Gentoo Linux
Encyclopedia
Gentoo Linux (ˈ ) is a computer operating system
built on top of the Linux kernel
and based on the Portage
package management system
. It is distributed as free and open source software
. Unlike a conventional software distribution, the user compiles the source code locally according to their chosen configuration. Where source-code is available, portage normally supplies no precompiled binaries, continuing in the tradition of the ports collection
, although for convenience, some software packages (such as Mozilla Firefox
and LibreOffice
) are also available as precompiled binaries for various architectures
where compiling would otherwise be very time consuming. The development project and its products are named after the fastest-swimming penguin, the Gentoo
, to reflect the potential speed improvements of machine-specific optimization. Gentoo package management is designed to be modular
, portable
, easy to maintain, flexible, and optimized
for the user's machine. Gentoo describes itself as a meta
-distribution, "because of its near-unlimited adaptability", in that the majority of users have configurations and sets of installed programs which are unique to themselves.
as the Enoch Linux distribution. The goal was to create a distribution without precompiled binaries that was tuned to the hardware and only included required programs. At least one version of Enoch was distributed: version 0.75, in December 1999.
Compilation issues revealed problems with the GNU Compiler Collection
(GCC), used to build from source code. Daniel Robbins and the other contributors experimented with a fork of GCC known as EGCS developed by Cygnus Solutions
. At this point, Enoch changed name to Gentoo Linux (the Gentoo species
is the fastest swimming penguin). The modifications to EGCS eventually became part of the official GCC (version 2.95), and other Linux distributions experienced similar speed increases.
After problems with a bug on his own system, Robbins halted Gentoo Linux development and switched to FreeBSD
for several months, later saying "I decided to add several FreeBSD features to make our autobuild system (now called Portage) a true next-generation ports system."
Gentoo Linux 1.0 was released March 31, 2002. In 2004, Robbins set up the non-profit Gentoo Foundation, transferred all copyrights and trademarks to it, and stepped down as Chief Architect of the project.
The current Board of Trustees is composed of five members who were announced (following an election) on March 2, 2008. There is also a seven-member Gentoo Council that oversees the technical issues and policies of Gentoo. The Gentoo Council members are elected for a period of one year, each year by the active Gentoo developers. When a member of the Council retires, the successor is voted into place by the existing Council members.
The Gentoo Foundation is a 501(c)(6) non-profit foundation, registered in the State of New Mexico
. In late 2007, the Foundation's charter was revoked, but by May 2008 the State of New Mexico declared that the Gentoo Foundation, Inc. had returned to good standing and was free to do business.
, Gentoo has been ported to many others. Currently it is officially supported and considered stable on x86, x86-64
, IA-64
, PA-RISC
, PowerPC
, PowerPC 970
, SPARC
64-bit and DEC Alpha
architectures. It is also officially supported but considered in development state on MIPS
, PS3 Cell Processor
, System Z/s390, ARM
, and SuperH
. Official support for 32-bit SPARC hardware has been dropped.
Portability toward other operating systems, such as BSD-derived ones including Mac OS X
, is under active development by the Gentoo/Alt
project. The Gentoo/FreeBSD
project already has a working guide based on FreeSBIE
, while Gentoo/NetBSD, Gentoo/OpenBSD and Gentoo/DragonFly are being developed. There is also a project to get Portage working on OpenSolaris
. There was an unofficial project to create a Gentoo port to GNU Hurd
but it has been inactive since 2006.
. It is similar in idea to the BSD
ports collection
s: the original design was based on FreeBSD ports
. In contrast, the Portage tree does not contain directories of Makefiles, but of so-called ebuild
s, bash scripts that describe separate functions to download, configure, make, install and remove a package and additional functions that can be used to set up the operating environment for a package.
In contrast to other distributions, the Portage tree contains many packages which are considered non-free by the Free Software
movement, and these may be installed using the same mechanisms as other packages and without restriction. Users who feel strongly about this may control this behaviour in the portage configuration file, make.conf.
Portage's main utility is emerge, which is written in Python
and can be used by privileged users to inspect and alter the set of installed packages on a Gentoo operating system. Whereas emerge used to operate in a similar way to other ports collections, by entering a directory in the tree and using emerge (instead of make) to perform package management operations, it now reads variables from the file /etc/make.conf (again similar to ports) to determine where the Portage tree is kept.
Alternative package management utilities like Paludis and pkgcore have seen heavy development. Both are intended to be used alongside or instead of the official Portage utilities in both development and practical use. As both competing projects intend to replace the official utilities, an effort has been raised to standardise the application programming interface
(API) of ebuilds for all package managers, in a project called the Package Manager Specification or PMS.
system is another important feature. It is similar to the System V init system that most Linux distributions use, but uses dependency-based scripts and named run levels
rather than numbered ones. It also includes a command called rc-update which manages runlevels.
Gentoo startup scripts use the runscript shell interpreter, rather than a more traditional shell.
Originally Gentoo's rc system was written entirely in bash and was part of the baselayout package, which contains the basic filesystem layout and critical files needed for the system. However, this led to several limitations. For example, certain system calls needed to be accessed during boot which required C-based callouts to be added. These callouts were each statically linked, causing the rc system to bloat over time. Additionally, as Gentoo expanded to other platforms such as Gentoo/FreeBSD
and Gentoo Embedded, requiring the relatively heavy bash shell for the rc system became undesirable or sometimes impossible.
This led to a development of baselayout 2, which was written in C and only required a POSIX-compliant shell. During this development, it was decided that it was a better fit if baselayout provided only the base files and filesystem layout for Gentoo, and the rc system was broken off into an independent project – OpenRC.
(see below for more explanation on stages). As with many Linux distributions, Gentoo may be installed from almost any Linux environment, such as another Linux distributions' LiveCD, LiveUSB or Network Booting using the Gentoo Alternate Install Guide. A normal install requires a connection to the internet, but there is also a guide for a network-less install.
Previously, Gentoo supported installation from stage 1 and 2 tarballs. However, this no longer recommended officially by the Gentoo foundation, and is meant only for Gentoo developers.
Following the initial install steps, the Gentoo Linux install process requires that all users compile their own Linux kernel. This process is generally not required by more simplified Linux distributions. Although this is widely regarded as a complex task, Gentoo provides documentation and tools such as Genkernel
to simplify the process and make it straightforward for novice users. Support for installation is provided on the Gentoo forum and on irc.
, a slight variant of Gentoo Linux, which is developed and maintained by Daniel Robbins. However, Metro has not yet been integrated into the Gentoo release process.
As of November 2005, only stage3 installations are officially supported. Tarball
s for stage1 and stage2 were distributed for some time after this, although the instructions for installing from these stages had been removed from the handbook and moved into the Gentoo FAQ. Only the supported stage3 tarballs are currently available.
, X Window System
, OpenOffice
, GNOME
, and Mozilla
. Once the installation was complete, the packages installed as part of the GRP were intended to be replaced by the user with the same or newer versions built though portage
which would be built using the users' system configuration rather than the generic builds provided by the GRP. As of 2011, the GRP is discontinued, the final reference to it appearing in the 2008.0 handbook.
"; that is, once an emerge update is done, the system is at the latest version, with the most up-to-date packages available (subject to restrictions that a user may have specified in their Portage configuration files). For example, if a system is installed using a stage3 from March 2011, and the user performs a full emerge update one month later, they will upgrade the installed Gentoo system to the same as they would have if they had performed a fresh installation from an April 2011 CD. Thus, Gentoo users may upgrade to the latest version of all of their installed software the day that new versions are released and have an ebuild
available. Like other linux distributions, Gentoo systems have an
In 2004, Gentoo began to version its Live media by year rather than numerically. This continued until 2008, when it was announced that the 2008.1 LiveCD release had been cancelled in favour of weekly automated builds of both Stages 3 and Minimal CDs. On 20 December 2008, the first weekly builds were published. In 2009, a special LiveDVD was created to celebrate the Gentoo 10-year anniversary.
Generally, Gentoo users accept long compile times as the cost of being able to apply their own compile-time options and enjoy the flexibility of portage
, but Gentoo developers have created a number of work-arounds to avoid slow package installation.
is the fastest-swimming of the penguin family. The name evokes an image of speed, while retaining the penguin as a generic mascot for Linux.
The official Gentoo logo is a stylized 'g' resembling a silver magatama
.
Unofficial mascots include Larry The Cow and Znurt the Flying Saucer.
Gentoo-derived distributions
Distributions using Gentoo's Portage system
Unofficial documentation and other
Articles and media coverage
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
built on top of the Linux kernel
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....
and based on the Portage
Portage (software)
Portage is a package management system used by Gentoo Linux, based on the concept of ports collections. Gentoo is sometimes referred to as a meta-distribution due to the extreme flexibility of Portage, which makes it operating-system-independent. The Gentoo/Alt project is concerned with using...
package management system
Package management system
In software, a package management system, also called package manager, is a collection of software tools to automate the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing software packages for a computer's operating system in a consistent manner...
. It is distributed as free and open source software
Free and open source software
Free and open-source software or free/libre/open-source software is software that is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
. Unlike a conventional software distribution, the user compiles the source code locally according to their chosen configuration. Where source-code is available, portage normally supplies no precompiled binaries, continuing in the tradition of the ports collection
Ports collection
Ports collections are the sets of makefiles and patches provided by the BSD-based operating systems, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, as a simple method of installing software or creating binary packages...
, although for convenience, some software packages (such as Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...
and LibreOffice
LibreOffice
LibreOffice is a free and open source office suite developed by The Document Foundation as a fork of OpenOffice.org. It is largely compatible with other major office suites, including Microsoft Office, and available on a variety of platforms...
) are also available as precompiled binaries for various architectures
Computer architecture
In computer science and engineering, computer architecture is the practical art of selecting and interconnecting hardware components to create computers that meet functional, performance and cost goals and the formal modelling of those systems....
where compiling would otherwise be very time consuming. The development project and its products are named after the fastest-swimming penguin, the Gentoo
Gentoo penguin
The Gentoo Penguin , Pygoscelis papua, is easily recognized by the wide white stripe extending like a bonnet across the top of its head and its bright orange-red bill. The gentoo penguin has pale whitish-pink webbed feet and a fairly long tail - the most prominent tail of all penguins. Chicks have...
, to reflect the potential speed improvements of machine-specific optimization. Gentoo package management is designed to be modular
Modularity (programming)
Modular programming is a software design technique that increases the extent to which software is composed of separate, interchangeable components called modules by breaking down program functions into modules, each of which accomplishes one function and contains everything necessary to accomplish...
, portable
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
, easy to maintain, flexible, and optimized
Optimization (computer science)
In computer science, program optimization or software optimization is the process of modifying a software system to make some aspect of it work more efficiently or use fewer resources...
for the user's machine. Gentoo describes itself as a meta
Meta
Meta- , is a prefix used in English to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter....
-distribution, "because of its near-unlimited adaptability", in that the majority of users have configurations and sets of installed programs which are unique to themselves.
History
Gentoo Linux was initially created by Daniel RobbinsDaniel Robbins
Daniel Robbins is a computer programmer and consultant best known as the founder and former chief architect of the Gentoo Linux project. In 2008, he launched the Funtoo project, a free GNU/Linux distribution based on Gentoo, and is the project's lead hacker and organizer...
as the Enoch Linux distribution. The goal was to create a distribution without precompiled binaries that was tuned to the hardware and only included required programs. At least one version of Enoch was distributed: version 0.75, in December 1999.
Compilation issues revealed problems with the GNU Compiler Collection
GNU Compiler Collection
The GNU Compiler Collection is a compiler system produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages. GCC is a key component of the GNU toolchain...
(GCC), used to build from source code. Daniel Robbins and the other contributors experimented with a fork of GCC known as EGCS developed by Cygnus Solutions
Cygnus Solutions
Cygnus Solutions, originally Cygnus Support, was founded in 1989 by John Gilmore, Michael Tiemann and David Henkel-Wallace to provide commercial support for free software...
. At this point, Enoch changed name to Gentoo Linux (the Gentoo species
Gentoo penguin
The Gentoo Penguin , Pygoscelis papua, is easily recognized by the wide white stripe extending like a bonnet across the top of its head and its bright orange-red bill. The gentoo penguin has pale whitish-pink webbed feet and a fairly long tail - the most prominent tail of all penguins. Chicks have...
is the fastest swimming penguin). The modifications to EGCS eventually became part of the official GCC (version 2.95), and other Linux distributions experienced similar speed increases.
After problems with a bug on his own system, Robbins halted Gentoo Linux development and switched to FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
for several months, later saying "I decided to add several FreeBSD features to make our autobuild system (now called Portage) a true next-generation ports system."
Gentoo Linux 1.0 was released March 31, 2002. In 2004, Robbins set up the non-profit Gentoo Foundation, transferred all copyrights and trademarks to it, and stepped down as Chief Architect of the project.
The current Board of Trustees is composed of five members who were announced (following an election) on March 2, 2008. There is also a seven-member Gentoo Council that oversees the technical issues and policies of Gentoo. The Gentoo Council members are elected for a period of one year, each year by the active Gentoo developers. When a member of the Council retires, the successor is voted into place by the existing Council members.
The Gentoo Foundation is a 501(c)(6) non-profit foundation, registered in the State of New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
. In late 2007, the Foundation's charter was revoked, but by May 2008 the State of New Mexico declared that the Gentoo Foundation, Inc. had returned to good standing and was free to do business.
Portability
Although originally built on the x86 architectureX86 architecture
The term x86 refers to a family of instruction set architectures based on the Intel 8086 CPU. The 8086 was launched in 1978 as a fully 16-bit extension of Intel's 8-bit based 8080 microprocessor and also introduced segmentation to overcome the 16-bit addressing barrier of such designs...
, Gentoo has been ported to many others. Currently it is officially supported and considered stable on x86, x86-64
X86-64
x86-64 is an extension of the x86 instruction set. It supports vastly larger virtual and physical address spaces than are possible on x86, thereby allowing programmers to conveniently work with much larger data sets. x86-64 also provides 64-bit general purpose registers and numerous other...
, IA-64
Itanium
Itanium is a family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture . Intel markets the processors for enterprise servers and high-performance computing systems...
, PA-RISC
PA-RISC family
PA-RISC is an instruction set architecture developed by Hewlett-Packard. As the name implies, it is a reduced instruction set computer architecture, where the PA stands for Precision Architecture...
, PowerPC
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
, PowerPC 970
PowerPC 970
The PowerPC 970, PowerPC 970FX, PowerPC 970GX, and PowerPC 970MP, are 64-bit Power Architecture processors from IBM introduced in 2002. When used in Apple Inc. machines, they were dubbed the PowerPC G5....
, SPARC
SPARC
SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....
64-bit and DEC Alpha
DEC Alpha
Alpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation , designed to replace the 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computer ISA and its implementations. Alpha was implemented in microprocessors...
architectures. It is also officially supported but considered in development state on MIPS
MIPS architecture
MIPS is a reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Technologies . The early MIPS architectures were 32-bit, and later versions were 64-bit...
, PS3 Cell Processor
Cell (microprocessor)
Cell is a microprocessor architecture jointly developed by Sony, Sony Computer Entertainment, Toshiba, and IBM, an alliance known as "STI". The architectural design and first implementation were carried out at the STI Design Center in Austin, Texas over a four-year period beginning March 2001 on a...
, System Z/s390, ARM
ARM architecture
ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...
, and SuperH
SuperH
SuperH is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by Hitachi. It is implemented by microcontrollers and microprocessors for embedded systems....
. Official support for 32-bit SPARC hardware has been dropped.
Portability toward other operating systems, such as BSD-derived ones including Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, is under active development by the Gentoo/Alt
Gentoo/Alt
Gentoo/Alt is a Gentoo Linux project created to manage porting the Portage framework and other features to other operating systems, such as Mac OS X and the free BSDs...
project. The Gentoo/FreeBSD
Gentoo/FreeBSD
Gentoo/FreeBSD is a Unix-like operating system developed by Gentoo Linux developers in order to bring Gentoo Linux design, structure, and tools such as Portage and the Gentoo Linux baselayout to the FreeBSD operating system...
project already has a working guide based on FreeSBIE
FreeSBIE
FreeSBIE is a live CD, an operating system that is able to load directly from a bootable CD with no installation process or hard disk. It is based on the FreeBSD operating system. Its name is a pun on frisbee. Currently, FreeSBIE uses Xfce and Fluxbox....
, while Gentoo/NetBSD, Gentoo/OpenBSD and Gentoo/DragonFly are being developed. There is also a project to get Portage working on OpenSolaris
OpenSolaris
OpenSolaris was an open source computer operating system based on Solaris created by Sun Microsystems. It was also the name of the project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around the software...
. There was an unofficial project to create a Gentoo port to GNU Hurd
GNU Hurd
GNU Hurd is a free software Unix-like replacement for the Unix kernel, released under the GNU General Public License. It has been under development since 1990 by the GNU Project of the Free Software Foundation...
but it has been inactive since 2006.
Portage
Portage is Gentoo's package management systemPackage management system
In software, a package management system, also called package manager, is a collection of software tools to automate the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing software packages for a computer's operating system in a consistent manner...
. It is similar in idea to the BSD
Berkeley Software Distribution
Berkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995...
ports collection
Ports collection
Ports collections are the sets of makefiles and patches provided by the BSD-based operating systems, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, as a simple method of installing software or creating binary packages...
s: the original design was based on FreeBSD ports
FreeBSD Ports
The FreeBSD Ports collection is a package management system for the FreeBSD operating system, providing an easy and consistent way of installing software packages. As of October 2011, there are over 22,700 ports available in the collection...
. In contrast, the Portage tree does not contain directories of Makefiles, but of so-called ebuild
Ebuild
An ebuild is a specialized bash script format created by the Gentoo Linux project for use in its Portage software management system, which automates compilation and installation procedures for software packages....
s, bash scripts that describe separate functions to download, configure, make, install and remove a package and additional functions that can be used to set up the operating environment for a package.
In contrast to other distributions, the Portage tree contains many packages which are considered non-free by the Free Software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
movement, and these may be installed using the same mechanisms as other packages and without restriction. Users who feel strongly about this may control this behaviour in the portage configuration file, make.conf.
Portage's main utility is emerge, which is written in Python
Python (programming language)
Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
and can be used by privileged users to inspect and alter the set of installed packages on a Gentoo operating system. Whereas emerge used to operate in a similar way to other ports collections, by entering a directory in the tree and using emerge (instead of make) to perform package management operations, it now reads variables from the file /etc/make.conf (again similar to ports) to determine where the Portage tree is kept.
Alternative package management utilities like Paludis and pkgcore have seen heavy development. Both are intended to be used alongside or instead of the official Portage utilities in both development and practical use. As both competing projects intend to replace the official utilities, an effort has been raised to standardise the application programming interface
Application programming interface
An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
(API) of ebuilds for all package managers, in a project called the Package Manager Specification or PMS.
Init system
Gentoo's initInit
init is a program for Unix-based computer operating systems that spawns all other processes. It runs as a daemon and typically has PID 1. The boot loader starts the kernel and the kernel starts init...
system is another important feature. It is similar to the System V init system that most Linux distributions use, but uses dependency-based scripts and named run levels
Runlevel
The term runlevel refers to a mode of operation in one of the computer operating systems that implement Unix System V-style initialization. Conventionally, seven runlevels exist, numbered from zero to six; though up to ten, from zero to nine, may be used. S is sometimes used as a synonym for one...
rather than numbered ones. It also includes a command called rc-update which manages runlevels.
Gentoo startup scripts use the runscript shell interpreter, rather than a more traditional shell.
Originally Gentoo's rc system was written entirely in bash and was part of the baselayout package, which contains the basic filesystem layout and critical files needed for the system. However, this led to several limitations. For example, certain system calls needed to be accessed during boot which required C-based callouts to be added. These callouts were each statically linked, causing the rc system to bloat over time. Additionally, as Gentoo expanded to other platforms such as Gentoo/FreeBSD
Gentoo/FreeBSD
Gentoo/FreeBSD is a Unix-like operating system developed by Gentoo Linux developers in order to bring Gentoo Linux design, structure, and tools such as Portage and the Gentoo Linux baselayout to the FreeBSD operating system...
and Gentoo Embedded, requiring the relatively heavy bash shell for the rc system became undesirable or sometimes impossible.
This led to a development of baselayout 2, which was written in C and only required a POSIX-compliant shell. During this development, it was decided that it was a better fit if baselayout provided only the base files and filesystem layout for Gentoo, and the rc system was broken off into an independent project – OpenRC.
Installation
Gentoo may be installed in several ways. The most common way is to use the Gentoo minimal CD with a stage 3 tarballTar (file format)
In computing, tar is both a file format and the name of a program used to handle such files...
(see below for more explanation on stages). As with many Linux distributions, Gentoo may be installed from almost any Linux environment, such as another Linux distributions' LiveCD, LiveUSB or Network Booting using the Gentoo Alternate Install Guide. A normal install requires a connection to the internet, but there is also a guide for a network-less install.
Previously, Gentoo supported installation from stage 1 and 2 tarballs. However, this no longer recommended officially by the Gentoo foundation, and is meant only for Gentoo developers.
Following the initial install steps, the Gentoo Linux install process requires that all users compile their own Linux kernel. This process is generally not required by more simplified Linux distributions. Although this is widely regarded as a complex task, Gentoo provides documentation and tools such as Genkernel
Genkernel
Genkernel is a tool for building a general-purpose modular Linux kernel for Gentoo Linux. Genkernel compiles the kernel with all available device drivers built as modules, then copies these to an init RAM disk that is passed to the kernel at boot time, providing automatic hardware detection...
to simplify the process and make it straightforward for novice users. Support for installation is provided on the Gentoo forum and on irc.
Catalyst
Starting with version 2004.0, Gentoo introduced a tool called Catalyst, which is used to build all Gentoo releases and can be used to build one's own customized install media. In the summer of 2008, Gentoo's founder Daniel Robbins released a new build tool called metro. Metro is used to build releases of funtooFuntoo
Funtoo is a a free operating system, more precisely a GNU/Linux distribution based on Gentoo, and initiated in 2008 by Daniel Robbins former Gentoo Linux project leader.- History :...
, a slight variant of Gentoo Linux, which is developed and maintained by Daniel Robbins. However, Metro has not yet been integrated into the Gentoo release process.
Stages
Traditionally installation could be started from one of three base stages:- Stage1: System must be bootstrapped and the base system must be compiled.
- Stage2: System has already been bootstrapped, but the base system must be compiled.
- Stage3: System has already been bootstrapped and the base system already compiled.
As of November 2005, only stage3 installations are officially supported. Tarball
Tarball
Tarball can refer to:* Tar , a computer file format that can combine multiple files into a single "tarball" file* Tarball , a blob of semi-solid oil found on or near the ocean...
s for stage1 and stage2 were distributed for some time after this, although the instructions for installing from these stages had been removed from the handbook and moved into the Gentoo FAQ. Only the supported stage3 tarballs are currently available.
Graphical installer
A graphical installer (the Gentoo Linux Installer project, or GLI) was released with 2006.0, but the project did not gain enough development support and is no longer supported as of 2008.0.Gentoo Reference Platform
From 2003 until 2008, the Gentoo Reference Platform (GRP) was a snapshot of prebuilt packages that users could quickly install during the Gentoo installation process, to give faster access to fully functional Gentoo installation. These packages included KDEKDE
KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...
, X Window System
X Window System
The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...
, OpenOffice
OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo or OpenOffice, is an open-source application suite whose main components are for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. OpenOffice is available for a number of different computer operating systems, is distributed as free software...
, GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
, and Mozilla
Mozilla
Mozilla is a term used in a number of ways in relation to the Mozilla.org project and the Mozilla Foundation, their defunct commercial predecessor Netscape Communications Corporation, and their related application software....
. Once the installation was complete, the packages installed as part of the GRP were intended to be replaced by the user with the same or newer versions built though portage
Portage (software)
Portage is a package management system used by Gentoo Linux, based on the concept of ports collections. Gentoo is sometimes referred to as a meta-distribution due to the extreme flexibility of Portage, which makes it operating-system-independent. The Gentoo/Alt project is concerned with using...
which would be built using the users' system configuration rather than the generic builds provided by the GRP. As of 2011, the GRP is discontinued, the final reference to it appearing in the 2008.0 handbook.
Versions
Once Gentoo is installed, it becomes effectively "versionlessRolling release
In software development, a rolling release development model refers to a continuously developing software system; this is opposed to a standard release development model which uses software versions that must be reinstalled over the previous version...
"; that is, once an emerge update is done, the system is at the latest version, with the most up-to-date packages available (subject to restrictions that a user may have specified in their Portage configuration files). For example, if a system is installed using a stage3 from March 2011, and the user performs a full emerge update one month later, they will upgrade the installed Gentoo system to the same as they would have if they had performed a fresh installation from an April 2011 CD. Thus, Gentoo users may upgrade to the latest version of all of their installed software the day that new versions are released and have an ebuild
Portage (software)
Portage is a package management system used by Gentoo Linux, based on the concept of ports collections. Gentoo is sometimes referred to as a meta-distribution due to the extreme flexibility of Portage, which makes it operating-system-independent. The Gentoo/Alt project is concerned with using...
available. Like other linux distributions, Gentoo systems have an
/etc/gentoo-release file, but this contains the version of the installed sys-apps/baselayout package.In 2004, Gentoo began to version its Live media by year rather than numerically. This continued until 2008, when it was announced that the 2008.1 LiveCD release had been cancelled in favour of weekly automated builds of both Stages 3 and Minimal CDs. On 20 December 2008, the first weekly builds were published. In 2009, a special LiveDVD was created to celebrate the Gentoo 10-year anniversary.
Release-media version history
- (Enoch Linux) 0.75, December 1999
- 1.0, March 31, 2002
- 1.1a, April 8, 2002
- 1.2, June 10, 2002
- 1.4 August 5, 2003 (Gentoo Reference Platform introduced)
- 1.4 maintenance release 1 September 11, 2003
- 2004.0 March 1, 2004 (versioning changed to four releases a year)
- 2004.1 April 28, 2004
- 2004.2 July 26, 2004
- 2004.3 November 15, 2004
- 2005.0 March 27, 2005 (versioning changed to semi-annual releases)
- 2005.1 August 8, 2005
- 2005.1-r1 November 21, 2005 (maintenance release 1)
- 2006.0 February 27, 2006
- 2006.1 August 30, 2006
- 2007.0 May 7, 2007
- 2008.0 July 6, 2008
- Weekly Releases from September 22, 2008
Special releases
In 2009, a special LiveDVD was released to celebrate Gentoo's 10-year anniversary. Initially planned as a once-off, the LiveDVD was updated to the latest package versions in 2011 due to its popularity among new users.- 10.0 October 4, 2009 (special edition LiveDVD for the 10th anniversary)
- 10.1 October 10, 2009 (Bugfix release of Special LiveDVD)
- 11.0 March 8, 2011 (Anniversary LiveDVD is updated to latest package versions)
Drawbacks and criticisms
Compiling packages from source takes considerably more time than installing pre-built binaries. In some cases (depending on the size of the source code to be compiled and hardware) compilation of large programs can take hours and may also require a few gigabytes of temporary disk space in which to build.Generally, Gentoo users accept long compile times as the cost of being able to apply their own compile-time options and enjoy the flexibility of portage
Portage (software)
Portage is a package management system used by Gentoo Linux, based on the concept of ports collections. Gentoo is sometimes referred to as a meta-distribution due to the extreme flexibility of Portage, which makes it operating-system-independent. The Gentoo/Alt project is concerned with using...
, but Gentoo developers have created a number of work-arounds to avoid slow package installation.
- Pre-compiled binaries are provided for some applications with long build times, such as OpenOffice.orgOpenOffice.orgOpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo or OpenOffice, is an open-source application suite whose main components are for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. OpenOffice is available for a number of different computer operating systems, is distributed as free software...
and Mozilla FirefoxMozilla FirefoxMozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...
, provided by upstream maintainers. By using these binaries, installation time is equivalent to other linux distributions, but users lose the ability to customize optional features. - The standard installation process gives users configuration options to reduce compilation times, such as enabling parallel compilation and using pipes instead of temporary files.
- Other optional features of the Portage system include distributed compiling and using a compiler cache. In addition, the user may be able to mount a large filesystem in RAM to greatly speed up the process of building packages. Some of these approaches have drawbacks, and so are not enabled by default.
- When installing the same package on multiple computers, the package may be compiled once and a binary package created for quick installation on the other computers, assuming sufficiently similar hardware.
Logo and mascots
A Gentoo PenguinGentoo penguin
The Gentoo Penguin , Pygoscelis papua, is easily recognized by the wide white stripe extending like a bonnet across the top of its head and its bright orange-red bill. The gentoo penguin has pale whitish-pink webbed feet and a fairly long tail - the most prominent tail of all penguins. Chicks have...
is the fastest-swimming of the penguin family. The name evokes an image of speed, while retaining the penguin as a generic mascot for Linux.
The official Gentoo logo is a stylized 'g' resembling a silver magatama
Magatama
Magatama , are curved beads which first appeared in Japan during the Jōmon period.They are often found inhumed in mounded tumulus graves as offerings to deities . They continued to be popular with the ruling elites throughout the Kofun Period of Japan, and are often romanticised as indicative of...
.
Unofficial mascots include Larry The Cow and Znurt the Flying Saucer.
See also
- Gentoo/AltGentoo/AltGentoo/Alt is a Gentoo Linux project created to manage porting the Portage framework and other features to other operating systems, such as Mac OS X and the free BSDs...
- GoboLinuxGoboLinuxGoboLinux is a free and open source operating system whose most prominent feature is a reorganization of the traditional Linux file system. Rather than following the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard like most Unix-like systems, each program in a GoboLinux system has its own subdirectory tree, where...
Gentoo-derived distributions
- Calculate LinuxCalculate LinuxCalculate Linux is an optimized distribution designed for rapid deployment in a corporate environment. It is based on the Gentoo project and includes numerous pre-configured functions....
- Exherbo
- FuntooFuntooFuntoo is a a free operating system, more precisely a GNU/Linux distribution based on Gentoo, and initiated in 2008 by Daniel Robbins former Gentoo Linux project leader.- History :...
- Gentoox
- iloog
- KnopperdiskKnopperdiskKnopperdisk is an operating system specifically designed for a USB pen drive and floppy disks. Knopperdisk is a fairly minimal, text system that can be used as a rescue disk, although the USB pen drive version has a few more software packages installed which are used for different purposes.Despite...
- PentooPentooPentoo is a Live CD and Live USB designed for penetration testing and security assessment. Based on Gentoo Linux, Pentoo is provided both as 32 and 64 bit livecd. It features packet injection patched wifi drivers, GPGPU cracking software, and lots of tools for penetration testing and security...
- Sabayon Linux
- SystemRescueCDSystemRescueCDSystemRescueCd is an operating system for the x86 computer platform, though the primary purpose of SystemRescueCD is to repair unbootable or otherwise damaged computer systems after a system crash. SystemRescueCD is not intended to be used as a permanent operating system. It runs from a Live CD or...
- Tin Hat LinuxTin Hat LinuxTin Hat is a Linux distribution derived from Hardened Gentoo Linux. It aims to provide a very secure, stable, and fast desktop environment that lives purely in RAM. Tin Hat boots from CD, or optionally from USB flash drive, but it is not a LiveCD in that it does not mount any file system from the...
- VidaLinuxVidaLinuxVidaLinux is an operating system based on Gentoo Linux. Because Gentoo is notorious for its arduous installation process, VidaLinux uses the Red Hat Anaconda installer to make it easier for end users to install it. Its default desktop environment is GNOME. The purpose of VLOS is to make the Linux...
Distributions using Gentoo's Portage system
- Google Chrome OSGoogle Chrome OSGoogle Chrome OS is a Linux-based operating system designed by Google to work exclusively with web applications. Google announced the operating system on July 7, 2009 and made it an open source project, called Chromium OS, that November....
and Chromium OSChromium OSChromium OS is the open source development version of Google Chrome OS.Chrome OS's source code was released on November 19, 2009 under the same BSD license as Chromium OS.-User interface:... - UtutoUtutoUtuto GNU/Linux is a GNU/Linux operating system consisting entirely of free software. The name makes reference to a gecko known by this name from northern Argentina. It is compiled using Gentoo Linux "ebuilds" and "emerge" software. All documentation is in Spanish.Ututo was the first fully free...
External links
- Official website
- Official wiki, collaboration of developers and users
Unofficial documentation and other
- gentoo-wiki.com, user-supplied documentation
- Gentoo-Portage, alternate presentation of current ebuild information
- Planet Larry, another aggregation of user blogs
- Secunia advisories for Gentoo
Articles and media coverage
- Growing With Gentoo, O'Reilly Linux Dev Center, 2004-03-15