Gentoo, a source-based Linux distro suited for experienced users, has released a look back at the project’s significant events and developments of 2023. We’ve highlighted the key points for our readers, so here’s what you need to know.
A Year in Numbers
The main Gentoo repository saw a consistently high activity level with 121,000 commits, a slight decrease from the previous year. Notably, contributions from external authors rose to 10,708 across 404 unique contributors, signaling a growing and engaged community.
Despite a slight dip in commits, GURU, Gentoo’s user-curated repository, also witnessed active participation. The number of contributors increased from 134 to 158, reflecting a growing interest in packaging the latest software and a stepping stone for those aspiring to become Gentoo developers.
The Gentoo bug tracker reported a slight decrease in bug reports and resolutions, indicating a potential trend toward a more stable and up-to-date Gentoo ecosystem. Last but not least, the project saw the addition of three new developers.
Gentoo’s Major Initiatives and Updates
Binary Package Hosting: As we informed you earlier, Gentoo has made a significant shift and now offers binary packages for easier and faster installation, covering a wide range of software for AMD64 and Arm64 architectures.
New Profiles and Modern C: Gentoo is preparing new 23.0 profiles, promising enhanced toolchain hardening and internal consistency. Efforts to transition to Modern C continue collaborating with Fedora, benefiting numerous upstream projects.
Architectural and Package Enhancements
The distro has made strides in supporting various architectures. The revival of the DEC Alpha architecture and the addition of musl libc support for MIPS and m68k are particularly notable.
The .NET ecosystem within Gentoo has seen substantial improvements, alongside the introduction of OpenJDK 21 and the latest Python versions. Another significant development is the PyPy3 compatibility for scientific Python packages.
The project has also focused on security and usability enhancements, supporting signed kernel modules and unified kernel images for secure boot setups.
Infrastructure and Financial Health
The Portage package manager has seen improvements to support binary package deployment better. Moreover, Gentoo’s package database website, packages.gentoo.org, has been enhanced for a more user-friendly experience.
Financially, the Gentoo Foundation remains robust, with a healthy balance of $101,000 as of July 1, 2023. Most of its income comes from individual donations, reflecting the community’s strong support.
Bottom Line
It’s exciting to see that Gentoo is progressing smoothly. This is excellent news for this Linux distro, a project with a rich history spanning over 20 years, which become a hallmark of speed and dependability, earning the trust of numerous experienced users.
So, we wish an even more successful 2024 for the fastest penguin swimming in the Linux ocean!
