At least under user mode linux this program is not really a 'must be', but is it neccessary for the default system profile ? n22 / # emerge info Portage 2.0.54 (default-linux/x86/2006.0, gcc-3.4.5, glibc-2.3.5-r2, 2.6.15-gentoo-r1 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.15-gentoo-r1 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1700MHz Gentoo Base System version 1.6.14 dev-lang/python: 2.4.2 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.12 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r6 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.16.1 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.22 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium-m -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/env /usr/kde/3.4/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium-m -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/gentoo/ http://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/gentoo/ http://gentoo.inode.at/ http://ftp.club-internet.fr/pub/mirrors/gentoo" LINGUAS="de en" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 apache2 arts berkdb bitmap-fonts bzip2 crypt cups dri emboss encode expat fam foomaticdb fortran gdbm gif gstreamer gtk2 imlib ipv6 javascript jpeg libg++ libwww logrotate mad mhash mikmod mmx mmxext mp3 mpeg mysql ncurses nls nptl ogg opengl oss pam pdflib perl php png python quicktime readline spell sse sse2 ssl tcpd tiff udev userlocales vorbis xml xml2 xv zlib linguas_de linguas_en userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc" Unset: ASFLAGS, CTARGET, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY
Eh, it pretty much sucks if you can't enable DMA for system install, e.g.
yes, it's the default for all linux systems if you wish to have this changed, then you need to start a thread on the gentoo-dev mailing list