Gentoo Linux

Gentoo Linux is designed to be fully optimized to each individual user's machine using a system called Portage which allows the user to compile a package and all its depencies easily. Portage is similar to the way the BSD ports collection works and makes it extremely easy to keep a Gentoo system up to date. Precompiled binaries for some of the large software packages are also available and you can use the packages CD to install these initially.

Installing Gentoo is somewhat more difficult than most other Linux distributions, requiring the user to run a series of command line utilities to partition the hard drive, compile the Linux kernel and initial packages but the system ends up configured exactly how the user wants and fully optimized to their system. There are pros and cons for doing it this way and this Wikipedia article section talks about some of the criticisms about Gentoo.

The online documentation for Gentoo is excellent and it is highly recommended to either print out a copy of the install guide or have a second computer connected to the Internet that you can use to refer to it as you install (the latter is preferable as the install documentation is pretty big).

Linux CD Mall

Shopping Cart