For those like me who don't like the significant changes that came with KDE 4, here are instructions for keeping KDE 3.5.10.¹⁾

The following is excerpted from here and is summarised here to be more concise and in case that web site goes away.

• Put “git” in the USE flags of /etc/make.conf
• Install layman

emerge -va layman
layman -f
layman -a kde-sunset

• Edit /etc/make.conf and insert a line to source the layman configuration.

source /var/lib/layman/make.conf

• Create a /etc/portage/package.unmask directory if it does not already exist.
• Link the KDE 3.5 file from Layman into this directory. This has the benefit of keeping this file updated whenever you update layman's snapshot of KDE (see below).

ln -s /var/lib/layman/kde-sunset/Documentation/package.unmask/kde-3.5 \
  /etc/portage/package.unmask/

• If you already have KDE installed and, therefore, have entries for it in /var/lib/portage/world you need to edit those entries to have a suffix of “:3.5” to avoid pulling in version 4, e.g., “kde-base/kde-meta” needs to become “kde-base/kde-meta:3.5”.

If you have a machine that has never had KDE installed before, then I suggest the verbose, ask, and update flags:

emerge -vau kde-meta

For a machine that already has KDE installed you should probably add the flags to do a “deep” scan and to consider any new USE flags in your /etc/make.conf file since it was last installed or updated:

emerge -vauDN kde-meta

To update your Layman data from time to time:

layman -s kde-sunset

See the KDE 3.5 Troubleshooting section.

Gentoo KDE-Sunset GIT overlays

Write to overlays@gentoo.org for write-access to assist in maintaining the KDE-Sunset overlay.