An In-Depth Look at Gentoo Linux
- Introduction / Installation
- Portage - Package Management on Steroids
- Available Software, Working with Gentoo and Final Thoughts
Imagine an Operating System that only includes the features that you actually want and use. An Operating System that is finely tuned to your computer hardware. One that doesn't include any resource hogging applications that you don't need such as "Desktop Search" or huge bloated software such as modern music players. A System that doesn't need to be re-installed or upgraded every 6-9 months like most Operating Systems. Well, if you are partial to Linux, Gentoo Linux is such an Operating System.
Gentoo Linux is what is referred to as a "Source Based Distribution". What this means is that you build all of the software that you will use directly from the "Source Code" - Source Code is what developers create and modify, mostly comprised of text files, however, computers don't understand Source Code. In order for a program to be usable on a computer, the source code needs to be compiled into Binaries (the "language" computers understand).
Since Gentoo Linux is built from source code, it is a highly configurable distribution. For instance, instead of building the source code to a generic 32 or 64 bit processor, you can tell the compiler to build the code specifically to your exact processor. This alone can give you a noticeable performance increase. As well as optimizing the binaries for your computer (cpu architecture), you can also optimize the software for the features that you want your software to have (and ignore the features you don't want to have).
Gentoo Linux has been around for over 10 years now, the peak of Gentoo's User Base was probably between 2002 and 2004 (when source based distros first hit the scene). In 2004, the original creator, Daniel Robbins, announced he was leaving the project and setup the non-profit Gentoo Foundation to take ownership of all of Gentoo's copyrights and trademarks. We believe this started a user base shift away from Gentoo. In 2007, a slight controversy, when the State of New Mexico revoked the Gentoo Foundation's Charter (it is now restored), didn't seem to help matters.
In more recent history, the Gentoo Developers decided to move away from "release versions", such as 2008.0, and simply start providing weekly automated builds to allow people to install Gentoo Linux. To us, this was a smart move. Historically when Gentoo's Major Versions were being readied for release. The Developers would "freeze" the Portage Tree to get a stable release ready. Unfortunately quickly after the release, the Portage Tree would quickly fill with updated software, which made it somewhat troublesome for new installations to get everything compiled correctly (You didn't dare update the Portage Tree until after a few weeks after the major release to ensure all the bugs from the onslaught of new packages were sorted out).
Gentoo Linux's Live DVD 10.1 GNOME and KDE Desktops
For the 10th Anniversary of Gentoo's existence, the Gentoo Developers released a "LiveDVD" which allows you to try out a Gentoo Linux System by booting from the Disk. This is a good starting point for those that may want to try out Gentoo without going through the long process of installing Gentoo on their machines. While testing the LiveDVD we did find a few issues that you may want to be aware of if you are testing it. In order to get USB Drives to work, you must first run the commmand "sudo mkdir /media" within a terminal. Also, note that the LiveDVD isn't as cleaned up as an installation would be (menus contain software from all Desktop Environments, etc.) and that running Gentoo from a Hard Drive is much, much faster than the LiveDVD.
Installing Gentoo Linux
Although the Gentoo Developers provide some of the best Installation Documentation around, the Gentoo Installation Routine is not for the faint of heart. It is an extremely hands on installation routine, which at the end of the installation, will leave you with a very minimal Linux System that will boot on your computer. This means no X Server, no Desktop Environment, just a very basic Linux System.
This doesn't mean that you are on your own trying to figure out what to install onto your Gentoo Linux System. The Gentoo Linux Developers and Maintainers provide quite a bit of additional documentation to help you transform the standard installation into a full blown Linux Desktop Operating System. For instance: The X Server Configuration HOWTO, The Gentoo KDE Guide and The GNOME Configuration HOWTO.
It is important to note that building everything from source code can take a long time, especially if you do not have a very fast computer. For instance, building OpenOffice.org from source code (probably the largest program you will build) can take a day on some systems, although it can be compiled within a few hours on most modern processors. Fortunately, with Gentoo's Package Management System, just about everything will build cleanly the first time (including any and all dependecies).
Additionally, when (not if) you run into problems, the Gentoo Forums provide a good source of information where you will probably find the answers to the questions you may have and if not, you can post your own questions and someone will probably answer. If you need more immediate help, the Gentoo IRC Channels usually has someone on them that will try to help you out.
A Note on Linux: Linux is actually only the kernel of a complete system. Many contributors like to call a complete Linux system a GNU/Linux system. The GNU stands for GNU's Not Unix (a recursive acronym) and is the system first started by Richard Stallman, then later developed with the coordination of the Free Software Foundation. The idea of GNU/Linux is to get the point of freedom across when you discuss the operating system. We have decided that our site will use the generic name Linux to signify the whole system, but please, keep software freedom in mind when reading our Linux articles.
