Gentoo Puts Out Linux 2006.0 Release

Published: February 28, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

If you like to roll up your sleeves and get into the guts of Linux, if you like the Debian style of Linux, and if you like the idea of a sophisticated application packager, then you will probably like the Gentoo version of Linux. The Gentoo project yesterday put out its first release for 2006, which is called Gentoo Linux 2006.0, and it has lots of new stuff.

While many features of the Gentoo Linux operating system have been updated for this 2006.0 release, one of the main distinguishing features of Gentoo, called Portage, is still part of the package and is what makes Gentoo so flexible. Portage keeps track of the packages you have installed on your very own Gentoo Linux system and then updates those programs as frequently as you desire. And, because of Portage, the Gentoo project doesn't make a big deal about a "new" release of the software. Every time someone invokes Portage, they are, in effect, creating a new release. Releases like 2006.0 are really just a snapshot in time all placed on mirrors or CDs.

Gentoo has made a lot of progress in the past few years. With the 2004.0 release two years ago, Gentoo ran on X86, PowerPC, UltraSparc, Alpha, and MIPS processors and put out its first LiveCD installation available for X86, PowerPC, UltraSparc, and Alpha machines. With a LiveCD, you load and run Linux from a CD and never mess with your hard drive; think of it as dating instead of being married and you get the right idea. Gentoo 2004.0 included the then-latest stable releases of the KDE and Gnome graphical user environments, supports ReiserFS, XFS, ext3, EVMS, and LVM file systems, and over 6,000 Linux applications.

With Gentoo Linux 2005.0, experimental support for 64-bit AMD Athlon and Opteron and IBM PowerPC and Power processors was added to the support list, and work began on 32-bit Sparc processors from Sun Microsystems and 64-bit Itanium processors from Intel. It also included optimized kernels for specific platforms and a hardened security approach (which, in fact, pushed the 2005.0 release to the end of March that year).

Now comes Gentoo Linux 2006.0. With this release, the project is supporting more than 10,000 packages in the portage tree, up from 6,000 packages two years ago when the 2004.0 release, which was arguably the most important one put out by the Gentoo project up until that time. According to the project, this is the first release with the Gentoo Linux Installer on the X86 LiveCD, which replaces the Universal and PackageCD set. The LiveCD also has a fully-fledged Gnome environment, and later releases will include KDE support as well as a new LiveDVD.

Gentoo Linux 2006.0 has support for the Linux 2.6.15 kernel as well as the KDE 3.4.3 and Gnome 2.12.2 interfaces and the GCC 3.4.4 compilers. IBM donated some PowerPC hardware to the project, and the PPC64 team at the Gentoo project and now offer a 64-bit kernel with 32-bit userlands (instead of just a pure 64-bit environment). The kernel has also been optimized for the PowerPC G5 and Power5 processors and includes experimental support for full framebuffers in dual-core PowerPC G5 chips and their related thermal management features. And unlike Gentoo Linux 2005.1, it supports newer Apple PowerBooks as well as older G4-based machines. Support for AMD X64 architectures is also improved in both the Linux 2.4 and Linux 2.6 kernels, and 64-bit memory extensions have been moved into production from experimental stage. On Alpha chips, users can choose a 2.4 kernel and opt out of the new threading model or go with the Linux 2.6 to get the Native POSIX Threads Library (NPTL) support.

You can download Gentoo Linux 2006.0 at this link, which also has a BitTorrent download if you are feeling generous with your bandwidth. The CD releases of the software will be available in March, with $5 from every sale going to the Gentoo Foundation.

A few weeks ago, Daniel Robbins, the founder of the Gentoo project, left Microsoft after a six-month stint at Big Bill helping the company try to understand open source. Robbins has apparently moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and is working for an application software provider tweaking .NET code. Robbins set up the Gentoo Foundation in 2004 because he wanted to do something else, and it will be interesting to see if he can resist the temptation to get involved with Gentoo again.