emerge -pv --depclean wants to remove x11-base/xorg-server and many other packages. I guess the problem are dependencies missing somewhere, at least for Xserver packages; in fact if I run (for example) emerge -p --emptytree konqueror x11-base/xorg-server is not listed to be emerged, while , I suppose, it should be there. # emerge --info Portage 2.2_rc55 (default/linux/amd64/10.0/desktop, gcc-4.4.2, glibc-2.11-r1, 2.6.31-gentoo-r6 x86_64) ================================================================= System uname: Linux-2.6.31-gentoo-r6-x86_64-Intel-R-_Core-TM-2_Duo_CPU_T7300_@_2.00GHz-with-gentoo-2.0.1 Timestamp of tree: Sun, 06 Dec 2009 01:45:01 +0000 ccache version 2.4 [disabled] app-shells/bash: 4.0_p35 dev-java/java-config: 2.1.9-r2 dev-lang/python: 2.5.4-r3, 2.6.4, 3.1.1-r1 dev-util/ccache: 2.4-r8 dev-util/cmake: 2.8.0 sys-apps/baselayout: 2.0.1 sys-apps/openrc: 0.5.3 sys-apps/sandbox: 2.2 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.64 sys-devel/automake: 1.5, 1.7.9-r1, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10.2, 1.11 sys-devel/binutils: 2.20 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1 sys-devel/libtool: 2.2.6b virtual/os-headers: 2.6.30-r1 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64 ~amd64" ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA" CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=core2 -O2 -pipe" CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/X11/xkb /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/php/apache2-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cgi-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cli-php5/ext-active/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/language.dat.d /etc/texmf/language.def.d /etc/texmf/updmap.d /etc/texmf/web2c /etc/udev/rules.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=core2 -O2 -pipe" DISTDIR="/mnt/portage/distfiles" EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--keep-going" FEATURES="assume-digests collision-protect distlocks fixpackages metadata-transfer news parallel-fetch preserve-libs protect-owned sandbox sfperms splitdebug strict unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch userpriv usersandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/gentoo/" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1,--as-needed" LINGUAS="en it" MAKEOPTS="-j3" PKGDIR="/mnt/portage/packages" PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/mnt/portage/overlays" SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X a52 aac acl acpi alsa amd64 bash-completion berkdb bluetooth branding bzip2 cairo cdr cli consolekit cracklib crypt cups cxx dbus dri dts dv dvb dvd dvdr eds emboss encode fam ffmpeg firefox flac fortran gdbm gif gpm gstreamer hal htmlhandbook iconv ipv6 jpeg kde kdehiddenvisibility ldap libnotify mad mikmod mmx mng modules mp3 mp4 mpeg mudflap multilib ncurses nls nptl nptlonly ogg opengl openmp pam pcre pdf perl png ppds pppd python qt3support qt4 quicktime readline reflection samba sdl session spell spl sqlite3 sse sse2 ssl startup-notification svg sysfs tcpd theora thunar tiff truetype unicode usb vorbis x264 xcb xcomposite xml xorg xv xvid zlib zsh-completion" ALSA_CARDS="hda-intel usb-audio" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" CAMERAS="ptp2 directory" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="evdev keyboard mouse synaptics" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LINGUAS="en it" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby18" SANE_BACKENDS="epson2 dll net" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="intel" Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS
This is entirely normal since it's possible for most X apps to use a remote X server instead of a local one, and therefore a local X server is not necessarily required. Since you clearly want to keep xorg-server, you should add it to your world file like this: emerge --noreplace xorg-server
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 287416 ***
