Abbreviations, terminology, and jargon

As with any unique distribution with a history, specific colloquialisms such as "Portage tree", or deprecated terminology such as "Herds" have influenced conversation in the Gentoo community. In order to aid new community members and harden concepts for existing ones, this article Article description::aims to serve as a location to collect terms, definitions, acronyms, colloquialisms, expressions, and all other types of jargon known to the Gentoo community.

Authoritative citations
If possible, entries under each section should list a link or other type of authoritative upstream citation. Archive.org links are welcome, but only if necessary (example: when citing information from the original Gentoo.org site).

Abbreviations
'''Editors: please focus on the not-so-common abbreviations which are important in the Gentoo universe. Well-known general abbreviations like CPU or SCSI would not fit here.'''

Jargon
What is jargon? According to Wikipedia, jargon is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. In Gentoo, this means terms such as Portage tree, ebuild repository/overlay, genkernel, Profiles, and other terms these not quickly or easily understood by etymology alone.

Terminology

 * Herd : A deprecated term used to define a group of developers who shared maintenance responsibility for a specific group of ebuilds. Herds are now known as projects (see the full list).
 * Genkernel : A tool created by Gentoo used to automate the build process of the kernel and initramfs.
 * gentoo.git : The name of Gentoo's official, primary ebuild repository containing elements of the EAPI used to install packages via the package manager.
 * Gentoo tree : The historic title of the official, primary ebuild repository for Gentoo. Now more of a colloquial reference.
 * Portage : The package management framework for Gentoo. It downloads, unpacks, compiles, and installs packages.
 * Portage tree : The historic title of the official, primary ebuild repository for Gentoo. Now more of a colloquial reference.
 * Tinderbox : A build bot to identify build and installation issues of Gentoo Linux software packages.