“The Gentoo Foundation is both pleased and proud to announce the much anticipated release of Gentoo Linux 2005.1. Due to a scheduled power outage at the Open Source Laboratory affecting our master mirror, the release is currently only available for download via BitTorrent. We anticipate recovery from the downtime and full staging of release material to mirrors within 48 hours, accompanied by a comprehensive PR and ChangeLog.” In addition, the Gentoo Installer reached their 0.1 release.
Props to Gentoo devs for (in my opinion) hands down the best Linux distro out there!
Good to see Gentoo going Stong, not my distro any more, but still fun to play with on a spare drive.
“Good to see Gentoo going Stong, not my distro any more, but still fun to play with on a spare drive.”
Let me guess. You’ve moved to Ubuntu.. And you probably had a layover at Arch along the way
Whither the flock?
I started with Gentoo 1.4, and I’m still with it. For me it’s the absolute Nirvana of Linux distros. Super configurable, fast, and a great learning platform. And it doesn’t break DEs like RedHat, et al, do. KDE is stock KDE; Gnome is stock Gnome. I’ve learned more with Gentoo than I ever did with SuSE or Vector. There are easier distros out there, but I didn’t want simple…I wanted solid. As others have pointed out, the documentation and user community are world class (literally). In fact, I been able to start contributing the forums, based on what I now know about Linux. Gentoo opened a huge door for me in the Linux world, and I intend to stick with it.
Good work still a treat to use from day one.
I can see it now… Gentoo newbies busy backing up their drive, wiping it clean and reinstalling Gentoo 2005.1 from scratch. *wink* *wink*
I find Gentoo is one of the best ways to learn Linux, from a hands on approach one can really learn the command line commands. From there everything else should be easy
You’re kidding, right? Watching shit scroll by for hours does not make you a Linux expert overnight. An automated build process does not make you a Linux expert overnight.
Try LinuxFromScratch — that is the #1 best way to learn about Linux and the components that make up the system, not Gentoo.
There’s no better way to spend the summer vacations compiling gentoo
is gentoo debian based ? is is good for linux newbies ?
1. No, it isn’t.
2. No, it isn’t. It needs a lot more work to get running than more “userfriendly” distributions, though this might have changed a bit with the new installer.
is gentoo debian based ?
No, although I’ve never understood why there isn’t a Debian flavor catering to those who want to install from source – of course you can install from source debs with Debian, but no derived distro (that I know of) caters to that audience. Yes, maybe the benefits of this are dubious, but there’s no doubt that there is demand for this and Debian has lost some hardcore techie mindshare to Gentoo (in part) because of this.
is is good for linux newbies ?
I’d say no, even with the LiveCD and easier installer. Look at this screenshot and you’ll see that newbies weren’t taken into account:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/releng/installer/screenshots/gtk_kern…
Sure they can just click ‘Next’ and accept the default (even though they label it ‘Forward’ for some reason?), but UI design like this doesn’t just confuse newbies, it confuses me. What’s the difference between the first, third, and fourth options – which all have the same exact description? And if I really want option five, shouldn’t that be default? etc. (And yeah, I know this is beta stuff, the above is just an example.)
Not slamming Gentoo, I just don’t think newbies are a big priority. On the other hand, many have said that if you really want to know how a Linux distro ticks under the hood, a distro like Gentoo is a great way to learn. So if you’re an “enthusiast newbie” – perhaps a power user from another platform who really wants to dive into the guts of Linux – there’s no reason not to take the LiveCD for a spin.
“although I’ve never understood why there isn’t a Debian flavor catering to those who want to install from source”
Actually there is something along that line:
http://people.debian.org/~jgoerzen/dfs/
Why bother announcing this now then.
I can see it now… Gentoo newbies busy backing up their drive, wiping it clean and reinstalling Gentoo 2005.1 from scratch. *wink* *wink*
You couldn’t be more wrong.It’s not uncommon to see gentoo boxes that have been upgraded from the day one release up to current.
You fail to see his sarcasm…
Oh man, you just made that posters day! Gentoo userbase IS a cut above the rest! *wink* *wink*…. *WINK* *WINK*
Congrats to the Gentoo. I remember installing 2004.0 awhile back from scratch. Now that GLI has progressed I will give that /experimental disk a whirl.
Nice to see Gentoo on the top, much respect to the Gentoo crew.
Is there now a installer included? So can I use a normal install method instead of doing everything by hand?
Release Notes:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/releng/release/2005.1/2005.1.xml
Changelog:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/releng/release/2005.1/ChangeLog
Both not yet official, so updates may be made until them… (but not likely =] )
I hope they get the torrent up and ready to go soon. Usually after I download an ISO I leave my system running for a few days to feed other clients.
Real men run FreeBSD. http://www.funroll-loops.org/
Nope, Gentoo is not a distro for n00bs. If you are programmer, developer, system administrator, Unix guru, advanced/power user, then you are probably already running Gentoo.
However, Gentoo is a good way to learn about the guts of Linux. It’s basically LFS, with the best package manager on earth, Portage. Gentoo’s documentation is unparalleled among Linux distros, and the community is nothing short of amazing.
Gentoo is arguably the de facto source based distribution for Linux.
Isn’t the sensible thing to do, to have release files uploaded to mirrors, and then make the anouncement? And just when master mirror is out for lunch…?!? Ah well, knowing the meaning of ‘release’ in Gentoo, I guess most Gentoo users are already running it – sort of.
@ranasrule: Gentoo is one of the few source-based distro’s out there. With most other disto’s (like Debian), the common way to add software, is download binaries. With Gentoo, the normal way is to download source code, and have it compiled on your own machine. As a result, a normal install has all the properties of a developer’s system. Good for you? It is the best distro for you, if it meets your needs better than other distro’s.
I’ve been running Gentoo for months now, and my feelings remain mixed. NOT negative in any way, just mixed as in how far it meets MY needs.
Pro’s: EXCELLENT documentation, very powerful, flexible, very easy to keep up to date/patched, easy to customize according to your wishes. A good base for making your own distro. As a side note: IMHO Gentoo is one of the better distro’s for active gamers – several modern 3D shooters are in the package database. Once you’ve setup sound & 3D video card drivers, a simple command, copy over some data files from original CD, and you’re running around jumping ‘n fragging.
Cons: A decent bandwidth internet connection is HIGHLY recommended, for downloading the large source archives (as opposed to smaller binaries) and package database. Full set of development tools take lots of diskspace (cheap these days), and compiling takes lots of CPU time (note: does not equal YOUR time!), so a fast machine is recommended as well. For simple desktop work, compiling from source is a waste of resources. And last but not least: no hand-helding is done in Gentoo, you HAVE to know what you’re doing.
If you’re a newbie, I suggest you play with Knoppix first. When you’re ready to devote some harddisk space to Linux, have a look at distro’s like Ubuntu or Mandriva.
I’m not sure if this has adequately been explained, but when people say you learn a lot about Linux from using Gentoo, they don’t mean from the text-based install. As far as I can tell, the reason that isn’t automated more is because they want to allow a power user who knows exactly what they want to do, to deviate from the average installation. For the rest of us, there’s the Gentoo Install Handbook. It holds your hand fairly well, though I still managed to screw it up my first time through.
But really, when you learn about Linux while using Gentoo, you do so by maintaining it, changing things by modifying the configuration files, and using the command line a lot. With Gentoo, you have to go “under the hood” a lot.
As for source-based package management, another advantage that apparently few people realize isn’t the speed; it’s the ability to have programs compiled with support for what you want.
Rather than having to hope your program came with support for, say, XviD and Ogg Vorbis, there are flags you can set to make Gentoo compile each program that CAN have support, WITH support. Granted, it seems most distros would compile with optional support so that all you need to add are the libraries, but in that case you have to grab the libraries and you’ve got less choice in the matter.
I was a 3 year linux user before a tried Gentoo, I learned more in the 5 months I used Gentoo, then the 3 years I used Debian/SUSE/Red Hat.
It is a bit to much fuss for me, just tried VLOS, but to many apps were bombing on compile… So back to Breezy. But it was fun to play in the land of Gentoo again, even if it was short!
Now that you’ve seen how hard we’ve worked and what we here at Gentoo can do, a couple of our lead developers, having given up everything to work on this project, are deeply in debt. Please pass the hat and send your contributions to Daniels Robbins at Microsoft. He’ll see that they’re distributed equitably.
is downloading 40 floppies Slackware Linux 0.98
over 9600 baud modem.
Or little bit newer try http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/development/
Package management is for loosers and if you are a looser like me then use http://www.archlinux.org/
Or does Gentoo install most recent 2.6 with full Udev system this time?
What are you supposed to learn by “downloading 40 floppies Slackware Linux 0.98 over 9600 baud modem”?
That technology did indeed move forward?
And as gentoo basically installs whatever you want it to install, it has installed a 2.6 kernel with udev for ages now, so I fail to see your point.
Atleast I’ve been using udev and 2.6 for a looong time now. 2.6 is the default nowadays. And what’s wrong with package management then?
-WereCat
“Package management is for loosers”
Then I am a looser because I mainly use Debian.
If you don’t want to be a looser, why don’t you use Slack? Slack (by default) doesn’t have any package manager.
>If you don’t want to be a looser, why don’t you use Slack? Slack (by default) doesn’t have any package manager.
Slack does (by default) have a package manager. Just for the record.
Or does Gentoo install most recent 2.6 with full Udev system this time?
Yes,as you know it’s all do it yourself with the gentoo provided quality tools.”Linux localhost 2.6.12-gentoo-r6 #1 SMP Sun Aug 7 10:31:28 CEST 2005 x86_64 AMD”.I think that’s pretty recent.
“Or does Gentoo install most recent 2.6 with full Udev system this time? ”
The udev upstream developer Greg KH is a Gentoo developer. Thus you can expect first-class udev support in Gentoo.
Just to add to what others have already said about the learning experience of Gentoo. I was a noob when I tried Gentoo. The reasons I went with Gentoo are long, complicated and not on topic.
What is on topic is that I am so glad I used Gentoo for the time I did. I use an ‘easy’ distro now. And there are many times when I want to do something unusual. Something that’s not supported by any GUI. Mostly chaning default ‘under the hood’ configurations that the distro maintainers thought were most suitable. Because of what I learned using Gentoo I have control of my system. It’s exactly how I want it, not how someone else thinks it should be. And when something goes wrong I can usually fix it, even when the problem isn’t my fault.
These ‘easy’ distros are attracting alot of new users. These new users may have the root password, but they are *not* the superuser. Not until they have learned how to master their system. Using Gentoo for awhile will get you there quickly.
Daniel Robins, employee of the proprietary Microseft corporation, makers of the proprietary Windows XP system, the worst piece of shit I’ve seen since CP/M.
In past years I have used numerous distros with a few coming out a step above the rest, arch being one of them and gentoo being the other. there are other source distros that in some areas are better then gentoo, but none can come close to the documentation and the userbase.
I’ve been using Gentoo for about a year now and as many others have said, I have learned 10 fold more running Gentoo than I have running all other distros combined (with the possable exception of slackware). The package management is great, the system is fast (if you set it up right), and I get exactly what I want… noting more, nothing less.
I started using Gentoo at version 2004.0. I still have the install CD. Initially I had installed everythig as per the Document and voila was very pleased to learn that I had installed an operating system from Scratch. Later I learned that it was an mundane task for every gentoo user, not to talk about LFS users. Installing gentoo did teach me a lot of things about configuring from command line. I really like the distribution and have it on my desktop. For my Thinkpad, well, I came across Ubuntu. We do lots of configuration in gentoo and futher lots of compile to get a working system, then do a lot of tweaking to adjust it to our need, like flash support in firefox etc. In ubuntu its a single command “ubuntusetup.sh” and you get a very workable system with all the required applications installed. Though I had to install kdevelop/mysql and the associated packages seperately, nothing else is an addition. I use breezy and have the latest kde/gnome and every thing working properly. I can afford lots of time on my desktop ( typically nights for compile on gentoo), for my thinkpad I prefer Working distribution, with me compiling my generated application and not OpenOffice2.
All said, gentoo is my first love and I get to comfiguring it as often as I can, but for application development and my daily work, I use Ubuntu.
Let me guess. You’ve moved to Ubuntu.. And you probably had a layover at Arch along the way
Whither the flock?
=================================================
I’ve been one of “the flock” for a few years now. And yes, I’ve done a few “clean installs” of Gentoo as new releases came along, mainly because attempting to do major updates with Portage usually resulted in something like “You have five hundred and fifty six out of date config files. Please update all of them manually.” I find it easier to wipe my /boot and / partitions, and start over.
As I write this, the time has come for a new install, because the Gentoo install on my main PC is very sick. And I find myself going through the usual painful decision – stick with Gentoo and its death-by-a-thousand-papercuts install, or use an easier distro?
But you know what? In the last few years, every time I’ve tried an easier distro (and I’ve tried a *lot* of them), I’ve found myself going back to Gentoo after a while. There was always *something* not to my satisfaction on the other distros. Most often it was finding that some oddball bit of software I want or need wouldn’t install (xcircuit, qcad, CRRCSIM, Slope Soaring Simulator, etc ). And every time that happened I would realize, once again, that while installing and configuring Gentoo is as much fun as a run-in with a Cholla cactus, Gentoo continues to have the best software management tool (Portage) available on any Linux distro today. Not to mention the best documentation. Not to mention the best user forums, filled with incredibly knowledgeble Linux gurus with an answer to every conundrum. Not to mention maybe the biggest pool of available software of any distro. Not to mention new software often becomes available for Gentoo before it is available for any other distro (KDE 3.3 was available within what seemed like minutes of the official KDE announcement, for instance – and could be installed with a simple “emerge kde”.)
So in a day or two, when I’ve had time to brace myself for the tedious install process, I will probably be installing Gentoo from scratch. Again. Even if the new installer doesn’t work and I have to do it the old way.
Guess I’m still one of the flock. Not out of blind loyalty, but because Gentoo still offers me the best overall Linux experience of any distro I’ve tried.
-Gnobuddy
I used and enjoyed Gentoo before – as a FreeBSD user it seems quite familiar. Gentoo/FreeBSD are the only OSs that I can suirt/cp/tar between machines/partitions with impunity. The problems is when you come to build a new Gentoo system, the install process puts you off – not the difficulty, as its actually just a lot of simple steps – but the time to nurse a box ’till its up. Lets hope the new installer helps here – there are a lot of people out there that would be bowled over by Gentoo.
I sincerly hope gentoo will stay the way it is right now.While it maybe takes more time to get a gentoo box up and running it defenitely pays off in the end with a personnally tuned system according to ones wishes.Currently gentoo attracts just the userbase it deserves and not the can-never-be-satisfied-whiners of most easy fast default install distros.
“Currently gentoo attracts just the userbase it deserves and not the can-never-be-satisfied-whiners of most easy fast default install distros.”
So you think Gentoo *deserves* the ricers amongst its fanbase, do you? The ones who waste the devs’ time with bugs like http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=74072 and make statements such as the ones immortalised on http://www.funroll-loops.org?
Was once a Gentoo fan until Slackware rocked my world. I’ve used probably 70 different distros in my live and Gentoo while not #1 is in my top 3.
It’s nice to finally see an installer. something that I feel has been hindering Gentoo from the beginning. That and taking a week to compile stuff … even on today’s machines
Nice move nevertheless…..
So you think Gentoo *deserves* the ricers amongst its fanbase, do you?
No i’m afraid it’s getting worse with an installer that’s all.
I mostly agree with what you said. Also you don’t always have the battery power to compile an big application you need right now on your laptop. Also less configurion pain when dealing with a laptop an Noobuntu.
Ok. I didn’t read all 40+ comments yet to see if anyone else countered the majority of the comments, but here’s my take.
I was admittedly not *quite* a newbie the first time I installed Gentoo, but the documentation is excellent and is a great learning experience if you have the time to sit down and read/do everything from scratch. I didn’t stick with Gentoo, but I sure took a lot of knowledge away from the experience.
I’d say that if you’re technically inclined in the least, it’s worth going through the Gentoo experience at least once, even if it’s only for learning purposes.
My $.02
Personnally i think of Gentoo as a state of art Linux.The portage system is simply awsome and amongst the best of breed to say the least.The extra amount invested during install is rewarded with by my experiences one of the fastest and less error prone distros around.