 The official Gentoo Linux logo | |
| Release Status | Maintained |
|---|---|
| Release Model | Rolling Release / Stable |
| Package Manager | portage |
| Default Desktops | KDE Plasma |
| Usage Type | Desktop, Server |
| Architectures | amd64, alpha, arm, arm64, hppa, ia64, loong, mips, m68k, ppc, riscv, s390, sparc, x86 |
| Website | gentoo.org |
Gentoo Linux is a source-based Linux distribution, aimed around user customization. This distribution, in addition to having the systemd init system, also provides its own init system known as OpenRC.
Unlike other Linux distributions, everything you install is compiled on the local system. As such, users can use compile flags, known as 'Use Flags,' to help them fit their system to their use case. .[1]
Their unofficial mascot is Larry the Cow, a cow who was once frustrated at the state of Linux distributions until he found Gentoo Linux.[1]
Gentoo has support for a large variety of hardware and has extremely minimal requirements, which makes it great for most devices.
Portage
Portage is the package manager for Gentoo Linux, it provides many configuration options based off of Bash, an example make.conf can be found here. Emerge is a front-end for Portage and is used to manage the entire system.
Trivia
- You can find Larry the Cow by running
emerge --mooon the command line.