Gentoo Linux is proud to announce the release of Gentoo Linux 2004.0 for the x86, AMD64, PowerPC, Sun SPARC, and SGI MIPS architectures.
Additionally, the Gentoo Hardened team is announcing the inaugural release of a security-enhanced Gentoo platform for the x86 architecture.
In addition to many bugfixes and security updates since the 1.4 release,
Gentoo Linux 2004.0 contains a cutting-edge development toolchain and user
environment including, but not limited to, Linux kernel 2.6.3, GCC 3.3.2,
GLIBC 2.3.2, KDE 3.2, GNOME 2.4.2, and xfce4.
We are pleased to announce the new Gentoo
Store. Available
at the Gentoo Store are Gentoo Linux LiveCDs that come complete
with the on-CD Gentoo Installation Handbook, 2004.0 Release Notes
and optimized pre-compiled binary packages. Users who want to
stay up-to-date for 2004 can purchase a subscription
that offers the shipment of each quarterly 2004.x release sent straight to their door.
Those wishing to donate to Gentoo Linux can now do so in an easy and secure manner
utilizing the new donation system. The Gentoo Store accepts PayPal, Visa,
Mastercard, and Discover for both orders and donations.
Gentoo Linux 2004.0 marks the debut of Catalyst, the new Gentoo release meta-tool. Using
Catalyst, developers and users can create and customize every aspect of
their Gentoo Linux system; from installation stages, to bootable LiveCDs, to
customized binary packages for the Gentoo Reference Platform (GRP). For more
information on Catalyst, please see the Catalyst project page and
online documentation.
Installation stages, LiveCDs, and GRP sets can be
found on our mirrors.
More information about the Gentoo Hardened project
can be found on its project page.
For more information, please consult our
documentation,
mailing lists,
user forums and official IRC channels.
I am running 1.4. So how do I go about upgrading to this? Is ’emerge sync && emerge system’ enough?
As always, emerge sync && emerge -UD world is what it takes, no more and no less ;-).
As always, emerge sync && emerge -UD world is what it takes, no more and no less ;-).
No offense but that is not very good advice. You should always use “emerge –uD world”. If you have unstable packages then you should add them to /etc/portage/pakckage.keywords. The -U option is an ugly hack that could possibley get you into trouble. Learn more about portage’s more advnaced features by reading through portage’s man pages.
Well, I guess it depend on your preferences. Honestly, I find far more convenient to use -UD instead of package masks.
By the way, is that a beta or the final version of the 2004 installation CD? I really wonder why they drop out the previous numbering scheme. It was far more logical and conventional.
Make that ’emerge rsync && emerge -u system’ and your done
(’emerge –help’ for, erhh, help 🙂 To update your whole install simply replace ‘system’ by ‘world’ or even ‘world –deep’, of course that will last considerably longer depending on your proc and installed ebuilds.
Btw, running up2date ~ppc on the AmigaOne (G4/800) right now, works like a charm, just recompile with gcc 3.3.3_pre (instead of 3.2.3, also -Os for -O2) and openssl speed gained up to 25%! Wonder if this will work out for anything else?! 😉
Just like Slackware skipped versions, Gentoo “1.4” didn’t have a very good ring to new users, since “everyone else is already at 9+!”
Anyways, they plan to do something like bi-annual releases, so it helps distinguish the dates it was made.
This should be the final version of 2004.0 though, as the beta one has been out for a while now.
I actually find the versioning scheme quite useful. You can actually associate a release to a date. Red Hat 9 lets you know it’s version 9 but you couldn’t go from there and tell how old the release is. 2004.2 lets me know it’s the second release of Gentoo in 2004.
Very cool.
When I used to use Red Hat or Slackware, I would install clean with every new release, just to avoid problems. The great thing about Gentoo is that you’re always up to date. My first thought upon seeing this was “and I just finished compiling my first system last weekend!” Then I remembered the whole point of Gentoo and smiled…
They could make it even clearer by doing the points by month so 2004.6.26 would be a special release for my birthday.
Gentoo never ceases to amaze me. I really like the idea of being able to produce my own stage tarballs using catalyst, not to mention the option to also build GRP packages for separate cds. Talk about flexibility.
But what I would really like to know, is what they have planned for April Fools. I don’t see how they could possibly top last year.
[i]2004.2 lets me know it’s the second release of Gentoo in 2004</
i>
Obviously you don’t do much programing and aren’t the greatest mathematician around! 2004.2 would be the third release in 2004.
I can not find on the mirror the iso images ?
No need to get hasty or mean, it’s rather that I just need to get some sleep.
Just like Slackware skipped versions, Gentoo “1.4” didn’t have a very good ring to new users, since “everyone else is already at 9+!”
And now other distros should change their numbering scheme because someone is already at 2004?
Developers shouldn’t mess with version numbers like that. Who cares if your competitor has an higher number? I also believe that annual-numbering sucks as you can’t know the real progress they’ve made (i.e. you expect 3.0 to be a major upgrade over 2.5.3 or something like that). Then again, I must admit that most developers just don’t care and use numbers for marketing…
This should be the final version of 2004.0 though, as the beta one has been out for a while now.
Okay, I was just wondering if THIS was the beta CD. I thought that OSNews was a bit late in their news…
@ mudrii:
If you’re looking for 650 MByte ISO’s to install Gentoo from CD, you should probably read the introductionary parts again… (Hint: Gentoo only provides boilerplate start-up code, and builds the main part of itself from sources downloaded on the fly…)
Regarding version numbers… it’s a very simple thing of what bears more information:
1.4
1.4.1
1.5
2.0
or
2004.0
2004.1
2004.2
2005.0?
Version numbers have been fine throughout the computing history up until Windows 95, and suddenly everybody goes crazy about them…
Why not get rid of the “20” in “2004.0” and upcoming releases? It won’t change anytime soon
[i]If you’re looking for 650 MByte ISO’s to install Gentoo from CD, you should probably read the introductionary parts again… (Hint: Gentoo only provides boilerplate start-up code, and builds the main part of itself from sources downloaded on the fly…) i]
Umm…Hint: GRP
> Why not get rid of the “20” in “2004.0” and upcoming
> releases? It won’t change anytime soon
… {speechless}
Why not get rid of the “200”, 6 years ain’t so soon either…
Serious, I thought the Y2k debacle taught people a lesson… seems I was wrong.
@ Stray:
> Umm…Hint: GRP
Yes I know, I was just anticipating what might be confusing him.
@ mudrii:
There *is* an option to download a larger Gentoo image with the larger packages being precompiled – as it can take quite a while to compile e.g. KDE.
However, as the website says, “these prebuilt packages aren’t maintained during the lifetime of the Gentoo distribution”, which pretty much defeats the whole purpose of chosing Gentoo over other distributions IMHO.
Did anyone find a 2004.0 Live-CD for ppc? I’d like to try it out on my dual-G5, but can only find the 1.4 release.
Yes I know, I was just anticipating what might be confusing him.
No prob
@ mudrii:
However, as the website says, “these prebuilt packages aren’t maintained during the lifetime of the Gentoo distribution”, which pretty much defeats the whole purpose of chosing Gentoo over other distributions IMHO.
I guess the one reason to choose it over other distros at the moment, even in binary form, is Hardened Gentoo. There really aren’t enough secure, non-commercial, distro’s out there…Which is a shame really.
Too bad they didn’t use the second field for the date.
Ergo the month
grin
Donaldson
Note: Base zero, must be a C coder.
Someone keeps posting links to this on Slashdot! It’s gonna get totally slashbotted in hours!
Is it just me that can’t find the stages for the 2004.0 release? I can’t find the stages or the livecd’s? Is there a release date? I just find the sse version, which I don’t really want.
I can’t find them either. As usual I think Euginea jumped the gun before the ISOs were posted. Oh well I have knoppix disk hanging around so I might try it that way. I will have a usable system on Knoppix until Gentoo finishes the compiling.
They could make it even clearer by doing the points by month so 2004.6.26 would be a special release for my birthday.
Wow, did you realise you haven’t been born yet Anonymous!! 🙂
I don’t know about the LiveCD ISO’s, but I found the stage tarballs in plain sight at /gentoo/releases/x86/2004.0/stages/…
Regarding “hardened” Linuxes, LinuxFromScratch.org is also working on one. (Which leaves a clear message: If you want it secure, build it yourself. 😀 )
> Someone keeps posting links to this on Slashdot!
> It’s gonna get totally slashbotted in hours!
Gentoo has a fair number of mirrors, and since it’s not another full-ISO-download website I doubt they’ll go down under your average slashdotting. 😉
I’m the release manager for 2004.0. We don’t have the actual goods up yet because we are waiting for the mirrors to propogate some before we unleash it to the world
All is ready to go, we are just pushing it through our infrastructure. Cheers –
I pulled the iso’s for sparc Friday and installed it on a new scsi hd, and grp was nice for a change on the Ultra 10 w/ 440MHz proc. Install only took a couple of hours and i’m now running 2.6.3 kernel on it.
My previous install on it took about 400mins for stage 1 and 400mins for stage2 and gnome was just ugly 😉
So I welcome GRP very much for this old dog. ;P
btw, install was perfect and all the grp software i installed works fine.
Thx Gentoo Dev’s 😉
It is NOT released according to #gentoo, the official channel.
–> You are now talking on #gentoo
— Topic for #gentoo is Gentoo Linux || 2004.0 is _not_ released! || XFree86 4.4? http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/15996 || autoheader problems? sync & re-merge autoconf || can’t load libstdc++.so.5? Run `ldconfig` || python upgrade? run /usr/portage/dev-lang/python/files/python-updater || new genkernel? commands and options changed, grub.conf is different (/usr/share/genkernel/README)
This was posted in the gentoo forums last week. I was using this on Thursday.
The topic in #gentoo was bad, 2004.0 is released. Just give the mirrors a couple of hours to update.
When is gentoo getting a decent graphical installer?
Prolly never, unless someone does it on the side. There is one or two out there, but i don’t remember the name or site.
I consider it not released until there is a notice at http://www.gentoo.org.
> When is gentoo getting a decent graphical installer?
You’re looking at the wrong distro…
We are currently working on an installer atm. It is in the planning stages, but I know that the person that was working on GLIS <http://glis.sourceforge.net> is helping us out with it. There are tangible future plans for a GUI installer.
As for a notice on the front page, I put the press release in the GWN, so when that comes out, there ya go.
>> I don’t know about the LiveCD ISO’s, but I found the stage tarballs in plain sight at /gentoo/releases/x86/2004.0/stages/… <<
The stages I am finding on all the mirrors are SSE versions which are hardened version of Gentoo. I am just looking for the regular versions.
I agree, it’s not on the forum/irc/front page.
I’ve checked just about every mirror and thier is no sign of them either.
I pulled the 2004.0 for sparc last week, but that was from “experimental” (does work
, but no sign of the x86 iso’s from what i’ve looked at.
I really think these distros are the killer ap for Linux. There are just so many damn things you can do with this.
Are either of these companies open to making money? I realize, in the real world, that sounds like a silly question. Not so, in the OSS world.
Damn GPL…
> When is gentoo getting a decent graphical installer?
—> You’re looking at the wrong distro…
Just because it runs well under the hood doesn’t mean it can’t have a nice GUI installer. If that mindset were true, who would need X, or Gnome or KDE. Just because something is cool and geeky, doesn’t mean that eletists should only use it.
I can’t find a PPC version of this release on any of the mirror sites. Is it out yet?
>> Just because it runs well under the hood doesn’t mean it can’t have a nice GUI installer. If that mindset were true, who would need X, or Gnome or KDE. Just because something is cool and geeky, doesn’t mean that eletists should only use it. <<
Follow the directions in the manual. I came from a Windows machine and didn’t know anything about Linux and still I found the install very easy to follow along.
There should never be a gui installer (yes I know they are working on one) because that’s like the opposite of what Gentoo is, but then again, they shouldn’t release binary packages for certain apps, but they do that now too.
“There should never be a gui installer (yes I know they are working on one) because that’s like the opposite of what Gentoo is,”
I personally don’t care if they have a GUI installer or not, as long as the text install remains. Installing from a chroot in Knoppix, or a distro on a separate drive, is just too easy to ever give up the text install.
forgive me, but I had thought that Gentoo was all about choice.. and thats it.
A GUI is not at all opposite of what Gentoo is about
forgive me, but I had thought that Gentoo was all about choice.. and thats it.
Bingo
Microsoft is doing just that since 1995…
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows 2000
Windows 2003
Yup, XP broke it. But it broke other things too so it’s consistent.
@ Norberto:
What Microsoft really did was:
Windows 95
Windows 95 B
Windows 95 C
Windows 98
Windows 98 SE
Windows ME
Windows XP
or
Windows NT 3.x
Windows NT 4 SP 1-6
Windows 2000
Windows XP
or… (dunno the server line…)
Talk about consistency…
Simply use LFS: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org
Yes, I guess that is true, but where do you draw the line? Make one binary, why not make a binary for all the builds? now gentoo is a binary gentoo like all the rest and there is really no reason to use it…bleh
er, binary distro*
“There should never be a gui installer (yes I know they are working on one) because that’s like the opposite of what Gentoo is, but then again, they shouldn’t release binary packages for certain apps, but they do that now too.”
Actually Martin, you are wrong. Gentoo isn’t “about” what you apparently think it is about. Gentoo is about choice. You will _always_ have the choice to install via shell, or text based install or gui install, or even a jumpstart style install (once the installer is done). It’s all about choice, and just because you want to install via shell (and so do I) doesn’t mean you have the right to deny the choice of installing via GUI to anyone.
Re Solar,
I little reordering
What Microsoft really did was:
Windows 95 Windows NT 3.x
Windows 95 B
Windows 95 C
Windows 98 Windows NT 4 SP 1-6
Windows 98 SE
Windows ME
Windows 2000/NT 5.0
Windows XP/NT 5.1
XP is really 2000.1 which is also called NT 5.1
MS has a serious issue with naming…
Donaldson
While we seem to have some Gentoo people around… the one thing that always scares me in Linux is the breaking of ABI’s. The latest glibc breaking things, the latest gcc breaking things, the latest kernel breaking things… you name it.
Can gentoo handle this? Is a kernel 2.4 -> 2.6 update also as simple as some ’emerge –black-magic’? Or glibc 2.3.2 -> 2.3.3? gcc 3.2 -> 3.3? I really don’t care about compile times.
What about configuration files I touched?
Does Gentoo solve the problem that careless ABI design created?
“Is a kernel 2.4 -> 2.6 update also as simple as some ’emerge –black-magic'”
Yes it works. Just did this two days ago to the 2.6.3 ck-sources. The only problem I had was getting the kernel config correct for the changes in usb & alsa, which have nothing to do with Gentoo.
“Or glibc 2.3.2 -> 2.3.3? gcc 3.2 -> 3.3”
Haven’t done this with glibc. Gcc went off without a hitch though.
“What about configuration files I touched?”
It is called etc-update. It lists new configuration files, which you select by number. For each file, you select whether you wish to keep your current config or replace it. You can also choose to auto-merge the changes, which I wouldn’t recommend for files like /etc/fstab, for example.
This is garbage. A gui installer would make it more accessible to normal people instead of just hard corps geeks. This has been an attitude that has crippled linux from the very start. The macho,intellectual,geek mentality. I think Gentoo is a wonderful distro, and a GUI installer that still allows for compilation of all packages as they are installed would be awesome. I have installed Gentoo before, but it becomes tedious to try and install it on multiple machines, and if you don’t do a stage 2 at least it is not worth the trouble. Some of the Debian distros out now are beginning to innovate, but Gentoo has greater untapped potential.
This has been an attitude that has crippled linux from the very start. The macho,intellectual,geek mentality.
Now…I’m not going to saying anything bad. But it’s definitely the furthest thing from “macho” one can get.
Heh, want Macho? As in any old school geek will tell you:
Real men write in assembly.
Neither is it “intellectual” — Nobody is writing code when they type “emerge” — Why someone would want to pat themselves on the back for that I’ll never know. Compiling does not make one “special” or “elite”.
The install process comes down to about the same basic process as any other distro, albeit with a little more user input involved and a finely-tuned system. It is NOT difficult. Why be proud of something that requires hardly any effort? Be happy that it’s an OS that provides Choice. But don’t fret when people do not feel like wasting their time, but still want Choice. There’s only one life to live.
I am against a graphical installer for Gentoo. It wouldn’t be all that bad if there was one, but people who use it would miss out on a fair bit of knowledge about their system.
It is like a right of passage. It may be tough but there is someone to hold your hand through it (install docs and forums). You will come out of it feeling confident about yourself and your system and be better prepared for any bumps in the road.
I also feel this way about genkernel, I recently weened a friend off of it. It took him a few tries to understand how to config a kernel by hand, but now he can do it no problem. And he has more customized kernels for his systems.
Why do you think that there’ll no longer be any reason to use Gentoo if there are binary versions avaiable for all packages? I think that’d be great.
I love Gentoo – I love how it’s set up, I think it’s wonderfully easy to use and administer, etc. And sometimes I find that compiling something is a major pain in the ass. I’m extremely happy that a binary openoffice is available through portage; I have *absolutely no need* to spend eight hours compiling my word processor in order to squeeze out that extra .01% performance. In general, I don’t mind the compiling — I like the USE variables, the choices, etc., and it doesn’t take all that long on my machines. But if I wanted to set up a new desktop really quickly, or didn’t want than many choices for every single package?
Binaries would subtract nothing at all from Gentoo, assuming that source was still an option for all packages. There would still be plenty of reason to use it. It’s nicely set up and fairly simple, and it gives you lots of control in terms of what you can do without making things too complicated. The online documentation isn’t bad, and the community — forums in particular, but also IRC — are often quite helpful. Those all seem like excellent reasons to me, and I doubt they’d go away if people weren’t forced to compile everything.
Learning is great, but it’s pretty easy to use the Gentoo install handbook like an instruction list (which it pretty much is) and not understand a damn thing you’re doing. Just because you go through the motions doesn’t mean you’re learning.
Also — what about people who don’t really want to understand everything that’s going on, but would like to use it anyway? People who want to learn will still be able to; adding a graphical installer won’t change this.
I’m not trying to troll here but I can’t understand the ethos of compiling everything. Compiling a program won’t make it run much faster than running a generic binary so what’s the point?
I prefer downloading and installing straight away instead of having to compile first. It must be a real drag to have to compile everything.
I don’t see the point in having a GUI except for a desktop workstation. If you’re setting up a server, you don’t need a 340Mb GUI just to parse webpages, process a database or to collect/send email. You don’t need a GUI whatsoever it’s a waste of resources.
If someone writes a graphical installer it should be like any linux software an option written by someone but not force anybody to use it. You only have to install a system once unlike Windoze.
Another point on versions. As soon as you emerge -u world you are using the latest version there is no specific version number which then becomes obsolete after a set period of time – unlike Redhat 6, 7 8 and 9 for example which become useless forcing you to upgrade to the latest version. However numbering Gentoo live CDs does serve as a useful reference point, so from time to time it is useful to install from the latest live CD to get a more up to date base system.
With gentoo you can have a choice of tweeking your system to the max. Its faster than you actually think. With pre-compiled binaries you get the options the person wanted. Not what you wanted.
With gentoo you also have portage.
Installing a program and all of its dependencies are as simple as emerge (program name) thats it!
“I’m not trying to troll here but I can’t understand the ethos of compiling everything.”
Some of us have used rpm distributions int the past. It never fails that some new programfoo.bar is released. Yet, you can not install it on your rpm based distro, since you don’t have all of the new libraries on which programfoo.bar rely. Mplayer, in the earlier days of it’s release, was one such program. Yet on Gentoo, a simple emerge mplayer of emerge kplayer and it was done. I don’t say this to bash rpm based distros. I have used them in the past and well aware of apt4rpm and urpmi. But if the rpm for the new libs haven’t been released yet, apt4rpm or urpmi won’t solve the problem. Gentoo does.
Additionally, by compiling everything yourself, the functionality is built into your packages based on the USE flags you have defined. For instance, say you want the latest gcc, but you don’t build java apps. You can unset the java in your USE flags (-java) and gcc will not build the java compiler. So you get exactly what you want or need. Or say you need a server which will be headless. USE=”-X” will build all of your apps without X functionality.
Alternatively, if you want a KDE or GNOME only system, you can unset those USE flags as well (-gnome or -kde, depending on your preference) If you do end up installing an app from a DE you don’t use, it will only install the libs necessary for that app to function, rather than the entire desktop. Again, taking Mplayer as an example, if you have mpeg & quicktime set in your USE flags, and the real video codecs installed, emerging mplayer will make sure that mplayer can handle all of those file formats. It is so much easier than tracking down rpms all over the net, then praying they will install without further dependencies.
Additionally, say you use KDE, but you don’t use kde apps such as atlantik, kformula or kregexpeditor. You can set the DO_NOT_COMPILE option in /etc/make.conf like this:
DO_NOT_COMPILE=”atlantik kformula kregexpeditor”
When you build KDE, the kde apps you do not want or use will not be built. My Gentoo system is KDE only, but my DO_NOT_COMPILE list is huge. I love this. I am left with only the KDE apps I use. Now some distributions, Debian is a good example, will allow you to install a single program, like kmail, without having to install the entire kdenetwork pacakge, which may have things you don’t need. But most distros don’t do that. If you want kmail, you must install kdenetwork in its entirety.
“It must be a real drag to have to compile everything.”
It’s not. Most of the updates you do are small. How long does something like ncurses, bash or texinfo take to build, minutes? For larger apps, emerge in the morning as you leave your house for work, or at night before you go to bed.
Compiling a program won’t make it run much faster than running a generic binary so what’s the point?
The point is that there are some users out there who at one point in time were afraid of being called n00bs. Then they convinced themselves that Linux was about being “elite” or something.
Insisting that one should compile _everything_ from source, that it makes any significant difference, just shows that you are still n00bs. Get a clue, will ya? You just end up proving that you know nothing about computing.
As for thinking that “compiling” a system is elite:
You’re no different than a script kiddie who thinks he’s “hacking”. How about writing you’re own OS…Hell, even just an app. Then maybe you can brag. Until then you are just a user like all those you criticize. Stop the elitist shit. I’ve met UNIX users who’ve been hacking away at it for 30 years. You know what they use now:
Macs.
Linux and Open Source is about choice, not knowledge, not about being an uber geek, and not about being “fringe”. It’s about giving people something to use, in whatever way they want to use it. It’s not about you patting yourself on the back.
Does anyone else dream about a Linux distribution that combines Gentoo with Debian? Use binaries when you want, use source when you want. FreeBSD comes close to this but doesn’t offer anyway to keep your system up to date with binaries. Anyone interested in starting out DEBtoo?
HAHAH! That’s already in process, even with the exact same name:
http://www.debtoo.org/
this is quite doable in debian already, make sure you have links to sources aswell as binaries in /etc/apt/sources.list, (deb-src http://example.mirror.org), do an apt-get update, then if you want to compile a package, just
apt-get build-dep <package name>
and then
apt-get -b source <package name>
it’s not completely great but i think there is a 3rd party package called apt-source or something that downloads and compiles dependencies too.
meh, i prefer using my iBook and writing my own apps now anyway. when my desktop dies i’ll replace it with an (i|e)mac 8)
“I’m not trying to troll here but I can’t understand the ethos of compiling everything. Compiling a program won’t make it run much faster than running a generic binary so what’s the point? ”
Two things… Firstly, there *are* big speedups available if you compile with the right flags…
If you run any multimedia software that requires video encoding/decompression or FFTs of any kind (they turn up in almost all plugins, the FFT is the real building block of DSP) then you can get speedups of 50% or even more.
(Compare fftw3.01 built plain to built with altivec support).
They don’t just put altivec, sse etc on chips to add a few letters to the feature list.
But… I have to say I like the method I see used in some commercial Windows and Mac software where speed critical parts of the code are provided with processer and feature (simd like sse, altivec sse2 etc) optimisation are detected and chosen at run time. This avoids having to compile different versions for all the different cpus out there. So essentially, you get the benefits of gentoo style optimisation with a single binary release.
Another caveat is that gcc x86 simd support is still a little flaky imho, but getting better.
Well, I guess it depend on your preferences. Honestly, I find far more convenient to use -UD instead of package masks.
/etc/portage/package.keywords solves a whole lot of problems that -U cannot. Just say that I want to emerge an unstable package. If I use ACCEPT_KEYWORDS it will attempt to install unstable dependencies as well as the unstable package. That can break a lot of stuff. Now if you have that package in package.keywords it will only install the unstable package you requested, while installing the stable versions of the dependencies. Also, downgrades for bugs and/or security reasons will be ignored with the -U option. I have encountered a Block many times before when trying to “emerge -UD world” because of dependency conflicts. The correct way is to use the /etc/portage/package.keywords.
It’s more like to get emerge functionality into apt-get for source code, not making Gentoo use binaries, as gentoo can be set up from scratch with binaries in about 20 minutes and use binary ebuilds anyway.
The advantage of using Gentoo is that say if you only use ALSA as your sound system as there are obout 4 main different sound systems out there, just put alsa -arts etc into your use flags. There’s no point in installing 4 different sound systems when you only use one, saving a waste of resources.
From another point of view setting up a server with just the minimum services from scratch which is more responsive, starts quicker and more secure than some pre-built distros which have a lot of services you have to disable.
As for speed a friend of mine changed from Redhat to Gentoo logging in from SSH he used to wait 5 seconds for the prompt to appear. With Gentoo it was near-instantaneous. So Gentoo was streamlined and responded quicker. Enough said.
Anyone who has ever done a stage 1 knows why it is all compiled. As well as being highly customizable it is INSANELY fast. I have never seen a linux system boot near as fast as Gentoo. If you need binaries use stage 3. Open Office already has binaries so if you can’t wait for the compile just go to openoffice.org and grab them.
> I have never seen a linux system boot near as fast
> as Gentoo.
Well, I have, but that was LFS (Linux from Scratch)… LFS teaches you more about Linux internals, while Gentoo has nice package support (portage), but other than that, they are pretty much of the same breed.