| New Gentoo updates installer, revises profiles |
Jul. 07, 2008
 The Gentoo Linux project team today announced the availability of its "2008.0" release of Gentoo. New features of the developer-oriented Linux distribution include an updated installer, improved hardware support, reworked profiles, and a switch from Gnome to Xfce for its LiveCD, says the team.
Gentoo Linux is positioned as a versatile and fast Linux distro aimed at developers and network professionals. Its Portage package management system is unusual in that it is an old-school "true ports" system in the tradition of BSD ports, yet it is also Python-based and boasts advanced features. These include dependencies, fine-grained package management, "fake" (OpenBSD-style) installs, safe unmerging, system profiles, virtual packages, and config file management.
The last major release, Gentoo 2007.0, was posted in May 2007. It added features including support for Gnome 2.16.2, KDE 3.5.5, and Xfce 4.4 desktop environments, as well as updated Firefox and OpenOffice.org versions. The 2007 release also updated the 32-bit emulation libraries for the amd64-bit version, which was said to improve support for certain closed source applications and plugins.
The Gentoo 2008.0 release offers 2.6.24 kernel support and includes "updated versions of many packages already available in your ebuild tree," says the Gentoo team. Specific improvements are said to include:- Updated installer -- Networkless installations are now limited to using the LiveCD's packages and ebuild tree. The installer is said to contain "numerous fixes for extended and logical partitions."
- Improved hardware support-- Linux 2.6.24 kernel specific hardware drivers have been added.
- "Complete" rework of profiles -- Extensive profile restructuring enables "significant cleanup of redundancies," says the Gentoo team, which claims the improvements streamline developer maintenance. Profiles now appear in /usr/portage/profiles/ under default/linux/ instead of default-linux/.
- Xfce instead of GNOME on the LiveCD -- Switching to the lightweight Xfce environment saves space, says the team. Users are said to still be able to build Gnome or KDE environments from source.
- Updated packages -- Newly updated packages include Portage 2.1.4.4, Xfce 4.4.2, and gcc 4.1.2 and glibc 2.6.1.
The team reports that due to technical difficulties, the current release does not support LiveDVDs on x86 or amd64 platforms. "They may show up later," says the team.
In other news, the Gentoo council just held elections, with a turnout of 57 percent comprising 145 developers. All previous council members who ran were re-elected, says the council, and the two new members are Mark Loeser and Tobias Scherbaum. More information on the election may be found here.
The free Gentoo Linux 2008.0 release is said to be available here.
-- Eric Brown
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