Gentoo Linux is a source package-based GNU / Linux distribution aimed at advanced users with operating system experience. It was founded by Daniel Robbins, based on the dormant distribution called Enoch Linux. In 2002, the latter was renamed Gentoo Linux.
Gentoo Linux was initially created by Daniel Robbins as the Enoch Linux distribution. The goal was to create a distribution without precompiled binaries, which was tuned for hardware and only includes the necessary programs.
Gentoo Linux promises from its installation, a customizable start to the user’s taste. Since this process is done through commands and there is no graphical installation interface to guide it. For the installation, a compressed file called stage is used that disseminates the Gentoo project in a time that they consider, then a series of processes documented in their Wiki must be followed in order to carry out the installation.
Gentoo Features
Here we can appreciate some functions that this distro offers us:
▸Portage: The cornerstone of Gentoo is Portage, a package manager inspired by FreeBSD ports, written in Python and Bash. Portage implements some advanced features that are not present in FreeBSD ports. Portage is a high-level manager that allows you to interact with this beautiful system. One of the commands used to manage the software installed on the system is called emerge. It is mostly written in Python and can be found in / usr / lib / python-exec / version_python / emerge
▸Programming language: It allows us to interact with the equipment in a language that we can understand as if it were speaking in English or another foreign language. The most typical are C, C ++.
▸Source code: It is the DNA of the program and / or software, it contains everything to make it work. Without it, there is no program directly. And it is written in a programming language.
▸Binary: It is the file that the compiler generates after having translated the source code.
▸Compiler: Program that translates the programming language into machine language, which would be the famous 0 and 1.
Gentoo, unlike other Linux distributions, a package is not a compressed file that follows a series of packaging guidelines and includes pre-compiled software. This is exactly what a port is called in FreeBSD (a set of folders and various readable files that allow the installation of software from source code by compiling it).
