So, as you can clearly see the Gentoo distribution of linux has a very unique and well-founded legacy. Gentoo was created and developed around this 'philosophy' which it still holds true to today.
"The Gentoo philosophy, in a paragraph, is this. Every user has work they need to do. The goal of Gentoo is to design tools and systems that allow a user to do their work pleasantly and efficiently as possible, as they see fit. Our tools should be a joy to use, and should help the user to appreciate the richness of the Linux and free software community, and the flexibility of free software. This is only possible when the tool is designed to reflect and transmit the will of the user, and leave the possibilities open as to the final form of the raw materials (the source code.) If the tool forces the user to do things a particular way, then the tool is working against, rather than for, the user. We have all experienced situations where tools seem to be imposing their respective wills on us. This is backwards, and contrary to the Gentoo philosophy."
The Gentoo distribution has numerous specialities, powerful tools and even some quite unique ones. To give you a full list would make this article far longer than it needs to be ;) but here are some off the top off my head -
- Masking
- USE Flags
- Ebuilds
- Portage (similiar to Debians APT)
Gentoo is a one-CD downloadable distro and can either be run as a Live CD or installed to your system, it even supports dual-boot. Gentoo also take a lot of pride in having cutting-edge updates and sporting a great mulimedia bundle with the system; KDE, GNOME, OpenOffice, Mozilla, FireFox, the list goes on. The gentoo official Mascott is Larry the Cow and the short and stumpy Gentoo penguin.
In summary, Gentoo is a great operating systemm it's free and it's quality!
http://www.gentoo.org
This article was originally published by CyberArmy.net in the CyberArmy Library.
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