Monday, February 4, 2008

Gentoo Linux, Based on the Portage Management System

The Gentoo Linux operating system (pronounced /ˈdʒɛntuː/) is a Linux distribution based on the Portage package management system. The development project and its products are named after the Gentoo penguin. Gentoo package management is designed to be modular, portable, easy to maintain, flexible, and optimized for the user's machine. 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.

History

Gentoo was initially created by Daniel Robbins as the Enoch Linux distribution. 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. At least one version of Enoch was distributed: version 0.75, in December 1999.

Compilation issues revealed problems with the GNU Compiler Collection (gcc), used to build from source code. 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. 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 modifications eventually became part of the official gcc (version 2.95), and other Linux distributions experienced similar speed increases.

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."

Gentoo Linux 1.0 was released 2002-03-31.

http://www.almack.ch/files/Linux/gentoo-transparent.png

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 and transferred all copyrights and trademarks to it and stepped down as Chief Architect of the project.

The current board of trustee contains 5 members who were announced (following an election) on October 21, 2006. There is also a subsidiary 7 member Gentoo Council whose members decide on global issues and policies. The current Council members were elected over the period of August 17, 2007 to September 17, 2007 by 117 active Gentoo developers.

Recently, the Gentoo Foundation charter was revoked, and reinstatement is underway.

Portability

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. Official support for 32bit Sparc hardware has been dropped. Gentoo was the first distribution to offer a fully functional 64-bit Linux computing environment (user space and the kernel) for the PowerPC 970.[citation needed]

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. 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. The Gentoo/FreeBSD project already has a working release, while Gentoo/NetBSD, Gentoo/OpenBSD and Gentoo/DragonFly are being developed. There is also a project to get Portage working on the GNU Hurd (although development is slow) and OpenSolaris.

Portage

Portage is Gentoo's package management system. It is similar in idea to the BSD ports collections: the original design was based on FreeBSD ports. 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.

Portage is also the name of Gentoo's default package management utility package. 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. 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.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

http://www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/images/shots/desktop-verwilst.png

Installation

Gentoo may be installed in several ways. The most common way is to use the Gentoo LiveCDs. 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.More advanced users will note that the new installer also brings back the stage 1 installation (see below) as a common installation method.

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.
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,[29][30] or even days on older hardware. 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). 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. 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.
The promise of optimisation
Gentoo has long been criticised for its alleged promise of faster program execution, as by design it allows the administrator to set compiler flags. Websites such as were expressly set up to satirise this "ricer" approach to computing. In reality, compiler optimisations rarely benefit execution of a program to such an extent that it warrants compiling an entire operating system and application software, instead of using precompiled packages as other (Linux) distributions normally do. Gentoo package management system does, however, offer options that allow users to install fewer (library) packages that applications would link to, which coul; Soft dependencies : Since packages are built by source, dependencies between packages are more flexible than for binary distributions, and can be exblicitly 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.d ultimately result in a leaner, smaller operating environment which would certainly execute (or at least start up) faster than any environment that has unwanted libraries linked in and more background services running unnecessarily.
Requires a good Internet connection
This seems to be related to downloading sources prior to building packages. However, any other distribution that has internet updates has to download binary packages instead, and the sizes of binary and source packages are usually comparable. Mitigating this drawback is that the necessary files can be pre-fetched with the emerge -f or --fetchonly flag, or they can be downloaded in the background while compiling by enabling the parallel-fetch feature.

source: wikipedia

Gentoo Branded Artwork

Terms of Use

The graphics on this page are written by various authors who grant you permission to use and modify them as you see fit. The use of the Gentoo name and logo are governed by the Gentoo Name and Logo Usage Guidelines.

Contribute

If you want to contribute a graphic to Gentoo, please use the Gentoo Forums first so others can comment and help you improve the quality of the graphic. Then contact the Gentoo WWW team and ask for your graphic to be included.

The team may decide not to include your artwork if it is too close to existing graphics, is not available in sufficient resolutions, does not fit the Gentoo spirit (for instance because it is offensive) or any other reason.

Including a graphic on the page can take some time, please be patient.

Gentoo Misc Graphics

G logo in svg format provided by Lennart Andre Rolland

Gentoo/OpenBSD logo in png format provided by the Gentoo Artwork Project

Gentoo Linux Badges

Let the world know that you run on Gentoo Linux.

Put a Powered by Gentoo image on your Gentoo powered web sites or use a Gentoo Badge on your web page, blog, forum signature or elsewhere and link back to http://www.gentoo.org - help us spread the word! Tell others how happy you are with Gentoo Linux.




Small - Medium - Large by Sascha Schwabbauer by Ralph Jacobs by Ryan Viljoen






by m@o by wolven by Szabó Bence

Gentoo Linux Wallpapers

Brand your desktop with a nice Gentoo wallpaper and show your colleagues that you run Gentoo Linux.

Use one of these Gentoo Wallpapers to beautify your desktop. Show every one that you run Gentoo Linux and run it with pride.

640x680 - 1024x768 - 1152x864 - 1280x1024 - 1600x1200
by mksoft
640x480 - 1024x768 - 1152x864 - 1280x1024 - 1600x1200
by mksoft
640x480 - 1024x768 - 1152x864 - 1280x1024 - 1600x1200
by mksoft
640x480 - 1024x768 - 1152x864 - 1280x1024 - 1600x1200
by mksoft
640x480 - 1024x768 - 1152x864 - 1280x1024 - 1600x1200
by Luca Martinetti
800x600 - 1024x768 - 1152x864 - 1280x1024 - 1600x1200
by Brian Wigginton
800x600 - 1024x768 - 1280x1024
by Tedder Wayne
800x600 - 1024x768 - 1280x1024
by Tedder Wayne
800x600 - 1024x768 - 1280x1024 - 1600x1200
by Robert Krig
800x600 - 1024x768 - 1280x1024 - 1600x1200
by Robert Krig
800x600 - 1024x768 - 1280x1024 - 1600x1200
by Robert Krig
800x600 - 1024x768 - 1280x1024 - 1600x1200
by Robert Krig
800x600 - 1024x768 - 1280x1024 - 1600x1200
by Robert Krig
800x600 - 1024x768 - 1152x864 - 1280x1024 - 1600x1200
by Tero Konttila
800x600 - 1024x768 - 1152x864 - 1280x1024 - 1600x1200
by Tero Konttila
800x600 - 1024x768 - 1152x864 - 1280x1024 - 1600x1200
by Przemysław Pazik

1. Here they are... click for larger PNG versions!

Disclaimer

The screenshots on this page are contributed by various Gentoo users. Information about the used themes, background images, etc. is not available through Gentoo. You will need to contact the author of the screenshot (if you can find this person) for more information.

You can always try locating the authors on our #gentoo chat channel on irc.freenode.net or through the gentoo forums.

(Almost) default GNOME

Bartek's shot is one of Gentoo Screenshot Contest winners. Bartek got this decent look by illusion of 3d wallpaper connected with arrangement of pretty icons. This is good example of how a default theme can be used to create a beautiful screenshot.

Elegant black WM

The second winner of Gentoo Screenshot Contest is Mikołaj aka mklimek, who is a KDE user so far, and he doesn't look to change that. On his exclusive screenshot you can see some KDE's utilities and icons which looks kinda gnome-like.

Space trip

Robert's screenshot demonstrates an appealing use of blue hues. Excluding cairo-clock, his KDE runs (as we can notice) qt-based only applications, as Kopete, Konsole and amaroK. Robert also cares about his irssi theme, which is distinguished by green colors.

Even more gentooish

That is probably the most "Gentooish" screenshot here ever and personally for me it is the most beautyful. Alexander runs GNOME, which not only looks pretty but also befits a Gentoo workstation.

Emerge that!

As you will notice, Massimiliano is going to build media-video/dvdauthor on his KDE box.

Minimal beauty

The second pretty screenshot of Bartek's desktop. This time he runs fluxbox with his "dark theme" whatever that means. But the hidden beauty of the screenshot is sane connection of audacious theme, fluxbox's theme and wallpaper.

Default things can be pretty too

A fellow who goes by Purple (whether that is his nickname or real name we don't know) submited his nice-looking screenshot of KDE displaying yakuake during sync process, and conky. All composed with decent wallpaper makes it unusual.

Darkclown Coronado

Darkclown (don't ask) submitted his nice-looking screenshot, displaying the vista-Inspirate icons by saki and the gears desktop by ChristianNickel. His desktop is a KDE environment with Plastik window decorations and keramik style. You'll also notice karamba plugins like liquid weather and cynapses aero.

Scott S Short

Scott's box uses the 2.6.14-gentoo-r2 kernel with Gnome 2.12, showing off the Milk 2.0 theme. All icons originated from the Gentoo web site.

Richard Head

Richard is one of our many Gentoo users who is impressed with Gentoo's flexibility. He describes his screenshot as "pretty cool", showing mp3 player, system status information, transparent terminals and menu and a root tail of a port scan.



1 comments:

xuemei said...

Now do you worried about that in the game do not had enough Archlord gold to play the game, now you can not worried, my friend told me a website, in here you can buy a lot Archlord money and only spend a little money, do not hesitate, it was really, in here we had much archlord online Gold, we can sure that you will get the cheap Archlord gold, quick to come here to buy Archlord gold.

Now do you worried about that in the game do not had enough Atlantica online Gold to play the game, now you can not worried, my friend told me a website, in here you can buy a lot Atlantica Gold and only spend a little money, do not hesitate, it was really, in here we had much Atlantica online money, we can sure that you will get the cheap Atlantica online Gold, quick to come here to buy Atlantica online Gold.

Vote for my Blog

Linux News

My Blog List

National Geographic POD

Social Bookmarking
Add to: Mr. Wong Add to: Webnews Add to: Icio Add to: Oneview Add to: Linkarena Add to: Favoriten Add to: Seekxl Add to: Kledy.de Add to: Social Bookmarking Tool Add to: BoniTrust Add to: Power Oldie Add to: Bookmarks.cc Add to: Favit Add to: Newskick Add to: Newsider Add to: Linksilo Add to: Readster Add to: Folkd Add to: Yigg Add to: Digg Add to: Del.icio.us Add to: Reddit Add to: Jumptags Add to: Upchuckr Add to: Simpy Add to: StumbleUpon Add to: Slashdot Add to: Netscape Add to: Furl Add to: Yahoo Add to: Spurl Add to: Google Add to: Blinklist Add to: Blogmarks Add to: Diigo Add to: Technorati Add to: Newsvine Add to: Blinkbits Add to: Ma.Gnolia Add to: Smarking Add to: Netvouz Information