The 2008.0 final release is out! Code-named "It's got what plants crave," this release contains numerous new features including an updated installer, improved hardware support, a complete rework of profiles, and a move to Xfce instead of GNOME on the LiveCD. LiveDVDs are not available for x86 or amd64, although they may become available in the future. The 2008.0 release also includes updated versions of many packages already available in your ebuild tree.
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Member since:
2006-06-22
Damn! I just finished compiling 2007.0!!
Ha ha yeah I know you can get the latest packages even if you start installing from 2007.0 CD. ;o).
p.s. Congratulations to Gentoo team. Still the most configurable linux distro around for people that need *complete* control over their system.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Member since:2005-06-29
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2005-07-07
Member since:
2006-01-11
I'm glad they released 2008.0. I used gentoo on my desktops and laptops from aug 2002 till december 2008 when I got my new laptop (Lenovo T61p) and switched to Fedora.
The half year before that Gentoo felt very broken and I just wanted to have a working situation that lasted longer then two weeks.
It still saddens me I had to switch...
Edited 2008-07-07 09:06 UTC
Member since:2005-08-12
Member since:2007-02-05
You might want to try Arch Linux.
It's not as automatic as Fedora/Ubuntu/SuSE/etc... but it's not as complicated to install as Gentoo.
It has precompiled packages optimized for i686, but can also rebuild your whole system(or parts of it) if you wish.
There is also a x86-64 port, not sure of how complete this one is yet. Haven't tested it.
Despite being a "geek-distro" I(coming from a Ubuntu-background) found my around it using the beginners guide very easily.
Recommended. 
More info here: http://archlinux.org/
Compared to other distros: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_vs_Others#Arch_vs_Gentoo
Member since:2007-07-01
The half year before that Gentoo felt very broken and I just wanted to have a working situation that lasted longer then two weeks.
It still saddens me I had to switch...
I'm not sure what you were doing, but I use Gentoo as my primary OS on all 3 machines I work on (home desktop, Work desktop, laptop), and none of them feel "very broken" every two weeks.
Member since:2005-12-02
"I'm glad they released 2008.0. I used gentoo on my desktops and laptops from aug 2002 till december 2008 when I got my new laptop (Lenovo T61p) and switched to Fedora.
The half year before that Gentoo felt very broken and I just wanted to have a working situation that lasted longer then two weeks."
So you are saying Gentoo is broken now? December 2008 has not arrived yet.... 
Member since:
2005-07-06
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2006-01-03
Member since:2006-06-12
Member since:
2006-07-26
Congrats. Although, I like to use Sabayon for installing Gentoo. It takes a little longer to boot up but its nice having a more complete environment to install from.
Having new install CDs is pretty meaningless with Gentoo. The real news here is that the 2008 profile is available which I have been using for quite some time now anyway.
I installed a 2007 profile on my laptop and it didn't work out so nice. Someone recommended to me to use 2008 since I was using amd64. It seems cleaner and things just work.
Member since:2006-12-30
The real news is not the livecd nor the new profile. You can install gentoo with almost any livecd. The new release was needed in order to start building your gentoo from an updated environment: using a stage3 with expat-1 (just to name one) was a PITA due to ABI breakage with expat-2.
Edited 2008-07-07 16:25 UTC
Member since:2006-09-18
I usually only install x86 or amd64 arches so for that you can use drobbins stages [1]. New ones are released quite often.
[1] http://www.funtoo.org/linux/
Edited 2008-07-07 19:01 UTC
Member since:
2006-05-09
When I moved from the Win world to the Linux side, I tested a lot of distros:
RedHat, Fedora, Suse, openSuse, Debian, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Slack, Gentoo... and I am still in Gentoo after several years...
Gentoo is a very nice Linux and its Portage is (IMHO) the best package/software management tool available today.
Kudos for the really really good work!!
Member since:2006-10-08
Gentoo's Portage seems to be inspired by FreeBSD's Ports Collection (I'm not sure what came first, but doesn't matter anyway) - it makes handling additional software installation very easy and you can dicide on different levels how "up to date" (read: cutting-edge, devlopment versions, not tested enough) you like your software.
Member since:2005-09-21
Gentoo's Portage was "inspired" by BSD's ports. The power of this system has kept me on gentoo for years. The package management on distros isnt that bad, it just doesnt seem right after been using gentoo for so long.. I love being able to "turn on" any feature I want and know the system is usually smart enough to figure out the dependancies. Whereas Fedora (which I do like quite a bit) I remember having to grab this devel package, then break it out, change this file, comment out line 250, download something else, and hope it all works in the end. Gentoo may seem harder, but when you want something your way, you usually get it.
Member since:
2006-09-12
I was excited by Gentoo because I'm a long time UNIX guy. I remember reading about Jolits port of BSD to the i386 and firing up PCs running 386BSD and the crufty per 1.0 versions of Linux. I'm used to getting down and dirty with source code.
After a week of installing Gentoo on an old PC I still had multiple things that didn't quite work right. I fixed a few of the problems but there were still a few more things that just weren't quite right. I'm sure I could have fixed them but I asked myself why I was going through all of this when there were so many distros that install in an hour and generally everything works on the first try.
Philosophically I like the idea of a source distro that builds and optimizes itself for your specific hardware but I decided this approach was more bother than it was worth. I tried Vector Linux and was super impressed. It seemed just as fast as Gentoo (Gentoo might have been faster with a stopwatch but Vector felt just as fast). Bit everything just worked with no tinkering. Since it has been a while I'll probably try Gentoo again.