Profile (Portage)

A Portage profile specifies default values for global and per-package USE flags, specifies default values for most variables found in, and defines a set of system packages. It masks unstable package versions and USE flags. The profiles are maintained by the Gentoo developers as part of the Portage tree, but there are ways for users to override single pieces.

List profiles
List the available profiles with eselect:

The "normal" profiles are the ones beginning with default, followed by subprofiles for kernel (linux or bsd), architecture (x86, amd64, etc.), release number (13.0) and target (desktop, server, developer, etc.). The desktop subprofile has also the subprofiles gnome and kde.

The arrow marks your currently active profile.

Change profile
Change your profile using eselect, e.g. for a KDE desktop:

Structure
All profiles are cascading/stackable profiles composed by several subprofiles. Each subprofile (corresponding to a directory under ) can contain files to set some defaults. Lower level subprofiles (e.g default/linux/amd64) also can have a file called, which pulls in one or more other higher level subprofiles (here: default/linux, arch/amd64 and base). Defaults defined in a lower level subprofile profile overwrites all conflicting defaults in higher subprofiles.

Following is an example for the stacked profile default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop/kde showing the dependencies.

The following table gives a quick overview of what subprofile contain what files: