Gentoo Linux 2008.0

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Gentoo Linux 2008.0

In recent times the Gentoo Linux and its foundation has been plagued with a multitude of problems and times have certainly been challenging for this once popular distribution. It's already July and we are now finally seeing Gentoo's first official release of the year. In this article we are taking a brief look at Gentoo Linux 2008.0 and its changes.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=12571

[Chewi]

Phoronix: Gentoo Linux 2008.0
Aside from these changes, there really isn't much to get excited over with Gentoo 2008.0.
http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=12571

That was very badly put. It's true that Gentoo releases aren't really as exciting as releases for other distros but that's because of the way Gentoo works. You never have to reinstall or do some clunky upgrade from one version to the next. The continual updating of packages keeps the system as a whole up to date.

[Vadi]

Looks very nice

[nightmorph]

. . . once popular distribution

That's rather trollish, don't you think? We're still popular.

Whatever made you think we weren't? Hope you haven't been getting that viewpoint from tabloids like DistroWatch.

Also, correction to the article, which states:

The Gentoo Linux installer now supports network-less installations using the packages and ebuild tree on the LiveCD.

This is incorrect; this has been the case for several releases now. All binary packages you install are pulled from stuff already on the CD.

In days past, you used to be able to use the graphical installer to perform a networked install, but in order to reduce the chance of user error, the installer has been changed to only use the packages on the CD. Sometimes users would select bad combinations of networked/networkless options despite repeated warning messages in the installer not to, and resulted in a broken system or incomplete installation. Hence why the installer was changed to operate only in networkless mode.


Anyway, yes, the release is out. Right now we offer LiveCD media, since there were weird issues cropping up with the generation of LiveDVDs, but once we get some out the door we'll announce them, too.

Also, the LiveCDs contain Xfce, which is total win for everyone.

[rolz]

w00T they shipped it? cool.

i'll have top upgrade my profile soon ...

[Naib]

yer agree with nightmorph, views on this report are not neutral.

Look at the Gentoo installCD as a liveCD in its own rights - since you can install Gentoo from an Ubuntu installCD if you wanted

and from that P.O.V. the hardware support and all that jazz is good from the LiveCD P.O.V. (with only SystemRescueCD being my fav... oh gentoo based as well and only because sysrescue comes with loads of useful tools)

[jeffro-tull]

man, I'm glad I'm not the only one upset by the wording in this article. Nothing to be excited about? If you know what you're doing (or are patient and can read), Gentoo itself is exciting. It takes the core idea of FOSS (choice!) and takes it to the extreme. Don't want a piece of software? Then it's not installed. Don't need functionality Y in software Z? It's not only disabled, but it's simply not there. Wonderful!

"Releases" of metadistributions like Gentoo aren't as earth-shaking as other distros (the ones that release with regularity, read: Fedora, Mandriva, Ubuntu), but that's because things are ALWAYS happening. It's just a snapshot of what's stable at the moment.

I can't wait until Debian Lenny goes stable. I bet Phoronix will have some choice words in that article.

[Forge]

release engineering team to avoiding the 2008.0 release any further.

Avoid delaying, you meant, I think.

And yeah, oh my, the LiveCD didn't get updated for a while. Oh teh noes. Good thing my actual install is perpetually up-to-date.

I love seeing things on Phoronix and promptly going to portage and installing them. I get Nvidia driver updates usually same day or next day, same for vanilla kernel updates and ati drivers. Everything else is up to date all the time. I never have to wait for current+1 or switch to a beta version to get a particular update.

WTF else do you need?

My only Gentoo wishes revolve around the portage wrapper scripts for installing some of the retail games. They aren't as complete as I'd like, and/or are slightly outdated. I just install using the vanilla installers and it's ok, like I assume most folks do, but it would be nice to have portage track/apply updates for me.

Currently the Gentoo ati-drivers installer yells about pci_find_slot being missing and fails, but that was fixed last ati-driver and I haven't gotten a bug filed, so meh.

Instead of saying 'OMFG NOES, what is wrong with Gentoo', why not ask yourself what is right, cause it's a longer list.

[aniruddha]

Aside from these changes, there really isn't much to get excited over with Gentoo 2008.0.
http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=12571

Gentoo is 'released' trough 'emerge world' on a daily basis, which fortunately isn't very exiting (if I want exciting I try ~x86). Saying that release 2008 isn't very exiting is entirely missing the point of a meta-distribution like Gentoo.

[yoshi314]

if we were to mention all changes since 2007.0 - openrc and baselayout2 (new initsystem) would be one huge change.

still it should be STRONGLY mentioned that changes affect only the installer and install media.

people using gentoo on their pcs are always running up-to date distro of they update their system at least once per month. it's a rolling-release distro, not like ubuntu where you have to skip to the next release to get e.g. new gnome version.

i actually never understood the purpose of gentoo install cd, since i always installed by gentoo from knoppix dvd or archlinux ftp install cd ;-) gentoo can be installed from under arbitrary distro, it if runs the right kernel (currently it's 2.6.* i guess, because of the way glibc is built in the stage).

phoronix went really downhill on this one. posting some screenshots won't describe gentoo.

it should be a more technical article instead of hastily written copy-paste from original announcement with some random screenshots.