More about Gentoo Linux

Gentoo Linux

Gentoo is a free operating system based on either Linux or FreeBSD which is optimized and customized efficiently to operate in the server, workstation, desktop and gaming environments. It has extreme configuration ability, better performance, and actively maintained by a group of more than 300 developers. Whatever you need to do, Gentoo can become an ideal because of its near-unlimited adaptability. Gentoo is more than just an operating system. Users to enjoy Gentoo because of well documentation, infrastructure, release engineering, software porting, quality assurance, security followup, hardening, and more. Gentoo Linux was developed using a technology known as Portage which simplifies Gentoo updates and enables the user to build their entire system from source with complete control over whatever packages are installed or not.

Why should you use Gentoo-Linux?

Speedy

Gentoo takes its name from the Gentoo penguin, which is the fastest swimming species of penguins in the world. Gentoo creator Daniel Robbins has given it the name since he knew Gentoo features would make it the fastest Linux distro, given the right optimization options. All Linux distros are based upon the same kernel and all are customizable, but not all have built-in tools which ease the optimization process like Gentoo.

Enhanced Security

Firewalls are an excellent way to secure your system. Gentoo allows the user to create dynamic scripts that are essential when improving network security and rate of system responsiveness. The scripts can also be generated when making rapid and complex modifications in your firewall protocols.

Great optimization

In Gentoo, the default way of installing a package is by compiling it, that takes longer to install a program, but the advantage of this method is that you can set your own use-flags in order for the compiler to build the packages tailored exactly to your computer’s hardware and needs.

Flexibility

The strong points of Gentoo are its flexibility which allows it to be installed on the largest number of different architectures and to work with almost any hardware parts you might have. If you wish to use an upstream version of a certain package, its flexibility also comes into play in a situation where you want to mix different packages versions on the same system.

Ultimate programming experience

The OS offers numerous documentation pages that give you power like a Linux programmer. Various compiler flags sprucing up the whole programming experience moderate the compilation process. In addition, building/compiler packages in Gentoo are easy to compile, as they are essentially shell scripts.

Up-to-date software

Gentoo offered bleeding edge software and updates. In the old day's distros only did security updates and only upgraded software on a new distro version release. Now, developers had a reason to release regular updates of their apps.

Control

Gentoo gives you control over every aspect of your OS including small details, such as, whether to install a package with Radeon-driver support when you know your graphics card is Nvidia if you’re not going to install KDE then why would you need your programs to have a built-in support for it? With Gentoo, all these accumulated bloatware can be easily disposed of when you use it.

Satisfaction

Everyone likes to build successfully something of his own, it’s a feeling of satisfaction for succeeding in doing something right, it also usually boosts your self-confidence. Gentoo is a distro which makes you feel this way sometimes since not everything is served for you on a single platform, you have to build it on your own, it makes you proud and builds confidence.

Learn more

And lastly, the learning curve is steep with Gentoo, because you can learn new things almost every time you run this OS, especially if you do so on testing branch. The stuff you learn from using Gentoo aren’t always Linux specific nor Gentoo’s ones, so it may be applied to more than one platform or event, thus Gentoo can be very useful for you in a general manner.

 

Conclusion

Installing Gentoo Linux is easy. Since you compile things, it takes a little longer. You start with an ISO image, download the latest minimal system and lists of available packages, and install what you want from there. A little way through, you realize this is a system that wants you to know how it works, rather than protecting you from that and there is no doubt about that it played a vital part to getting Linux distros organized and maintained within set standards, but with the powerhouse CPU's of today and distros having adopted everything Gentoo once stood for, and no need other than curiosity or for learning more of Linux that one would try Gentoo. Thank you!