Packages
global USE flags
Add support for X11
Add support for the 3d athena widget set
Enable support for decoding ATSC A/52 streams used in DVD
Enable support for MPEG-4 AAC Audio
Add support for media-libs/aalib (ASCII-Graphics Library)
Add support for accessibility (eg 'at-spi' library)
Add support for Access Control Lists
Add support for Advanced Configuration and Power Interface
Add support for asynchronous DNS resolution
Add OpenAFS support (distributed file system)
Add support for media-libs/alsa-lib (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture)
Use libao audio output library for sound playback
Add Apache2 support
Include support for the Mac OS X Aqua (Carbon/Cocoa) GUI
Enable Asynchronous Transfer Mode protocol support
Enable support for the AppArmor application security system
Build in support for notifications using the libindicate or libappindicator plugin
Add support for libaudiofile where applicable
Enable support for Linux audit subsystem using sys-process/audit
Enable bash-completion support
Add support for sys-libs/db (Berkeley DB for MySQL)
Enable bidirectional language support
Big-endian toolchain support
Flag to enable or disable options for prebuilt (GRP) packages (eg. due to licensing issues)
Add support for the virtual/blas numerical library
Enable Bluetooth Support
Enable Gentoo specific branding
!!internal use only!! DO NOT SET THIS FLAG YOURSELF!, used for creating build images and the first half of bootstrapping [make stage1]
Use the bzlib compression library
Enable support for the cairo graphics library
Add support for calendars (not using mcal!)
Use Linux capabilities library to control privilege
Add support for the CDB database engine from the author of qmail
Add Compact Disk Digital Audio (Standard Audio CD) support
Access cddb servers to retrieve and submit information about compact disks
Copy files from the CD rather than asking the user to copy them, mostly used with games
Add support for CD writer hardware
Add CGI script support
Add support for Multi-byte character languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
Add support for Clam AntiVirus software (usually with a plugin)
Support color management using x11-misc/colord
Add support for net-misc/connman
Build the CoreAudio driver on Mac OS X systems
Support for cracklib strong password checking
Add support for encryption -- using mcrypt or gpg where applicable
Enable reading of encrypted DVDs
Add support for CUPS (Common Unix Printing System)
Add support for client-side URL transfer library
Build with user-specified CFLAGS (unsupported)
Enable CVS (Concurrent Versions System) integration
Build support for C++ (bindings, extra libraries, code generation, ...)
Enable dev-db/libdbi (database-independent abstraction layer) support
Add support for generic DBM databases
Enable subslot rebuilds on Distribution Kernel upgrades
Support DjVu, a PDF-like document format esp. suited for scanned documents
Enable dbus support for anything that needs it (gpsd, gnomemeeting, etc)
Enable extra debug codepaths, like asserts and extra output. If you want to get meaningful backtraces see https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Quality_Assurance/Backtraces
Add support for dedicated game servers (some packages do not provide clients and servers at the same time)
Add DGA (Direct Graphic Access) support for X
Add extra documentation (API, Javadoc, etc). It is recommended to enable per package instead of globally
Enable direct rendering: used for accelerated 3D and some 2D, like DMA
Enable DTS Coherent Acoustics decoder support
Enable support for a codec used by many camcorders
Add support for DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting)
Add support for DVDs
Add support for DVD writer hardware (e.g. in xcdroast)
Enable support for Evolution-Data-Server (EDS)
Enable session tracking via sys-auth/elogind
Add support for GNU Emacs
Add support for the European Molecular Biology Open Software Suite
Add support for encoding of audio or video files
Install examples, usually source code
Add support for reading EXIF headers from JPEG and TIFF images
Enable the use of dev-libs/expat for XML parsing
Enable FAM (File Alteration Monitor) support
Add support for the FastCGI interface
Add framebuffer support for the console, via the kernel
Enable ffmpeg/libav-based audio/video codec support
Use FFTW library for computing Fourier transforms
Use Linux file capabilities to control privilege rather than set*id (this is orthogonal to USE=caps which uses capabilities at runtime e.g. libcap)
Add support for the Firebird relational database
Add support for FLAC: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Add support for the Fast Light Toolkit gui interface
Support for configuring and customizing font access via media-libs/fontconfig
Add support for fortran
Add support for the TDS protocol to connect to MSSQL/Sybase databases
Add support for FreeWnn kana to kanji conversion engine
Add FTP (File Transfer Protocol) support
Add support for media-libs/gd (to generate graphics on the fly)
Add support for sys-libs/gdbm (GNU database libraries)
Add geoip support for country and city lookup based on IPs
Enable physical position determination
Add support for media-libs/libggi (non-X video api/drivers)
Add GIF image support
Build a plugin for the GIMP
Enable git (version control system) support
Use GLES 2.0 or later instead of full OpenGL
Build an OpenGL plugin using the GLUT library
Add support for dev-libs/gmp (GNU MP library)
Add GNOME support
Enable support for storing passwords via gnome-keyring
Enable support for gnuplot (data and function plotting)
Prefer net-libs/gnutls as SSL/TLS provider (ineffective with USE=-ssl)
Add digital camera support
Add support for sys-libs/gpm (Console-based mouse driver)
Add support for Global Positioning System
Build and link against GraphicsMagick instead of ImageMagick (requires USE=imagemagick if optional)
Add support for the Graphviz library
Use the GNU scientific library for calculations
Add support for the gsm lossy speech compression codec
Add support for media-libs/gstreamer (Streaming media)
Add support for x11-libs/gtk+ (The GIMP Toolkit)
Build and install gtk-doc based developer documentation for dev-util/devhelp, IDE and offline use
Enable support for a graphical user interface
Add support for the guile Scheme interpreter
Compress files with Lempel-Ziv coding (LZ77)
Enable handbooks generation for packages by KDE
Activate default security enhancements for toolchain (gcc, glibc, binutils)
Enable monitoring of hdd temperature (app-admin/hddtemp)
Add support for the Hierarchical Data Format v5
Install only C headers instead of whole package. Mainly used by sys-devel/crossdev for toolchain bootstrap.
Include coloured haskell sources to generated documentation (dev-haskell/hscolour)
Add support for IBM ppc64 specific systems
Enable support for the iconv character set conversion library
Enable ICU (Internationalization Components for Unicode) support, using dev-libs/icu
Add support for software made by KDE, a free software community
Enable the ability to support ladspa plugins
Prefer using LAME libraries for MP3 encoding support
Add support for the virtual/lapack numerical library
Add LASH Audio Session Handler support
Add support for LaTeX (typesetting package)
Add lcms support (color management engine)
Add LDAP support (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol)
SRT/SSA/ASS (SubRip / SubStation Alpha) subtitle support
Add support for colored ASCII-art graphics
Use the libedit library (replacement for readline)
Enable support for Foreign Function Interface library
Enable desktop notification support
Build with support for converting sample rates using libsamplerate
Add libwww support (General purpose WEB API)
Add support for lirc (Linux's Infra-Red Remote Control)
!!internal use only!! DO NOT SET THIS FLAG YOURSELF!, used during livecd building
Use sys-libs/llvm-libunwind instead of sys-libs/libunwind
Add linux lm-sensors (hardware sensors) support
Enable Lua scripting support
Support for LZMA (de)compression algorithm
Enable support for lz4 compression (as implemented in app-arch/lz4)
Enable support for lzo compression
Enable m17n-lib support
Add support for mad (high-quality mp3 decoder library and cli frontend)
Add support for maildir (~/.maildir) style mail spools
Add support for file type detection via magic bytes (usually via libmagic from sys-apps/file)
Build and install man pages
Add support for the matroska container format (extensions .mkv, .mka and .mks)
Add support for mbox (/var/spool/mail) style mail spools
Add support for memcached
Add libmikmod support to allow playing of SoundTracker-style music files
Add sendmail mail filter (milter) support
Install a very minimal build (disables, for example, plugins, fonts, most drivers, non-critical features)
Add mmap (memory map) support
Support for Microsoft Media Server (MMS) streams
Add support for libmng (MNG images)
Add libmodplug support for playing SoundTracker-style music files
Build the kernel modules
Build Mono bindings to support dotnet type stuff
Add support for the Motif toolkit
Add support for reading mp3 files
Support for MP4 container format
Add libmpeg3 support to various packages
Add MPI (Message Passing Interface) layer to the apps that support it
Enable mplayer support for playback or encoding
Add support for Microsoft SQL Server database
Enable support for Media Transfer Protocol
On 64bit systems, if you want to be able to compile 32bit and 64bit binaries
Enable support for the musepack audio codec
Lookup audio metadata using MusicBrainz community service (musicbrainz.org)
Add mySQL Database support
Add support for the improved mySQL libraries
Add support for network audio sound
Add ncurses support (console display library)
Enable neXt toolkit
Enable NetCDF data format support
Enable net-misc/networkmanager support
Support for NIS/YP services
Add Native Language Support (using gettextGNU locale utilities)
Add support for newsgroups (Network News Transfer Protocol)
Install all files required to run the application without a CD mounted
Build plugin for browsers supporting the Netscape plugin architecture (that is almost any modern browser)
Add support for NVIDIA Encoder/Decoder (NVENC/NVDEC) API for hardware accelerated encoding and decoding on NVIDIA cards (requires x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers)
Add support/bindings for the Ocaml language
Enable ocamlopt support (ocaml native code compiler) -- Produces faster programs (Warning: you have to disable/enable it at a global scale)
Add Oracle 8 Database Support
Use dev-db/oracle-instantclient-basic as Oracle provider instead of requiring a full Oracle server install
Add ODBC Support (Open DataBase Connectivity)
Enable potentially offensive items in packages
Enable support for importing (and exporting) OFX (Open Financial eXchange) data files
Add support for the Ogg container format (commonly used by Vorbis, Theora and flac)
Add support for the Open Audio Library
Support for the OpenEXR graphics file format
Add support for OpenGL (3D graphics)
Build support for the OpenMP (support parallel computing), requires >=sys-devel/gcc-4.2 built with USE="openmp"
Convert BDF and PCF bitmap fonts to OTB wrapper format
Enable Opus audio codec support
Enable Oracle Database support
Use dev-lang/orc for just-in-time optimization of array operations
Enable support for Open Sound Control
Add support for OSS (Open Sound System)
Add support for PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules)DANGEROUS to arbitrarily flip
Enable precompiled header support for faster compilation at the expense of disk space and memory (>=sys-devel/gcc-3.4 only)
Add support for PCMCIA slots/devices found on laptop computers
Add support for Perl Compatible Regular Expressions
Add support for portable devices
Add general support for PDF (Portable Document Format), this replaces the pdflib and cpdflib flags
Add optional support/bindings for the Perl language
Include support for the PHP language
Build programs as Position Independent Executables (a security hardening technique)
Build optional KDE plasma addons
Add support for plotutils (library for 2-D vector graphics)
Add support for libpng (PNG images)
Enable PolicyKit (polkit) authentication support
Add support for the crossplatform portaudio audio API
Add support for POSIX-compatible functions
Add support for the postgresql database
Enable support for the PostScript language (often with ghostscript-gpl or libspectre)
Add support for automatically generated ppd (printing driver) files
Defines if a Gentoo Prefix offset installation is used
Add support for software performance analysis (will likely vary from ebuild to ebuild)
Add support for PulseAudio sound server
Add optional support/bindings for the Python language
Add support for the qdbm (Quick Database Manager) library
Add support for qmail SMTP plugins
Add support for the Qt 5 application and UI framework
Add support for the Qt 6 application and UI framework
Add support for OpenQuickTime
Add support for RADIUS authentication
Add support for raw image formats
Enables RDP/Remote Desktop support
Enable support for libreadline, a GNU line-editing library that almost everyone wants
Enable support for the GNU recode library
Enable support for RSS feeds
Add support/bindings for the Ruby language
Add support for SAMBA (Windows File and Printer sharing)
Add support for the Simple Authentication and Security Layer
Use this to restore your config from /etc/portage/savedconfig ${CATEGORY}/${PN}. Make sure your USE flags allow for appropriate dependencies
Add support for scanner hardware (e.g. build the sane frontend in kdegraphics)
Enable support for remote desktop and screen cast using PipeWire
Support for Stream Control Transmission Protocol
Add support for Simple Direct Layer (media library)
Enable seccomp (secure computing mode) to perform system call filtering at runtime to increase security of programs
Add support for the Simple Network Management Protocol if available
Add support for SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)
Add support for tcp/ip sockets
Add support for the socks5 proxy
Enable sound support
Zip the sources and install them
Add support for Sound eXchange (SoX)
Add support for the speex audio codec (used for speech)
Add dictionary support
Enable support for ISO/IEC 23008-12:2017 HEIF/HEIC image format
!!internal use only!! Security Enhanced Linux support, this must be set by the selinux profile or breakage will occur
Cross-KDE support for semantic search and information retrieval
Add persistent session support
Enable S/Key (Single use password) authentication support
Add support for the slang text display library (it's like ncurses, but different)
Enable smartcard support
Enable support for multiprocessors or multicore systems
Enable support for Snappy compression (as implemented in app-arch/snappy)
Add support for libsndfile
Enable behavior to support maintaining /bin, /lib*, /sbin and /usr/sbin separately from /usr/bin and /usr/lib*
Add support for sqliteembedded sql database
Add support for SSL/TLS connections (Secure Socket Layer / Transport Layer Security)
Enable application startup event feedback mechanism
!!do not set this during bootstrap!! Causes binaries to be statically linked instead of dynamically
Build static versions of dynamic libraries as well
Enable subversion (version control system) support
Enable setuid root program(s)
Add support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)
Add support for SVGAlib (graphics library)
Force kernel ebuilds to automatically update the /usr/src/linux symlink
Use the szip compression library
Enable tagging support with taglib
Add support the Tcl language
Use the dev-util/google-perftools libraries to replace the malloc() implementation with a possibly faster one
Add support for TCP wrappers
Enable support for syslog
Enable use of systemd-specific libraries and features like socket activation or session tracking
Enable virtual/udev integration (device discovery, power and storage device support, etc)
Enable storage management support (automounting, volume monitoring, etc)
Send anonymized usage information to upstream so they can better understand our users
Enable dependencies and/or preparations necessary to run tests (usually controlled by FEATURES=test but can be toggled independently)
Enable important test dependencies that require Rust toolchain
Add support for the Theora Video Compression Codec
Add threads support for various packages. Usually pthreads
Add support for HTML Tidy
Add support for the TIFF image format
Build with Timidity++ (MIDI sequencer) support
Add support for Tk GUI toolkit
Add support for FreeType and/or FreeType2 fonts
Add support for the WebP image format
Enable wireless network functions
Add support for the Windows Metafile vector image format
Add support for wxWidgets/wxGTK GUI toolkit
Enable h264 encoding using x264
Add support for extended attributes (filesystem-stored metadata)
Support the X C-language Binding, a replacement for Xlib
Enable support for the Xorg composite extension
Add support for XEmacs
Add xface support used to allow a small image of xface format to be included in an email via the header 'X-Face'
Build with support for XFT font renderer (x11-libs/libXft)
Add support for the XINE movie libraries
Add support for Unicode
Add support for installing web-based applications into a virtual-hosting environment
Install optional video files (used in some games)
Pulls in related vim syntax scripts
Enable VNC (remote desktop viewer) support
Add support for the OggVorbis audio codec
Add support for wavpack audio compression tools
Enable dev-libs/wayland backend
Add support for the WebKit HTML rendering/layout engine
Support for xml-rpc library
Enable support for Extensible Metadata Platform (Adobe XMP)
Enable support for Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) formerly known as Jabber
Sends display using the X On Screen Display library
Add support for XPM graphics format
Add support for XScreenSaver extension
Add in optional support for the Xvideo extension (an X API for video playback)
Add support for xvid.org's open-source mpeg-4 codec
Support for DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD)
Enable support for ZIP archives
Add support for zlib (de)compression
Enable zsh completion support
Enable support for ZSTD compression
Add support for querying multi-monitor screen geometry through the Xinerama API
Add support for the xinetd super-server
Add support for XML files
Add support for the mhash library
Add support for GObject based introspection
Add support for iODBC library
Enable support for Internationalized Domain Names
Enable FireWire/iLink IEEE1394 support (dv, camera, ...)
Enable optional support for the ImageMagick or GraphicsMagick image converter
Add support for IMAP (Internet Mail Application Protocol)
Add support for imlib, an image loading and rendering library
Enable support for Apple's iDevice with iOS operating system (iPad, iPhone, iPod, etc)
Enable support for iPod device access
Add support for IP version 6
Add support for the JACK Audio Connection Kit
Add support for Java
Enable javascript support
Enable Infiniband RDMA transport support
Enable inotify filesystem monitoring support
Enable jbig-kit support for tiff, Hylafax, ImageMagick, etc
Use dev-libs/jemalloc for memory management
Enable just-in-time compilation for improved performance. May prevent use of some PaX memory protection features in Gentoo Hardened.
Add support for joysticks in all packages
Add JPEG image support
Support for JPEG 2000, a wavelet-based image compression format
Add kerberos support
Add support for call stack unwinding and function name resolution
Enable UPnP port mapping support
Enable UPnP audio/video streaming support
Enable power management support
Add USB support to applications that have optional USB support (e.g. cups)
Enable support for video4linux (using linux-headers or userspace libv4l libraries)
Enable Video Acceleration API for hardware decoding
Enable bindings for dev-lang/vala
Do not add extra patches which change default behaviour; DO NOT USE THIS ON A GLOBAL SCALE as the severity of the meaning changes drastically
Video CD support
Enable the Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix acceleration interface
Verify upstream signatures on distfiles