I think you already know the problem of fat systems. To prevent this, I did a cleaning session on my Gentoo installation here. This is not only about unmerging old and unused software. Think about your USE-Flags again.
I give an example: LDAP support requires the OpenLDAP packages to be installed on the system. So if you never use LDAP support, there is no reason having them installed. That’s why I stepped back from using the desktop profile offered in portage. I used the default profile instead, extending it with the USE-flags I need. That way, I keep them to a minimum. I was quite surprised how many packages I could get rid of.
Aniruddha says:
Thanks! That is a great piece of advice :)
Stargazer says:
You’re welcome – Hope it helps
Steven Oliver says:
I hate to be a lazy bum, but if you published a howto of sorts, that would be awsome!
Stargazer says:
Well… I do not think that I can predict the things you need on your system. So all I can do is pointing you in a direction, just like I did.