Gentoo is a free operating system based on either Linux or FreeBSD that can be automatically optimized and customized for just about any application or need. Extreme configurability, performance and a top-notch user and developer community are all hallmarks of the Gentoo experience.
Gentoo Linux was initially created by Daniel Robbins as the Enoch Linux distribution. Gentoo Linux 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, but includes some proprietary software packages.Portage is the heart of Gentoo, and performs many key functions. For one, Portage is the software distribution system for Gentoo. To get the latest software for Gentoo, you type one command: emerge --sync. This command tells Portage to update your local "Portage tree" over the Internet. Your local Portage tree contains a complete collection of scripts that can be used by Portage to create and install the latest Gentoo packages.
Portage is also a package building and installation system. When you want to install a package, you type emerge packagename, at which point Portage automatically builds a custom version of the package to your exact specifications, optimizing it for your hardware and ensuring that the optional features in the package that you want are enabled.
Portage also keeps your system up-to-date. Typing emerge -uD world -- one command -- will ensure that all the packages that you want on your system are updated automatically.
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 metadistribution, "because of its near-unlimited adaptability".
Although originally designed for the x86 architecture, it 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.
Gentoo 10.1 desktop
Gentoo Install
Gentoo may be installed in several ways. The most common way is to use the Gentoo minimal CD with a stage 3 tarball. As with many Linux distributions, it can also be installed by most Linux flavors already operating.
Slow package Gentoo Install
Compiling a package from source takes considerably more time than installing a pre-built binary. In some cases compilation can take hours or even days on older hardware, and may also require a few gigabytes of disk space.
Generally Gentoo users accept long compile times as the cost of being able to apply their own compile-time options. However, pre-compiled binaries are provided for some applications such as OpenOffice.org and Mozilla Firefox, as they are provided by upstream maintainers. By using these binaries one loses the chance to customize the choice of optional features for the packages, but the installation time is reduced to just a few minutes.
Once Gentoo is installed, it becomes "versionless"; 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 any restrictions specified by the user in Portage configuration files).
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