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Gentoo Linux
Gentoo logo

The default desktop as provided by Gentoo Linux LiveCD, release 2007. 0
Website www.gentoo.org
Company/
developer		 Gentoo Foundation
OS family Linux
Source model Open source, Free Software
Latest stable release 2007. A website (alternatively web site or Web site, a back-construction from the Proper noun World Wide Web) is a collection of Web pages The software industry comprises businesses involved in the development, maintenance and publication of Computer software. A software developer is a person or organization concerned with facets of the software development process wider than design and coding a somewhat broader scope of Linux (commonly pronounced ˈlɪnəks Open source is a development methodology which offers practical accessibility to a product's source (goods and knowledge Free software or software libre is Software that can be used studied and modified without restriction and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified 0 / May 7, 2007 (2007-05-07); 400 days ago
Update method Emerge
Package manager Portage
Supported platforms x86, x86-64, IA-64, PA-RISC; PowerPC 32/64, SPARC, DEC Alpha, ARM, MIPS, S390, sh
Kernel type Monolithic kernel, Linux
Default user interface Command line interface, X Window System
License Various
Working state Current

The Gentoo Linux operating system (pronounced /ˈdʒɛntuː/) is a Linux distribution based on the Portage package management system. Events 558 - In Constantinople, the dome of the Hagia Sophia collapses Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Portage is a Package management system used by Gentoo Linux. Gentoo is sometimes referred to as a " Meta-distribution " due to the flexibility Portage is a Package management system used by Gentoo Linux. Gentoo is sometimes referred to as a " Meta-distribution " due to the flexibility See also X86 assembly language The generic term x86 refers to the most commercially successful Instruction set architecture in the history of Personal x86-64 is a Superset of the x86 instruction set architecture. Itanium is the brand name for 64-bit Intel Microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64) PA-RISC is a Microprocessor architecture developed by Hewlett-Packard 's Systems & VLSI Technology Operation. PowerPC is a RISC Instruction set architecture created by the 1991 Apple – IBM – Motorola alliance known as AIM SPARC (from Scalable Processor Architecture is a RISC Microprocessor Instruction set architecture originally Alpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, was a 64-bit Reduced instruction set computer (RISC Instruction set architecture (ISA developed The ARM architecture (previously the Advanced RISC Machine, and prior to that Acorn RISC Machine) is a 32-bit RISC processor architecture MIPS (originally an acronym for Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages) is a RISC microprocessor architecture developed by MIPS Technologies IBM System z, or earlier IBM eServer zSeries, is a brand name designated by IBM to all its Mainframe computers In 2000 IBM rebranded the existing The SuperH (or SH) is brandname of a certain Microcontroller and Microprocessor architecture In Computer science, the kernel is the central component of most computer Operating systems (OS A monolithic kernel is a kernel architecture where the entire kernel is run in Kernel space in Supervisor mode. Linux is an operating system kernel used by a family of Unix-like Operating systems These are popularly termed Linux operating systems and The user interface (or Human Computer Interface) is the aggregate of means by which people&mdash the users '&mdash interact with the System A software license (or software licence in commonwealth usage is a Legal instrument governing the usage or redistribution of copyright protected software An operating system (commonly abbreviated OS and O/S) is the software component of a Computer system that is responsible for the management and coordination A Linux distribution (also called GNU/Linux by distributions such as Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Mandriva and Portage is a Package management system used by Gentoo Linux. Gentoo is sometimes referred to as a " Meta-distribution " due to the flexibility A package management system is a collection of tools to automate the process of installing upgrading configuring and removing software packages from a Computer The development project and its products are named after the Gentoo penguin. The Gentoo Penguin (ˈdʒɛntuː Pygoscelis papua, is easily recognized by the wide white stripe extending like a bonnet across the top of its head Gentoo package management is designed to be modular, portable, easy to maintain, flexible, and optimized for the user's machine. Modular programming is a software design technique that increases the extent to which software is composed from separate parts called modules See also Software portability In Computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created In Computing, optimization is the process of modifying a system to make some aspect of it work more efficiently or use fewer resources Packages are normally built from source code, continuing the tradition of the ports collection, although for convenience, some large software packages are also available as precompiled binaries for various architectures. In Computer science, source code (commonly just source or code) is any sequence of statements or declarations written in some Human-readable Ports collections (or ports trees, or just ports) are the sets of Makefiles and patches provided by the BSD -based Operating systems In Computer engineering, computer architecture is the conceptual design and fundamental operational structure of a Computer system

Contents

History

Gentoo was initially created by Daniel Robbins as the Enoch Linux distribution. Daniel Robbins is a software developer best known as the founder and former chief architect of the Gentoo Linux project The goal was to create a distribution that was built from source code, tuned to the hardware, only included required programs, and decreased maintainer workload through scripting. [1] At least one version of Enoch was distributed: version 0. 75, in December 1999. [2]

Compilation issues revealed problems with the GNU Compiler Collection (gcc), used to build from source code. The GNU Compiler Collection (usually shortened to GCC) is a set of Compilers produced for various Programming languages by the GNU Project Daniel Robbins and the other contributors experimented with "forked" versions of gcc, finding a version that gave a 10% to 200% speed increase over the "official" gcc. The GNU Compiler Collection (usually shortened to GCC) is a set of Compilers produced for various Programming languages by the GNU Project At this point, Enoch gained a reputation for its speed, prompting the name change to Gentoo Linux (the Gentoo species is the fastest swimming penguin). The Gentoo Penguin (ˈdʒɛntuː Pygoscelis papua, is easily recognized by the wide white stripe extending like a bonnet across the top of its head The modifications eventually became part of the official gcc (version 2. 95), and other Linux distributions experienced similar speed increases. [3]

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. FreeBSD is a Unix-like free Operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD branch through "[4]

Gentoo Linux 1. 0 was released 2002-03-31. See also 2002 (disambiguation Year 2002 ( MMII) was a Common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. Events 307 - After divorcing his wife Minervina, Constantine marries Fausta, the daughter of the retired Roman Emperor [5]

Robbins had wanted Gentoo Linux to become a commercially successful project, but found an appropriate business model difficult to achieve. In 2004 he set up the non-profit Gentoo Foundation, transferred all copyrights and trademarks to it, and stepped down as Chief Architect of the project. [6][7]

The current Board of Trustees[8] is composed of five members who were announced (following an election) on March 2, 2008. Events 986 - Louis V becomes King of the Franks. 1127 - Assassination of Charles the Good 2008 ( MMVIII) is the current year in accordance with the Gregorian calendar, a Leap year that started on Tuesday of the Common [9] There is also a subsidiary seven-member Gentoo Council whose members decide on technical issues and policies. [10] The current Council members were elected over the period of August 17, 2007 to September 17, 2007 by 117 active Gentoo developers. Events 986 - A Byzantine army was destroyed in the pass of Trajan's Gate by the Bulgarians under the Comitopuli Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 1176 - The Battle of Myriokephalon is fought 1462 - The Battle of Świecino (or Battle of Żarnowiec Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. [11]

Until recently, the Gentoo Foundation was a 501c6 non-profit foundation, registered in the State of New Mexico. New Mexico ( is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States of America. [12] In late 2007, the Foundation's charter was revoked. [13] As of May 19, 2008 the State of New Mexico declared that the Gentoo Foundation Inc has returned to good standing and is free to do business[14]

Portability

The Gentoo/FreeBSD logo, derived from the BSD Daemon
The Gentoo/FreeBSD logo, derived from the BSD Daemon

Although originally designed for the x86 architecture, it has been ported to many others and currently runs on the x86, x86-64, IA-64, PA-RISC; PowerPC, PowerPC 970, SPARC64, MIPS, DEC Alpha, System Z/s390, PS3 Cell Processor and SuperH architectures. The BSD daemon, nicknamed Beastie, is the generic Mascot of BSD Operating systems Overview The BSD daemon is named after a See also X86 assembly language The generic term x86 refers to the most commercially successful Instruction set architecture in the history of Personal x86-64 is a Superset of the x86 instruction set architecture. Itanium is the brand name for 64-bit Intel Microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64) PA-RISC is a Microprocessor architecture developed by Hewlett-Packard 's Systems & VLSI Technology Operation. PowerPC is a RISC Instruction set architecture created by the 1991 Apple – IBM – Motorola alliance known as AIM The PowerPC 970, PowerPC 970FX, PowerPC 970GX, and PowerPC 970MP, are 64-bit Power Architecture processors from IBM SPARC (from Scalable Processor Architecture is a RISC Microprocessor Instruction set architecture originally MIPS (originally an acronym for Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages) is a RISC microprocessor architecture developed by MIPS Technologies Alpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, was a 64-bit Reduced instruction set computer (RISC Instruction set architecture (ISA developed IBM System z, or earlier IBM eServer zSeries, is a brand name designated by IBM to all its Mainframe computers In 2000 IBM rebranded the existing The SuperH (or SH) is brandname of a certain Microcontroller and Microprocessor architecture [15] Official support for 32bit Sparc hardware has been dropped. [16]Gentoo was the first distribution to offer a fully functional 64-bit Linux computing environment (user space and the kernel) for the PowerPC 970. '64-bit' CPUs have existed in Supercomputers since the 1960s and in RISC -based workstations and servers since the early 1990s. "kernel space" redirects here For mathematical definition see Null space. The PowerPC 970, PowerPC 970FX, PowerPC 970GX, and PowerPC 970MP, are 64-bit Power Architecture processors from IBM

There is also a "Gentoo for Mac OS X" project which allows Mac OS X users to use Gentoo's Portage to install packages, similar to the way provided by Fink. Mac OS X (mæk oʊ ɛs tɛn is a line of computer Operating systems developed marketed and sold by Apple Inc, the latest of which is pre-loaded on all currently In Computing, the Fink project is an effort to port Unix programs to Mac OS X. Although still a work in progress, this project can coexist with Fink because it uses the same environment as Mac OS X instead of creating a new one.

Portability toward other operating systems, such as BSD-derived ones, is under active development by the Gentoo/ALT project. 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 The Gentoo/FreeBSD project already has a working release, while Gentoo/NetBSD, Gentoo/OpenBSD and Gentoo/DragonFly are being developed. Gentoo/FreeBSD is a Unix-like Operating system developed by Gentoo Linux developers in order to bring Gentoo Linux design structure and tools such [17] There is also a project to get Portage working on the GNU Hurd (although development is slow) and OpenSolaris. OpenSolaris is an Open source project created by Sun Microsystems to build a developer community around Solaris Operating System technology

Portage

Main article: Portage (software)

Portage is Gentoo's package management system. Portage is a Package management system used by Gentoo Linux. Gentoo is sometimes referred to as a " Meta-distribution " due to the flexibility A package management system is a collection of tools to automate the process of installing upgrading configuring and removing software packages from a Computer It is similar in idea to the BSD ports collections: the original design was based on FreeBSD ports. Ports collections (or ports trees, or just ports) are the sets of Makefiles and patches provided by the BSD -based Operating systems The FreeBSD Ports collection is a Package management system which provides an easy and consistent way of installing software packages on the FreeBSD In contrast, the Portage tree does not contain directories of Makefiles, but of so-called ebuilds, 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 Software development, make is a utility for automatically building executable programs from Source code. An ebuild is a specialized Bash script format created by the Gentoo Linux project for use in its Portage software management system which automates

Portage is also the name of Gentoo's default package management utility. This package provides, among other useful scripts, the emerge utility, which is written in Python and can be used by privileged users to easily inspect and alter the set of installed packages on a Gentoo operating system. Portage is a Package management system used by Gentoo Linux. Gentoo is sometimes referred to as a " Meta-distribution " due to the flexibility Python is a general-purpose High-level programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes programmer productivity and code readability 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. In Software development, make is a utility for automatically building executable programs from Source code. conf (again similar to ports) to determine where the Portage tree is kept.

Recently, 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 of ebuilds for all package managers, in a project called the Package Manager Specification or PMS[18]

Init system

Gentoo's init system is another important feature. init (short for " Initialization " is the program on Unix and Unix-like systems that spawns all other processes 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. Unix System V, commonly abbreviated SysV (and usually pronounced though rarely written as System 5 was one of the versions of the Unix Operating system 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.

A faster init system known as initng is available and under active development on the Gentoo forums. Initng is a full replacement of the Sysvinit system Init, the first process spawned by the kernel in Unix-like computer Operating

A Gentoo developer named Roy Marples started a revised init system called "baselayout-2", which later became a stand-alone project called "OpenRC"[19], which moves core system scripts from bash scripting to C code. This change should make boot time and other lower level services faster. [20]

Installation

Gentoo may be installed in several ways. The most common way is to use the Gentoo LiveCDs. A live CD or live distro is a computer Operating system that is executed upon boot, without installation to a Hard disk drive. As with many Linux distributions, it can also be installed by most LiveCDs and existing Linux installations.

Installation of Gentoo can be completed by following the Gentoo Handbook. Additionally, several other methods of installation are listed in the Alternative Installation Method HOWTO; most of which are targeted at experienced users or users unable to boot from the Gentoo live CD.

As of version 2006. 0, the Gentoo Foundation has released a GTK+ based installer to greatly simplify the process of installing the distribution from scratch. [2] More advanced users will note that the new installer also brings back the stage 1 installation (see below) as a common installation method.

Catalyst

Starting with 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.

Stages

Traditionally installation could be started from one of three base stages:

As of November 2005, only stage3 installations are officially supported. [21] Although tarballs for stage1 and stage2 are still distributed, the instructions for installing from these stages have been removed from the handbook[22] and put into the Gentoo FAQ. In Computing, tar (derived from tape archive) is both a File format (in the form of a type of archive Bitstream) and the name

Version history

The official Gentoo 2008. Events 1429 - Joan of Arc arrives to relieve the Siege of Orleans. 2008 ( MMVIII) is the current year in accordance with the Gregorian calendar, a Leap year that started on Tuesday of the Common 0 release had been scheduled for May 19, 2008[35], but that date has since passed. An official announcement on the current status of Gentoo 2008. 0 has yet to be released.

Even though the versioning system changed to years, the numbering version system still continues. For example, /etc/gentoo-release might contain "Gentoo Base System version 1. 6. 13" (Modified Aug. 26, 2005). These numbers are actually the version numbers of the sys-apps/baselayout package in Portage.

Once Gentoo is installed, it becomes "versionless"; that is, once an emerge update is done, the system is at the latest version. If the system was installed from a 2005. 0 CD and 2005. 1 was released, an emerge update of the system effectively makes the installed 2005. 0 system equivalent to the newly released 2005. 1 installation.

Advantages

Soft dependencies 
Since packages are built by source, dependencies between packages are more flexible than for binary distributions, and can be explicitly enabled or disabled in many cases. Binary distributions typically offer similar flexibility by providing several versions of the same package under different aliases, or by splitting packages into more modular components where possible. Since the number of possible configurations becomes combinatoric as the number of compile-time options increases, it is not feasible to store binaries for all possible combinations. Gentoo is thus able to offer a greater variety of compile-time package options where other popular distributions are not.
Bleeding edge packages 
By regularly syncing their portage tree, Gentoo users are able to use the most up to date packages available, rather than remaining fixed at a particular release date. This typically results in newer versions of software being available within the package manager than are available for other Linux distributions at any given time, particularly those which are fixed at a particular release (albeit with security updates). This is also a drawback; when updating a Gentoo system, no guarantees are made on the backwards-compatibility of any package updates, whereas distributions which only make a limited release set of packages available are able to better maintain compatibility within each release.
Clarity and flexibility 
The Portage system shows, compared to other Linux distributions, a lot of what it is doing. For a lot of installation steps, the executed commands are shown, while most Linux distributions simply explain what they're trying to accomplish. Related is the fact that the user can modify the behavior of the entire system relatively easily, since most programs in the package manager are scripts. Because of all this, Gentoo can be useful for code developers because they can make a full install with the full code on their servers (for example revision servers) using a single command.

Drawbacks

Slow package installation 
Compiling from source means that some packages are slower to install. Slow package installation leads to a longer initial installation if a lot of packages are installed. In the extreme cases of KDE and OpenOffice.org, package installation will take hours,[36][37] or even days on older hardware. KDE ( K Desktop Environment) (ˌkeɪdiːˈiː is a Free software project which aims to be a powerful system for an easy-to-use Desktop environment. OpenOfficeorg ( OOo or OOo) is a free Cross-platform office application suite available for a number of different computer Also compiling these packages requires a lot of disk space while the package is compiling (4–6 GB for OpenOffice.org – see app-office/openoffice ebuild for more information). OpenOfficeorg ( OOo or OOo) is a free Cross-platform office application suite available for a number of different computer Generally, Gentoo users accept these delays as the cost of being able to apply their own compile-time options, but there are now pre-compiled binaries for large popular applications such as KDE, OpenOffice.org, and Mozilla Firefox. KDE ( K Desktop Environment) (ˌkeɪdiːˈiː is a Free software project which aims to be a powerful system for an easy-to-use Desktop environment. OpenOfficeorg ( OOo or OOo) is a free Cross-platform office application suite available for a number of different computer By using these binaries, one loses the chance to customize the choice of optional features for those packages, but the installation of the package is reduced to a few minutes.


Logo and mascots

The official Gentoo logo is the stylized G resembling a silver magatama. Magatama (ja 勾玉 or ja 曲玉) are curved Beads which first appeared in Japan during the Jōmon period. Unofficial mascots include Larry the cow and Knurt the flying saucer. In fact as Larry appeared originally on the official website, it can be considered semi-official.

Gentoo-based distributions

References

  1. ^ Gentoo Linux Documentation - Making the distribution, Part 1
  2. ^ Planet Mirror - enoch - Enoch Linux - enoch-0.75 - download now
  3. ^ Gentoo Linux Documentation - Making the distribution, Part 2
  4. ^ Gentoo Linux Documentation - Making the distribution, Part 3
  5. ^ Slashdot | Gentoo 1.0 Released
  6. ^ http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-nfp/msg_00845.xml
  7. ^ Slashdot | Daniel Robbins Resigns As Chief Gentoo Architect
  8. ^ Gentoo Linux Documentation - Gentoo Foundation Charter
  9. ^ Gentoo Linux - New foundation trustees elected
  10. ^ Gentoo Linux Projects - Gentoo Council
  11. ^ http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/msg_147748.xml
  12. ^ [1]
  13. ^ Gentoo loses charter; Robbins offers to return [LWN.net]
  14. ^ Gentoo Linux - List Archive: gentoo-nfp
  15. ^ http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/releng/release/2007.0/2007.0-press-release.txt
  16. ^ Gentoo Development Guide: Arch Specific Notes - SPARC
  17. ^ Gentoo Linux Projects - Gentoo/*BSD
  18. ^ Gentoo Linux Projects - Package Manager Specification
  19. ^ Gentoo Linux - OpenRC and baselayout 2 will reach ~arch soon
  20. ^ Gentoo Linux Newsletter - 16 April 2007
  21. ^ Gentoo Linux Newsletter - November 14th, 2005
  22. ^ Gmane - Mail To News And Back Again
  23. ^ Gentoo Linux Newsletter - March 1st, 2004
  24. ^ http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-announce/msg_02473.xml
  25. ^ http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/releng/release/2004.2/2004.2-press-release.txt
  26. ^ Gentoo Linux Newsletter - November 15, 2004
  27. ^ Gentoo Linux - Release Announcement: Gentoo Linux 2005.0
  28. ^ Gentoo Linux - Release Announcement: Gentoo Linux 2005.1
  29. ^ Gentoo Linux - Media Refresh: Gentoo Linux 2005.1-r1
  30. ^ Gentoo Linux - Release Announcement: Gentoo Linux 2006.0
  31. ^ Gentoo Linux - Gentoo Linux 2006.1 - Unleashed
  32. ^ Gentoo Linux - Gentoo Linux 2007.0 released
  33. ^ Gentoo Linux - Gentoo Linux 2008.0_beta1 released
  34. ^ Gentoo Linux - Gentoo Linux 2008.0_beta2 released
  35. ^ Gentoo Linux Documentation -- 2008.0 Release Information
  36. ^ www:
  37. ^ Compile time stats (Linux Reviews)
  38. ^ Pardus Linux 2007 is no longer based on Gentoo http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20070115

See also

External links

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