoo tools being a fairly kernel agnostic toolkit is just the coolest”
Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “AlpineBSD” “its software package system and its documentation”
Comment from 29 May 2026 in “Why Gentoo?”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow, especially dependency reconciliation
“The sync has nothing to do with it's slowness when reconciling dependency conflicts.”
Comment from 29 May 2026 in “Why Gentoo?” “I can't believe it's not instant like it should be.”
Comment from 29 May 2026 in “Why Gentoo?” “portage is really really slow”
Comment from 7 Apr 2026 in “AWS Engineer Reports PostgreSQL Perf Halved by Linux 7.0, Fix May Not Be Easy” Tree breakage and lost debugging time
“All sorts of portage tree screwups would affect you periodically”
Comment from 16 Oct 2026 in “Last rites for Gentoo's Chromium package” “Why did I waste hours of my life debugging portage and yum?”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “NP-Overrated”
Other package managers people recommend
The four most recommended other package managers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 35 package managers, rankedWhat people said
18 of the 22 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Portage and all other Gentoo tools being a fairly kernel agnostic toolkit is just the coolest”
“All sorts of portage tree screwups would affect you periodically”
“Portage (and friends) got better at figuring out the minimal set of packages to rebuild on library update”
“Why did I waste hours of my life debugging portage and yum?”
“apple sillicon is equivalent to portage in terms of efficiency”
“Portage is reminiscent of BSD ports”
“its software package system and its documentation”
“With portage all it takes is to have the patch sit in /etc/portage/patches. It doesn't get better than that.”
“I can't believe it's not instant like it should be.”
“The sync has nothing to do with it's slowness when reconciling dependency conflicts.”
“Python being a dependency of portage is gentoo's original sin”
“portage is really really slow”
“Portage/emerge is very much automated and once you set it up it runs updates with just a confirmation”
“My maintenance burden is limited nowadays compared to 10y ago”
“Portage is far-and-away the best traditional package manager I've ever used.”
“automatically tracking dependencies of things like USE-flags in Gentoo's Portage”
“Gentoo portage is probably the easiest package manager to tweak into creating accounts and groups”
“there's nothing like Portage on BSD so far”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.