Gentoo Linux Step-by-Step Installation Guide

Gentoo Linux is a Linux distribution oriented to users with certain experience but characterized by its customization and speedIn this article we share a step-by-step tutorial for its installation and correct configuration.

First of all I want to mention that everything one needs is on the Gentoo Wiki, or on the Arch Wiki, installation related questions are in the Gentoo handbook. I do this tutorial because I have been asked by several people, and because I am going to add my customization granite when installing Gentoo.

Know that people who read are highly appreciated in this distro. Yes, it is a distro where most of the problems can be solved by reading the wiki and doing a little research (that is, if you ask something and they answer "look at the wiki", it means that as a Gentoo user you are not doing things right xD). This does not mean that “simple” doubts are not answered, but the large amount of documentation suggests that one read to solve their problems.

Now I am going to comment, in broad strokes, what Gentoo is about, what is so striking about it, and what makes it different from other Linux distros. We will assume that Gentoo is a source code based distro. What does this mean? That unlike the conventional distros (precompiled) like Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, Manjaro, Fedora, SUSE, and a long etc .; When installing a package, it does not download the executable (binary, .deb, .rpm, .pkg.tar.xz, etc.) and install it, but rather it downloads its source code, compiles it according to our processor and the rules that we have. defined for the packages, and with this generates the executable, which then installs.

The advantages of Gentoo

What makes Gentoo a unique distro is not only the fact that it compiles the packages, but also that you decide the support for what features each package will have. The direct consequence of customizing and compiling the
packages, is the speed. Why? Let's illustrate it with an example.

Being X a precompiled distro (of which I mentioned above), so that the X distro can be installed on various types of machines, it is necessary that its packages be compiled with the set of instructions of the older machine. In this way, if we want them to run from a Pentium II onwards, we will compile all their packages with the Pentium II instruction set.

What consequences does this bring? That in the newer processors, suppose an i7, the packages would not be taking advantage of all the capacity offered by the latter, since if they are compiled with the set of instructions provided by the i7, they will not be able to be executed in processors prior to this one, because the latter lack these newer instructions.

Gentoo, when downloading the source code and compiling it for your processor, will take advantage of its full capacity, since if you install it on an i7, it will use the instruction set of the latter, and if you install it on a Pentium II, it will use the corresponding to the latter.

On the other hand, you can also customize what type of support you want the packages to have. I use KDE and Qt, so I am not interested in the packages having GNOME and GTK support, so I tell you to compile them without support for them. In this way, when comparing the same package on Gentoo and on distro X, the Gentoo package is much lighter. And since in distro X the packages are generic, they will have support for everything.

Now, having made an introduction, I leave you the links to my configuration files that accompany the PDF guide I made on how to install Gentoo from a Linux Live CD (Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, Backtrack, Slax, or whatever happens to them) or from a partition on which they have a Linux distro installed.