Wikipedia

Gentoo Linux

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 192.115.106.236 (talk) at 14:04, 4 February 2004 (1.4 already released; GRP provides binary packages, not the ability to use them - that was present before). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.


Gentoo Linux is a high performance, source-based Linux distribution. It has an advanced *BSD-style package management system called Portage which is written in Python. Gentoo is often referred to as a meta-distribution because of its high level of configurability. This includes the optional use of "USE flags" (in the Portage system), which describe the hardware and software features the user would like to include while building packages. The originator and current head of the Gentoo project is Daniel Robbins.

In Gentoo Linux 1.4, the Gentoo Reference Platform (GRP) was introduced. It provides precompiled packages, allowing users to avoid long compile times.

It is also possible to create tarballs of packages for distribution to other machines. This is particularly useful in the case of a homogenous computing environment, where packages may be used on many machines despite having been prepared on a specific one.

Gentoo currently runs on the x86, PowerPC, SPARC, AMD64, IA64, DEC Alpha and HPPA platforms.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gentoo_Linux&oldid=2314234"