Please first read the official Gentoo wiki page on Nouveau.

Stable ebuilds:

Nouveau is now available from the stable branch of the portage tree. Enable DRM_NOUVEAU in your kernel and set VIDEO_CARDS="nouveau" in /etc/make.conf. For detailed instructions, see http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/xorg-config.xml

Development ebuilds:

Previously, the nouveau ebuilds where in the nouveau overlay, which is now unmaintained. Use the x11 overlay instead, which is also available via layman

Recommended ebuilds:

  • x11-base/nouveau-drm (from git)
  • x11-drivers/xf86-video-nouveau (from git)
  • x11-libs/libdrm (from git) The x11 overlay also has a mesa git ebuild, which contains the gallium based nouveau 3d driver.