The ImageMagick homepage http://www.imagemagick.org/www/Install-unix.html says that ImageMagick uses a color depth of 8 as default (it is called "quantum depth" here). Using the ebuild, one gets a 16 bit depth installation, which is overkill for all but a few users. The difference is not academic; a 16 bit installation consumes 4x of RAM compared to a 8 bit installation, and can result in system crashes if working with big images (this is what happens to me). If I'm not missing something I would suggest to change the ebuild to use the option "--with-quantum-depth=8" to force a 8 bit installation. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3. Portage 2.0.49-r15 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.3.1, glibc-2.3.2-r1, 2.4.20-gentoo-r7) ================================================================= System uname: 2.4.20-gentoo-r7 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2500+ Gentoo Base System version 1.4.3.10p1 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -fPIC" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /var/qmail/control /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/ share/config /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /opt/tomcat/conf /usr/kde/3.2/share/ config /usr/kde/3.1/share/config /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/ /usr/ share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -fPIC" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="sandbox ccache autoaddcvs" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/ Linux/distributions/gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="" SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="oss apm encode foomaticdb libg++ mad mikmod ncurses nls quicktime spell xv gtkhtml gdbm berkdb slang readline tetex bonobo svga tcltk guile sdl gpm tcpd pam libwww ssl perl esd imlib motif opengl cdr scanner acpi alsa arts avi crypt cups dga doc emacs ethereal gif -gnome gphoto2 -gtk java jpeg kde mmx mpeg oggvorbis pdflib png python qt ruby sip tiff truetype usb X xml xml2 xmms zlib x86"
After a fresh gentoo install (and an upgrade to kernel-2.6) I dont get crashes any more. I assume that the memory management of 2.6 was enhanced so the system is more robust under heavy memory load. Since 16-bit-depth is not a problem for me any more, I dont insist on reducing the channel depth to 8. So the bug can be closed if I was the only one with these problems. * media-gfx/imagemagick Latest version available: 5.5.7.15 Latest version installed: 5.5.7.15 * dev-ruby/rmagick Latest version available: 1.3.2 Latest version installed: 1.3.2 * uname -r 2.6.1-gentoo
After system rebuild (kernel-2.6) no problems any more.