“Hi there. I’m sure many of you know that in addition to writing Linux articles, I’m also very involved in a free software project called Gentoo Linux. In this article, I’ll try to explain what Gentoo Linux is all about and also tantilize you with all the neat things we have in the works for Gentoo Linux 1.4, which we’re currently developing and should be available from our Web site by the time you read this article. So, what is unique about Gentoo Linux? Here are the answers.” Daniel Robbins introduces Gentoo Linux.
Gentoo Linux Reloaded
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
So now I finally know what the Live CD is for
Will it boot you to an X enviroment?
A Knoppix competitor perhaps?
My advice to all the Linux people out there – if you haven’t tried Gentoo yet,
then download 1.4 and try it out. It will take a while, but it’s well worth the waiting.
I just threw out Slackware from my computer at work and installed Gentoo 1.2 (can’t use 1.4 since our product won’t compile with gcc3).
And a suggestion to the Gentoo team:
You should post the names of everyone that has contributed through PayPal (as dyndns does).
I think that would encourage people to donate.
I started using Gentoo yesterday. It is a perfect mix between debian and FreeBSD.
However, I don’t use it because of the optimalisation options or whatever, but because the software is updated quited fast. Together with the heavily-patched Linux kernel (preempt, xfs etc) this is a perfect base for a desktop system.
Hm, tried the bootable UT CD, and although it booted, it completely failed to be able to use my NVidia GeForce 4 4200 video card. All I get is a screen full of garbage in text mode. All settings. Very strange. But I am interested in that kernel with all the patches pre-applied, I’d like to try compiling it and running it on my RedHat system. If I can get that to work I might want to play a little more with Gentoo, it would be great to have everything on the machine from the kernel up compiled with 3.2 and optimized with P4 optimizations. That, a cup of tea, and a nice, new mousepad, and my computing experience will be complete.
Self-compiling on installation, sounds like a neat idea.
Hi I have a question about Gentoo. I know it is supposed to be a very fast and minimal OS (in some respects) but why is it not possible to have a simplified installation? As far as I know, most distributions have GPL licensed installers. So why not build something from one of those? Then Gentoo could take over the world… ;-).
Pat
something i never understand is. i just read the ‘introduces’ link on the other page and the first thing i saw was a normal ordinary gnome 2.0 desktop. somehow it’s cheating to show the enduser a desktop like screenshot where the main core system (that what makes Gentoo become Gentoo) is everything else. what i am up to say is, that Gentoo is still Gentoo without gnome on it. so the screenshot is plain wrong. Gentoo can also be Gentoo if it installs KDE. Gentoo is still Gentoo if you show a WindowMaker screenshot. it’s sad and a nonunderstandable thing that people need to cheat their users by showing them stuff which is more or less an addition to Gentoo. they would have better done making some console screenshot of the installationscripts or something.
I’m using Gentoo 1.2 but close to moving onto 1.4.
Gentoo is an incredibly impressive distribution and the only things it lacks, really, are an idiot-install (which is easily possible) and a business based on binary downloads (that I would pay for as I don’t want to always compile).
It’s good.
I installed Gentoo 1.2 on an old machine: PII 300, 64MB. I thought that the Gentoo Linux approach would get me the fastest Linux possible on that particular hardware. I went the install-the-sources-and-compile-everything-yourself-way. Installation was ok, also it took a whole weekend to compile. What I don’t get is that the system downloaded everything from the net, but after the first reboot with its own kernel, it could not find the network card. Had to fix a lot by hand, but it’s as smooth as possible now.
Daniel mentions that the all-binary Gentoo is meant to have a running system in under an hour. Well I installed RH 8.0 on an Athlon XP 1800+, 512MB in 20 minutes and had it configured and on the net in an additional 3. SuSE 8.1 with some more apps took 30 minutes. Linux installation is a breeze now. I will give Gentoo 1.4 a try, but I doubt I get a real advantage with it on fast hardware.
I’d love to give Gentoo a go – I’m a Slackware user (and have been for 9 years), and everyone who has used Slack and tried Gentoo says it is about as good, with the difference being that you can optimise Gentoo to your heart’s content. I would LOVE to give this a go, except that Gentoo’s biggest advantage is also it’s biggest downfall: compile time.
It took me a whole day to compile Qt and KDE3. How long will it take to do a whole system? I know Gentoo puts up pre-compiled binaries, including the Athlon builds for my machine, but it’s only the base system software (why do you think the download is < 100mb). That still leaves a helluva lot of compiling.
My only solution would be to get an old box with a cross-compiling gcc. Build gentoo on it and then set the install prefix to a network share on your PC (NFS/Samba/whatever). But that will take even longer!
But I will get around to trying it when I have a week free. Or maybe a fortnight.
I just love my Gentoo Linux 🙂
It was hard to put it together but it’s worth it!
I can’t wait for a useable Gentoo for Alpha, debian will take a ride like on my x86 system to let Gentoo shine in all its glory!
Good article, should help give a good impression to future potential users. Very good job done by the Gentoo team once again
I used Gentoo 1.4RC1, and it was very buggy. I am well aware that I was using a release candidate, and have no complaints about the bugs I saw (all in applications, not the OS). I was really fond of Gentoo, but the compile time killed me. I’d like to see ISO’s with X, GNOME, KDE, and whatever else prebuilt for all the common intel hardware. That may draw me back to it. I thought the build process was pretty simple (I’ve been a Linux power user since 1996) I’d like to use Gentoo Linux, but I just can’t keep up with emerge haha.
i’d get gentoo.. except i don’t want to do all those commands to install it. can’t you guys just make an installer???
I dont want to start yet another flame war between Linux distros, but Gentoo truly IS the best in my opinion! But I’m sticking to 1.2 right now simply because I’ve tried it and I’ve liked it. Gentoo is the perfect Geek OS for lazy people. Portage just rocks
But yeah, BeOS is still my main OS – you cant beat the user-friendlyness that it offers
I’m using Gentoo for about three weeks now, my second Linux distribution/experience right after SuSE 8. The installation was pretty hard for me (there are still some bugs left in 1.4 RC1 – fortunately, the forum users were very helpful), as was the configuration, but finally, everything works as intended (X, sound, font rendering, wheel scrolling, etc.). It’s fast, it’s clean – I really like it. Portage is just a great thing.
We have been waiting for 1.4-Final for MONTHS now! They said they were going to release it in the middle of the summer, that never happened, and now here we are SEVERAL months later and still no 1.4.
I finally couldn’t take it any more and wiped my system clean (even though I didn’t need to – it was about time anyway – I hate OS clutter (even though it is all my fault)) a couple of weeks ago and loaded 1.4_rc1.
Wow am I glad I did! With GCC3.2 and the new kernel my system is snappier than ever. Great job Gentoo team.
Ok, now bring on the Gentoo trolls 🙁 Let me just get them out of the way:
1. You have to have a fast computer
2. You have to have broadband
3. It takes forever to install
4. Daniel Robbins is a Hindu cow brought back by the gods to give to the earth the ultimate Linux distro.
Let me just dispell these real quick
1. Use another distro – this distro never claimed to be able to be used by everyone. Don’t bring the project down because it doesn’t fit you
2. Look at #1
3. Look at #1
4. Wait – this one is true (at least partially 🙂
Now come on people – try it before you bash it. It really is fun, and I guarantee you will love your computer more after you load it.
Derek
From the article, new in Gentoo 1.4:
Thanks to the Gentoo Linux reference platform, a full installation of Gentoo Linux–including XFree86, GNOME, KDE and OpenOffice–can be completed in under an hour.
I think this feature was due–especially with the longer compile times that come with gcc 3.2. Though the installation is an educational experience, and very well documented, the idea that an install (of a system with desktop functionality) might take a few days is ridiculous.
With out the new “reference platform”, just setting up a gateway or an apache box takes a whole afternoon because that hardware is bound to be pretty minimal. I’m not sure which packages they’ve prebuilt in 1.4 (apart from the ones they mention), but by the time your P120 starts the second hour compiling the kernel, and you’re already many hours into the installation, Debian starts to look very attractive.
I will check it out, as soon as 1.4 is released and I can snag a boot cd .iso. It looks promising and it seems that the user has control more than some other distros. I have installed Red Hat 8 and am not really that happy with the USB 2.0 ports backward compatibility with USB 1.0 devices. So kernel 2.4.19 should be nice. I am also considering setting up Lindows on my second hard drive to see how that works out. I just need a more friendly operating system. (*note – I am a Red Hat shareholder but I need a desktop not a server). I need things to *work* and install themselves through the net without clicking on millions of .rpm’s and their dependencies. I want everything done for me. hehe
What’s the formal release date of Gentoo 1.4, I have been waiting it for sooooo long. Definitely I don’t want to jump in now, since the upgrade is painful on my machine.
I tried gentoo linux a little while ago, but when I was making gnome, I woke up the next mornging (because these things do take awhile;) to find it stopped w/errors. Seems not as stable as debian’s package management system. Anyway, I would love to try it again, the idea is really neat. My question is: how much speed is improved when you build everything w/optimizations from source? Is it really that much? A significant difference, especially on a modern machine? Or are the benefits really only seen on older/slower hardware?
How long will it take a dial-up user to get Gentoo up and running? Maybe this is silly question, but I don’t really understand how Portage works.
Also… can anyone comment on how debian and gentoo compare in terms of upgrading? I’ve mostly used RedHat in the past, but I’ve never been happy with rpm.
I used several distributions (YDL, Red Hat, Mandrake) but Gentoo is the only one that makes me passionate about Linux. It’s largely because of Portage and the Gentoo forums and also because of the social contract. Thank you Daniel Robbins & company!
I just poked around the gentoo site and it looks great. One thing though,.. No where can you *buy* gentoo cd’s from gentoo (yes, I realize they’re available elsewhere).
How do they stay in business? It seems like they must do an enormous amount of work on their distro.
Not to troll, but it seems like everybody who uses gentoo is a preacher. yes I used it. I used it starting at 1.0, made a couple ebuilds myself, did the gcc3 thing before it was supported, played, whatever. It takes so long. Debian unstable is updated just as fast. Unless you just want to keep your load average above 0.01 I dont really see the greatness. I think it’s a good distro and I love slackware and freebsd, which I see it being the biggest comparison to, but I dont see why everybody who uses it touts it as the greatest think to happen to linux since glibc. Use what you want, but I dont see why everybody who uses gentoo (or at least the vocal ones) has a superiority complex.
This is actually one of my favorite features of Gentoo. For awhile I was trying to get prelinking working (still doesn’t, btw) and I hosed my system after each trial. Until I got a brain and just made an image of my installed disk, I reinstalled after each hose. It was so refreshing to just issue a few commands and get the thing installed without having to wade through all the wait times (loading the ramdisk image, several passes through the package database, installation) of the RedHat or Mandrake installers. Don’t let the CLI installation scare you away. First, the docs are extremely good. If you have a basic idea of what you’re doing (which partition you want to install to) you just type exactly what the docs say to type, replacing with your partition number where needed. Also, it’s hard to mess up a Linux system. Usually, an error in entering a config file will just cause the kernel to issue an error and plow on through to a CLI prompt where you can fix it. At worst, the kernel won’t boot, and you just have to boot from the CD, mount the partition, and fix the problem there. So if you know the basics of Linux, give it a try. It involves maybe 20 lines of commands (including text file edits) all read from a script. C’mon, even telemarketers can read a script!
Gentoo and Debian both make it extremely easy to upgrade. Just type emerge world (Gentoo) or apt-get update (Debian) and the system is updated to the latest branch. Non of this “download a 700MB CD image every 6 months and pray it doesn’t break things” nonsense. As for dialup, that’s something that’s probably not a good idea with Gentoo. Installing a Gentoo system can involved downloading hundreds of megabytes of source code, something that would take days (and most likely fail somewhere in the middle) over dialup.
To the gentleperson who thought the names of Gentoo’s contributors should be posted: that one opens a can of worms. Some folks prefer to remain anonymous.
To the gentlepeople who do not like the idea of waiting a weekend for their operating system to compile or who would like an automated click ‘n’ drool installer, I’ll say only this: Mandrake. RedHat. SuSE.
To the person with the nVIDIA G4Ti4200, I run with the G4Ti4600. After you build your kernel, emerge nvidia-glx . That’s all it takes.
To the person who thinks that Dan Robbins is a reincarnated Hindu deity, you’re absolutely right, but don’t forget the rest of the pantheon. The Gentoo Forums are one of the best reasons to use Gento Linux. Gentoo enjoys a very friendly and helpful community.
To everybody else: If you use Linux because you like tweaking your OS, you’re gonna love Gentoo.
— Bill
I’m going to put gentoo on a via epia 800 system I think anyone else try it?
Rimmer asked about gentoo via dial-up. I found that the installation of Gentoo is really meant for broadband. However, you can enjoy the BSD ports system that Gentoo’s “portage” is based on with BSD itself! It works quite well over dial-up. I’ve run FreeBSD and NetBSD (and there’s also OpenBSD) and they offer the ease of dependency resolving and building from source that Gentoo offers without requiring cable modems or DSL.
Don’t let the fact that it’s not Linux scare you, the BSDs are closely related to Linux because they are based on Berkeley Unix. Most Linux software will run on BSD (FreeBSD has over 6,000 ports) and it even can emulate, without significant overhead, Linux binaries for when source code isn’t available. (For example, RealPlayer)
FreeBSD 4.7 and NetBSD 1.6 both have new versions that have just been released, BSD is far from dead. In fact the fact that Gentoo (and Slackware with it’s BSD init system) are immitatitating parts of BSD (immitation is the sincerest form of flattery) shows what a hacker-friendly system BSD is. 🙂
I would be very interested in what progress you make as i’ve been looking through many of the pictures at http://www.mini-itx.com with great lust… yeah i know that sounds pretty bad… as always check in the hardware and laptop section of the gentoo forum sure to be someone who has tried it.
Well, the reason people have a “superiority complex” with Gentoo is because it’s really *that good*, IF it is the kind of thing you were looking for all along. I wouldn’t slam something like Debian, but having dealt with horrid package management on other distros, I can’t imagine ever going back. The thing about Gentoo is, it is one of the most arduous installs of all of the distros I’ve tried, but once installed it is the easiest (or tied for easiest with Debian) to keep patched and up to date.
Criticizing the compile times for Gentoo is kind of like criticizing the gas mileage on race cars. The whole point of Gentoo is that it’s all built on your system; that is the prime differentiator between it and everything else. This is not appropriate for *every use*, not only in the sense of compile time but in the sense of how new everything in portage is. Frankly I think Debian and Gentoo compliment each other nicely – Gentoo for your desktop, to experiment with and install the latest apps on, and Debian for production (though I use Gentoo on my servers as well, but it is not a major production server).
Even if Gentoo does provide binary builds, this (in my opinion) dilutes one of the major reasons for using Gentoo in the first place. I’m trying to figure out why going through a *one time* (emphasis important here) 14 hour install (or whatever) is such an issue for people, especially since unlike other distros there is no reason to completely reformat and reinstall when a new version comes around (this present one being kind of an exception because of the gcc upgrade.)
One reason is, an individual has only one computer at their locale. That’s legitimate, I can understand that. But you really will only have to do this once. But it’s still possible you can’t tie up your computer that long. Keep in mind versions mean very little (usually) in Gentoo, since you can upgrade your system completely to *the day*.
Another is a rapid deployment environment, say in a corporation. Well, they’re working on precompiled binaries and the like, but I’d imagine in production using something like Debian would make more sense. I know one of the goals of Gentoo is to have a version for servers, specifically (Read this somewhere, forget where).
Yet another is just that people don’t have the OS install habits I do. Having been sick of reinstalling Windows every 3 months to deal with “OS rot”, I’ve adjusted to the fact that for me, a Linux reinstall is a BIG DEAL, a non-routine, worst case scenario situation. Beyond which I don’t experiment a whole lot on my system with other distros and OSes, so I figure if I have to do one 14 hour install per year, that’s trivial.
The last is just that people are used to accepting distributions pre-compiled with the kitchen-sink. There’s a place for those too. The point is, a lot of us really do like to compile things for our own architecture with specific support built in only for what we need. Alright, maybe we could use a bit more sun, but that’s why this distribution exists. It is specifically an *alternative* to distributions like Mandrake (what I used to run) and Red Hat.
Gentoo just gives you the most control, through a nearly idiot-proof simple interface. That’s why everyone raves about it. Because you can customize your system in incredibly detailed and powerful ways that aren’t possible on precompiled distros, and you can do that with very simple, easy to use tools that even a beginner could use. It’s just so well and intuitively designed (in my opinion).
As for the installer, well, again, the whole point is to truly own and understand and customize your system. Not only does the install process guide you through granular configuration options (and thereby teaches you something about what all those whizzo auto-configurators do), but it requires you to accept (almost) no decisions made by someone else. I found the installation to be quite enlightening and getting everything up and running gave me a great sense of accomplishment. And because of what I’ve learned, I can better troubleshoot problems should they arise. I have a much broader view now of how my system works. When I installed Mandrake for the first time, it seemed like a situation where I had to dismantle it brick to brick to see what was underneath and how it worked…digging, almost. Gentoo is the other way around – I watch it build from the foundation up. I have found both scenarios to be valuable but the latter one to be far more satisfying.
Gentoo isn’t for everyone, but it is for more people than it is typically recommended to. The install is *manual*, but it is not *difficult*. Just follow the instructions and *think* each step of the way. In the end, depending on what kind of user you are, you’ll have a much more productive and rewarding experience using GNU/Linux, if for no other reason that you’ll *know* what’s tweakable and modifyable.
And if you want to use something else, that’s fine too. If there is one distro that never seemed to be targeted at being the “killer” distro that unseats all of the rest and becomes the popular choice, it’s Gentoo. Gentoo is, however, the ultimate alternative, and it really is one of the most unique of all the distributions. It completely meets my needs and has fixed 99% of my complaints about the other distributions I’ve tried. For you, it may not. But it is worth looking at it as an alternative to other distros rather than a competitor. The philosophy is just too different.
Wow – couldn’t have said it better! Very well written.
I, like you, despise reinstalling my OS very often. I used to do it on average once every 3 months or so with windows (it would just get to a point where it was unusable, it would slow down and just give fits). Now of course this is because I am a HUGE tinkerer, so it is not ALL the OSes fault.
That said, if you read my earlier comment you will see that I reloaded gentoo with 1.4_rc1 a couple of weeks ago.
Why?
Well, because I was still running the same Gentoo I started with last January (or was it december – I can’t remember). I started with one of the 1.0pre’s so I had been upgrading quite a bit.
Given that, I just felt it was time to start anew. Plus I didn’t want to go through the “Upgrade to 1.4” doc (Although I have a friend that did just that and is running just fine).
This exposes one of the greatest things about Gentoo: CHOICE. You get to choose everything, and you have the freedom to deny anything. It is a very empowering experience (installing and using gentoo).
I have been using OSS for around 5 years now, and I think Gentoo is my favorite project of all in that time (although KDE is close – but lets not go there 😉 It is not the largest project – but it is one with well defined goals and enthusiastic people – and that makes using it fun.
Derek
“Gentoo in the first place. I’m trying to figure out why going through a *one time* (emphasis important here) 14 hour install (or whatever) is such an issue for people,”
It took 96 hours to emerge a working system with a GUI on a PII 400 w/ 320MB of Ram. Then it took another 48-50 hours recompiling because so many applications were unusable in the versions that were distributed. *THEN* once the system was somewhat stable I discovered that Mozilla plugins didn’t work, Abiword segfaulted when you exited, and many other little quirks. I like the OS a ton, but who can kill that kind of time? I did catch up on all the latest primetime shows though haha!
It took my dual Celeron 533 with 256 MB of SDRAM about 24 hours to emerge the system and the X/KDE thing. My dual Celerons are similar to your PII 400, because they have much less cache, and also I have less RAM, which is important when compiling big stuff.
I think that the 96 hours number you state is way too high.
Did you emerge koffice, mozilla, openoffice, mame, abiword, gnumeric, xine, mplayer, gnome, etc too? I did 😉
I noticed the following post on slashdot (hi dreamfactory!) and couldn’t agree more…
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=42093&cid=4434591
It seems that slashdot submitters read it here first!
Good job, Eugenia.
Rob,
I have been running gentoo for a few months now. Let me let you in on the secret, even if building all of kde takes a day, once it is built once, you can use the old version while the new version compiles at nice -19. So first you install a barebones gentoo system. Then you pick one or two apps you use most and emerge them, for example a webbrowser. Once you have emerged that you can begin to emerge everything else while you browse the web
. Yes it may take a few days before everything is back to normal, but it is not as bad as you think, because you can use your system as it builds stuff.
–Nate
Why can’t the source (the ebuilds?) come on a CD (or several CD’s)? After the system is up and running you could install more recent versions of packages from the net. Or maybe Gentoo will do this someday?
Debian unstable is updated just as fast.
so what version of kde is debian unstable running again? and gnome?
updated just as fast my ass. plus if you actually want to compile something not included in the distro you don’t have to chase down 20 different -dev and libfoo packages since debian fragments the packages. last i heard they wanted to fragment the linux kernel into free and non-free. f that, i’m outta there.
as soon as i replace my 6 year old computer i will give gentoo a shot i think – that or freebsd. i just started a job where we run freebsd and it rocks but i’ve been using linux for so long that i understand all the little tweeks so much better. gentoo sounds like a good mix of both.
the only thing I’m waiting for is a new hard drive for the epia then I get to try it
so I’ll be sure to tell all about it.
Getting a new installer is harder said than done. This is because most, if not all, graphical installers out there is based on a different package manager than Gentoo.
Some developers, BTW, is making a graphical installation based on Anaconda, but don’t hold your breath.
Well, the source cvs checkin itself is almost 200GB from what I understand. I wouldn’t want that many CD’s!!! 😉
But I am sure at some point they could put the source to the most commonly used apps on a CD – or maybe someone else will.
Derek
Would it be possible to mirror the CVS tree (from work) burn it onto CDs, copy onto my dialup box and point potace at that?
if so, does portage support his or would it be a hack?
I run Gentoo 1.4 on a PIII 500, from a stage1 it took around 24h to get to a fully functional Gnome2 desktop.
The scary installation procedure was the reason I hasitated for a month or so before I dared to install it, but once I gave it a try, I succeeded first time (being completely new to Linux). Don’t let the scary installation hold you back, do as I did, print the installation guide, read it through, prepare, ask in the gentoo forums Newbie section about the parts you are unsure about the go for it, it’s really easy once you get started.
Why are we so vocal about Gentoo? Personally I’m vocal cause after having used Redhat 7.2 (slow), Mandrake (medium), and Suse 8.0 (fast), I got around to try Gentoo in an effort to have my Linux perform atleast up to par with my Windows install, so I tried Gentoo… and today there is no more Windows on this box, Gentoo left it in a trail of dust.