You probably all know Gentoo Linux as your favourite source-based distribution. Did you know that our package manager, Portage, already for years also has support for binary packages, and that source- and binary-based package installations can be freely mixed?
To speed up working with slow hardware and for overall convenience, we’re now also offering binary packages for download and direct installation! For most architectures, this is limited to the core system and weekly updates – not so for amd64 and arm64 however. There we’ve got a stunning >20 GByte of packages on our mirrors, from LibreOffice to KDE Plasma and from Gnome to Docker. Gentoo stable, updated daily. Enjoy!
Gentoo’s official news
This is not as big of a deal as I feel like it should be. Gentoo is special, unique, and exists outside of the usual realm of distribution competition. Gentoo offering a binary method of installation makes perfect sense, I doubt anyone will complain, and nothing much will change. Yet, it feels like it should be a bigger deal?
I learned far more from using Gentoo than from installing (following the script) Linux From Scratch. I also learned that I love a binary distro like Debian :-).
Anyway, my Gentoo days are from 20 years ago as it was about the time when this bug was found in the windowmaker-themes package: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-1257537.html?sid=33873ad285325a9f8e3ec480ae851149
Love how they actually went all in analyzing whether they could remove the explicit wallpapers from the package as “someone could be depending on it by now” :-D.
This is awesome! I’ve been planning on switching some systems to Gentoo, and this will make it easier.
I’ve gotten a working Gentoo install once, and I have wished for a binary kernel option as a shortcut to get the system running. I don’t have a problem with Arch installs, but the Gentoo kernel install trips me up.
I wonder if the binary way will have a systemd free way. systemd is cancer.
What makes systemd cancer to you?
The same thing that makes systemd cancer to you.
Reminds me about some other smart guy who used the same metaphor.
https://www.theregister.com/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_cancer/