Hi All I thought I saw some one demonstrate a really easy way of getting files downloaded and installed in the Gentoo distro. As root # up <name_of_package> Computer then searches for and reports back: "I would install Files <name> to <name> If the user was satisfied with the report then the "p" is deleted <enter> and the update goes ahead. I did not put this in the wiki In case I was totally wrong, it did happen once :-)
I think you are right, however you missed part of the command: emerge -up <name_of_package> 'emerge' is the command you use to install packages into gentoo. It is part of the portage system - similar to FreeBSD's ports. Most modern distributions have package managers that handle locating, downloading and installing packages for you. Redhat has up2date, Fedora Core has up2date, yum and apt, Debian and its derivatives have apt, and so on. Of course, these only work for packages the distribution includes - you might still have to download sourcecode and compile and install manually.