Improvements include important pam/shadow/util-linux security fixes, new KDE3 ebuilds, many important improvements to Portage, new NVIDIA drivers and seamless OpenGL configuration, and more. Existing Gentoo Linux users can upgrade in-place by following the instructions included in the release announcement. New users can find install instructions and ISOs and build tarballs. Also be sure to read our new Portage Manual to get up to speed with the new Gentoo Linux 1.0+ features.
Gentoo Linux 1.1a Has Been Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
it seems the link in the main page is wrong, the build tarballs really are in: http://www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/releases/build/1.1a
It seems like a very detailed installation process, but I hear it is educational. I’ll post from Gentoo in about 3 hours. I hope.
I installed Gentoo on my laptop over the weekend, and ran into some very obscure and lengthy problems. They were not directly related to Gentoo, however I would appreciate it if real error messages could have been… well… existent. Basically, if you have problems with this, and most other distros, you must be smart.
This distro is very much like FreeBSD, and that is a great thing. However, be prepared to compile stuff out of the ports, and things like KDE + dependencies will take several hours to build. However, all you have to do for KDE 3 install + X + basic KDE apps is “emerge kde”. Then just let it do it’s thing for… seemingly forever 😉
This is definitely NOT a beginner’s distro. However, it is very friendly toward people who really want to learn Linux basics. Rather than being bundled with everything… you start small and build up.
Finally, compared to Red Hat’s betas, KDE 3 is much faster, and most other apps seem noticably faster too. I think that maybe it was worth the compilation and hassles.
does someone know if there is a way to install it using an adsl usb modem from alcatel?
this distro is every thing i need! it is fast(compilation of all system with optimisations for your cpu, kernel and libc included), you only have intalled what ya need, the booting scripts arent bloated by modifications from the distribution maker(ie Mandrake) and the portage system is synonym of ever-up-to-date software env.
One suggestion would be to start by locating all of the files (libraries, binaries, srcipts) that are used to establish your internet connection on a working distro. Then boot from the Gentoo CD and mount your partitions from the distro with the working net connection. Then copy the needed files into the right places on the RAM disk that the Gentoo CD loads. You might also need to modprobe some kernel modules. Then start the connection from the RAM disk, and you can erase those partitions if you intend to install Gentoo over them.
This is the method I used to get regular PPPoE working before PPPoE was supported by the Gentoo CD. A pain, but it worked fine. And it was well worth the effort. This is indeed a great distro.
I mean, what will it give me more than Slackware already does? I can have full control of my Slackware system, to the bone, and there are many other “barbarian” distros like that around (and don’t take that word in the wrong sense, I love slackware), so what’s all this buzz about Gentoo?
Apart from the fact that Eugenia is using it? ;op
While you can configure Slackware to be fast and all, if you have a PPro machine (i686), Gentoo will configure the system to compile ALL your apps with the i686 flags, making all your software faster.
The other good thing from Gentoo is that its kernel is not the standard stock one you download from kernel.org. When you download its kernel it also downloads a special patch that it applies before you configure and build the kernel. That patch it has the most bleeding edge stuff (featurew-wise and bugfix-wise) you can find today by third parties, and it is pretty handy to have your kernel prepatched this way before you actually build it.
Debian and Slackware are similar to Gentoo’s principles by being source distros, but Gentoo is the bleeding of the bleeding edge, while the other distros are more conservative.
All I need from Gentoo today are two things:
1. A better testing before people are submitting broken ebuilds at the main portage app tree.
2. A move to GCC 3.x which will speed up things even more.
Eugenia – why do you think that GCC 3.x will speed it up?
I may be wrong but benchmark I’ve seen don’t show any improvements for GCC 3.x against 2.95..
“Bleeding edge” is not actually very bleeding – this system is stable, not like Stampede or Enoch Linux.
With Gentoo you have something like “Windows Update” feature but in a “linux way”.
I like it because I can _easily_ choose what to put on my box – I’m thinking to use it for small embedded linux projects.
> I may be wrong but benchmark I’ve seen don’t show any improvements for GCC 3.x against 2.95..
Yes, you are wrong.
Gcc 3.x creates faster executables, ESPECIALLY faster i686 executables.
Make no mistake: Gcc 3 is *slower* on compilation times than Gcc 2.9x (for two reasons: 1. not optimized yet for that, 2. it creates some complex tables in order to optimize the code better), but it creates much faster executables, so it definately worth the extra wait for the compilation.
We were discussing this very subject on the dev-gentoo mailing list just 2 days ago:
http://lists.gentoo.org/pipermail/gentoo-dev/2002-April/010777.html
Welp, ok. I’ll stick with Slackware anyway. I have recompiled the kernel (not the whole userland, but still..) for i686 and didn’t notice any difference in performance. Maybe there was, but imperceptible.
Dunno, I don’t want to get any wilder than Slackware. I’m conservative allright ;o)