Gentoo Reviewed

An anonymous reader writes "Nick Petreley over at LinuxWorld.com gives the uninitiated an excellent view of what the world of Gentoo is like."

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Quick cut'n'paste of the story

[parkanoid]

A new distro in town: Gentoo emerges victorious By Nicholas Petreley Originally published May 16, 2003 Printed from LinuxWorld.com http://www.linuxworld.com/site-stories/2003/0516.p etreley.html Summary The 'meta-distro' Gentoo makes it possible to compile and configure everything on your system exactly the way you like, providing you with more structure and tools to ease the process and automate updates. Do I still like Debian? I absolutely love it. But until further notice, Gentoo is now my flavor of Linux. (1,900 words) Advertisement (LinuxWorld) -- A relatively new distribution called Gentoo Linux is gaining a rapidly increasing, rabidly loyal group of users. The increasing popularity of Gentoo is almost difficult to explain, given that it's clearly a distribution by geeks, for geeks and for nobody but geeks. Obviously a geek can set up a Gentoo system for a non-geek, so you may find novices using Gentoo. You just won't find many novices installing it. To be more precise, Gentoo Linux is not really a distribution but a meta-distribution. You don't usually install pre-compiled binaries when you add software to a Gentoo system. You most often compile and build the binaries yourself, according to your own personal optimization and configuration settings. Gentoo gives you the ability to treat almost the entire system this way, but it also lets the less-patient users start with a basic pre-compiled system. After that, you can build your own higher-level packages on top of that core installation. This may sound a lot like another project called "Linux from scratch," but Gentoo has an important difference in philosophy. While Gentoo Linux makes it possible to compile and configure everything on your system exactly the way you like, it also provides you with more structure and tools to ease the process and automate updates. The heart of Gentoo is its packaging system, Portage. Portage is similar to the BSD Ports system in that it installs software by retrieiving source code and building it on your system, resolving any dependencies as necessary. If any given package is available only in binary form, Portage grabs and installs it that way. Gentoo considers the process one of merging software into your system, so the basic command for installing software is emerge, which is mostly intuitive. If you want to get rid of some software on your system, you use the command emerge unmerge, which isn't entirely intuitive, but it works. Installation If you have any familiarity at all with the process of partitioning hard drives, mounting partitions and basic Unix commands, it isn't all that difficult to install Gentoo if you simply pay careful attention to the instructions. However, the process certainly isn't "easy" when compared to mainstream distributions. You can't just pop in a CD-ROM and answer a few questions; you have to get your hands dirty. Just how dirty depends on the version of Gentoo you are attempting to install, as well as your choice of installation methods. If you want the most-optimized system possible, installation will be a long and tedious process. If you can deal with a generic base system for Gentoo but want to optimize most of the high-level software, it will still be a long and tedious process, but less so. I installed Gentoo Linux 1.4 rc4, which is available for a few different processor types, but the x86 support is only generic x86. Under normal circumstances, Gentoo offers a choice of optimized base systems for a variety of x86 processors so that you don't have to compile everything from scratch to get enhanced performance on Athlon, Pentium 4, or other systems. You can still compile everything from scratch if you like, but installing an optimized base system makes it easier to get a performance boost without as much time and trouble up-front. I chose the quickest installation, which sacrifices a little performance. The basic software on my system is pre-compiled for a generic x86, but most of the rest of the software is optimized according to my preferences. For exam

Text incase of Slashdotting

[Anonymous Coward]

A new distro in town: Gentoo emerges victorious
Nick Petreley sans Debian may seem like cereal without the milk, but Gentoo is the new kid on his box
May 16, 2003

Summary
The 'meta-distro' Gentoo makes it possible to compile and configure everything on your system exactly the way you like, providing you with more structure and tools to ease the process and automate updates. Do I still like Debian? I absolutely love it. But until further notice, Gentoo is now my flavor of Linux. (1,900 words)

By Nicholas Petreley
Page 1 of 3 Advertisement

(LinuxWorld) -- A relatively new distribution called Gentoo Linux is gaining a rapidly increasing, rabidly loyal group of users. The increasing popularity of Gentoo is almost difficult to explain, given that it's clearly a distribution by geeks, for geeks and for nobody but geeks. Obviously a geek can set up a Gentoo system for a non-geek, so you may find novices using Gentoo. You just won't find many novices installing it.

To be more precise, Gentoo Linux is not really a distribution but a meta-distribution. You don't usually install pre-compiled binaries when you add software to a Gentoo system. You most often compile and build the binaries yourself, according to your own personal optimization and configuration settings. Gentoo gives you the ability to treat almost the entire system this way, but it also lets the less-patient users start with a basic pre-compiled system. After that, you can build your own higher-level packages on top of that core installation.

This may sound a lot like another project called "Linux from scratch," but Gentoo has an important difference in philosophy. While Gentoo Linux makes it possible to compile and configure everything on your system exactly the way you like, it also provides you with more structure and tools to ease the process and automate updates.

The heart of Gentoo is its packaging system, Portage. Portage is similar to the BSD Ports system in that it installs software by retrieiving source code and building it on your system, resolving any dependencies as necessary. If any given package is available only in binary form, Portage grabs and installs it that way.

Gentoo considers the process one of merging software into your system, so the basic command for installing software is emerge, which is mostly intuitive. If you want to get rid of some software on your system, you use the command emerge unmerge, which isn't entirely intuitive, but it works.

Installation
If you have any familiarity at all with the process of partitioning hard drives, mounting partitions and basic Unix commands, it isn't all that difficult to install Gentoo if you simply pay careful attention to the instructions. However, the process certainly isn't "easy" when compared to mainstream distributions. You can't just pop in a CD-ROM and answer a few questions; you have to get your hands dirty. Just how dirty depends on the version of Gentoo you are attempting to install, as well as your choice of installation methods. If you want the most-optimized system possible, installation will be a long and tedious process. If you can deal with a generic base system for Gentoo but want to optimize most of the high-level software, it will still be a long and tedious process, but less so.

I installed Gentoo Linux 1.4 rc4, which is available for a few different processor types, but the x86 support is only generic x86. Under normal circumstances, Gentoo offers a choice of optimized base systems for a variety of x86 processors so that you don't have to compile everything from scratch to get enhanced performance on Athlon, Pentium 4, or other systems. You can still compile everything from scratch if you like, but installing an optimized base system makes it easier to get a performance boost without as much time and trouble up-front.

I chose the quickest installation, which sacrifices a little performance. The basic software on my system is pre-compiled for a generic x86, but most of the rest of the sof

Here come the Gentoo love fest

[Anonymous Coward]

but it will take a few days to compile

Re:I loved Gentoo

[the_real_tigga]

for a glggle, look here