On Sun, 10 Dec 2017 07:54:59 -0500 John Covici wrote: > I am using ~amd64 and have done so for > years, so I don't think I need to maks off anything. Sorry, I may have gotten my wires crossed. The impression I got was you were trying to stick with perl 5.24 The point is *if* you're sticking with perl 5.24 ( which is current stable ) then by design, you need the set of virtuals that specify perl 5.24. If you try to use "~amd64" virtuals with an "amd64" perl, portage will try to install the newest versions of those virtuals, which in turn force installing perl 5.26 Hence, you need to use a paired combination of dev-lang/perl and virtuals. Just the mechanism by which we make this pairing happens is via stability levels. Hence, if you wanted to use Perl 5.24, you would need to do more than merely mask perl 5.26, you would need to mask the virtuals that tell portage to install perl 5.26 as well.