Milan is from Foresight Media s.r.o, who produce interactive Touch Tables, that run Gentoo Linux. One of the products are a low cost alternative to Microsoft's Surface. Be sure to check out an overview of their products. Milan, thank you very much for your time. My first question is this:

1. Who is Milan and how did you get started with Gentoo?
   • I guess I'm a product designer, developer, entrepreneur and part time artist living in Central Europe usually in Vienna, Bratislava and Prague. To be able to create inventions, new gadgets you either need a ton of money or you learn how to do many things by yourself in a garage or in my case in my atelier. For me it would be quite depressing to ‘just design' something :) And so I create prototypes, which I push into serial production like my touch table designs. When I was 13 years old I accidentally saw a magazine with a penguin. I thought it was a cool logo of something. Then I saw it said that there's a free CD of an operating system that I haven't heard of. I could not hack my pre-installed commercial software enough and so I gave it a try and I guess it's the usual story of many Open Source and Linux geeks from there on :) After some time using various Linux distributions I saw that the complexity and the number of regressions in many of them has become so high over the years that I needed a system that would let me stay in control and a system that would value it's own design. Gentoo was a natural choice.

Be sure to check out the Full Interview!

Discuss this!

SCALE 10x is almost here, and Gentoo will be there!

Southern California's premier open-source software event is just around the corner, running from Friday, January 20 through Sunday, January 22. Several Gentoo developers will be there; it will be even bigger than previous years.

We'll be showing off some nifty devices running Gentoo, and we'll be giving out installation media. Whether you're a developer, user, or simply curious, be sure to stop by booth #70. See you there!

Discuss this!

Figure 1.1: Heating your boxes since 1999

Gentoo Linux is proud to announce the availability of a new LiveDVD to celebrate the continued collaboration between Gentoo users and developers. The LiveDVD features a superb list of packages, some of which are listed below.

A special thanks to the Gentoo Infrastructure Team. Their hard work behind the scenes provide the resources, services and technology necessary to support the Gentoo Linux project.

• Packages included in this release: Linux Kernel 3.1.5, Xorg 1.10.4, KDE 4.7.4, Gnome 3.2.1 XFCE 4.8, Fluxbox 1.3.2 Firefox 9.0, LibreOffice 3.4.99.2, Gimp 2.6.11, Blender 2.60, Amarok 2.5 , VLC 1.1.13, Chromium 16.0 and much more ...
• If you want to see if your package is included we have generated both the x86 package list, and amd64 package list. You may also be interested in checking out the FAQ or the updated artwork plus dvd cases and covers for the 12.0 release.
• Special Features:
  • Writable file systems using AUFS so you can emerge new packages!
  • Persistence for $HOME is available; press F9 for more info!

The LiveDVD is available in two flavors: a hybrid x86/x86_64 version, and an x86_64 multi lib version. The livedvd-x86-amd64-32ul-12.0 version will work on 32-bit x86 or 64-bit x86_64. If your CPU architecture is x86, then boot with the default gentoo kernel. If your arch is amd64, boot with the gentoo64 kernel. This means you can boot a 64-bit kernel and install a customized 64-bit user land while using the provided 32-bit user land. The livedvd-amd64-multilib-12.0 version is for x86_64 only.

If you are ready to check it out, let our bouncer direct you to the closest x86 image or amd64 image file. If you would prefer to take it easy on the bandwidth and help the community, torrents are also provided.

If you need support or have any questions, please visit the discussion thread on our forum.

Thank you for your continued support,

Gentoo Linux Developers, the Gentoo Foundation, and the Gentoo-Ten Project.

We are glad to announce that the official Gentoo Wiki opens its doors today.

As you would expect it from a herd of proper Gentoo developers, we have spent quite some time bikeshedding about various things concerning the wiki, including the color. It seems we have finally reached a verdict, much to everyone's surprise it will be purple!

Now, without further ado, we'd like to welcome you to our shiny new Wiki.

Feel free to browse around, look for answers to your questions and other cool stuff to do with your Gentoo system. Do you think you have something useful to share with other Gentoo users? Please go ahead and create an article about it - or extend an existing one.

To help you get started, we've compiled some information on how the wiki works. If you still got questions left you can find us on #gentoo-wiki at freenode, or reach us via email at wiki@gentoo.org.

We are looking forward to your articles!

Your Gentoo Wiki Team

Long live Gentoo!

As the quantity and quality of this year's entries will attest, Gentoo is alive, well, and taking no prisoners!

Special thanks to likewhoa for putting together the Screenshot content management system.

The Winners

1. whtwtr's Compiz desktop

2. ifenslave's Kde desktop

3. Berr's Xfce desktop

4. ramonovski's Scrotwm desktop

5. slashbeast's Openbox desktop

For all the specifications and cool details please visit the main Gentoo screenshots page. Make sure to check out all the entries!

discuss this!

"The future is now" edition

Gentoo Linux is proud to announce the availability of a new LiveDVD to celebrate the continued collaboration between Gentoo users and developers. The LiveDVD features a superb list of packages, some of which are listed below.

• System packages include: Linux kernel 3.0 (with Gentoo patches), Accessibility Support with Speakup, Bash 4.2, GLIBC 2.13-r2, GCC 4.5.2, Binutils 2.21.1, Python 2.7.2 and 3.2, Perl 5.12.4, and more.
• Desktop environments and window managers include: KDE 4.7.0, GNOME 3.0.0, Xfce 4.8, Enlightenment 1.0.8, Openbox 3.5.0, Fluxbox 1.3.1, XBMC 10.1 Awesome 3.4.10, and LXDE-Meta 0.5.5.
• Office, graphics, and productivity applications include: LibreOffice 3.3.3, XEmacs 21.5.31 GVim 7.3.244, Abiword 2.8.6, Scribus 1.3.9, GIMP 2.6.11, Inkscape 0.48.2, Blender 2.57, XSane 0.998, and much more.
• Web browsers include: Mozilla Firefox 5.0, Chromium 13.0 Arora 0.11.0, Opera 11.50.1074, Epiphany 3.0.4, Seamonkey 2.2, and other favorites.
• Communication tools include: Pidgin 2.9.0, Quassel 0.7.2, Mozilla Thunderbird 5.0, Claws Mail 3.7.9, QTwitter 0.10.0, Irssi 0.8.15, and many more.
• Development applications include: KDevelop 4.2.3, KDESvn 1.5.5, Qt-creator 2.2.1, Bluefish 2.0.3, and many more.
• Multimedia applications include: Amarok 2.4.3, MPlayer 1.0_rc4, MPlayer2 2.0, DVDAuthor 0.6.14, LAME 3.98.4, FFmpeg 0.6.90, GNOME-MPlayer 1.0.4, SMPlayer 0.6.9, and several others.
• Special Features:
  • Writable filesystems using AUFS so you can emerge new packages!
  • Persistancy for $HOME is available; press F9 for more info!

The LiveDVD is available in two flavors: a hybrid x86/x86_64 version, and an x86_64 multilib version. The livedvd-x86-amd64-32ul-11.2 version will work on 32-bit x86 or 64-bit x86_64. If your CPU architecture is x86, then boot with the default gentoo kernel. If your arch is amd64, boot with the gentoo64 kernel. This means you can boot a 64-bit kernel and install a customized 64-bit userland while using the provided 32-bit userland. The livedvd-amd64-multilib-11.2 version is for x86_64 only.

Please select your architecture to be redirected to a mirror for download:

• x86
• amd64
• Torrents are available at http://torrents.gentoo.org

If you need support or have any questions, please visit the discussion thread on our forum.

Thank you for your continued support,

Gentoo Linux Developers, the Gentoo Foundation, and the Gentoo-Ten Project.

After the success of the 2010 Screenshot Contest the Contest Team is doing it again!

Gentoo Users, Developers, and Staffers are encouraged to submit their sweetest screenshots. This year likewhoa went all out and put together a custom cms for us to use for the contest. Please head over to the 2011 Contest Page for all of the details.

You can visit this forum post for comments and suggestions. OK enough talk, get started tricking out that desktop.

After years of "Larry the Cow" being identified with Gentoo and the Gentoo community, Larry has been traced to his creator, Ethan Dunham of Fonthead Design Inc.. Larry is a part of a bigger collection of Font Heads.

Following discussions with Ethan Dunham, involving Sebastian Pipping from the Gentoo Artwork Project and Roy Bamford, on behalf of the Gentoo Foundation, Fonthead Design Inc. has agreed to grant permission to use the artwork of letter "s" of font "Font Heads" showing the head of a cow under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license so that the Gentoo community can enjoy the freedom to use their mascot.

We encourage our developers and users to create Gentoo artwork based on our newly released Larry.

OpenRC, the replacement for Gentoo's current services system (known as baselayout), will be stabilized on May 8. It replaces the previous bash-only rc system in baselayout with an rc system that has a C-based core and uses only POSIX-compliant shell code.

You will see an update for sys-apps/baselayout to 2.x and a new package, sys-apps/openrc. It is recommended that you perform this update as soon as possible.

After these packages are emerged, it is absolutely critical that you immediately update your configuration files with dispatch-conf, etc-update or a similar tool then follow the steps in the OpenRC Migration Guide.

Failure to follow all of these steps will result in an unbootable system. If that happens, you will need to boot from a LiveCD or LiveDVD, mount your root filesystem, chroot into that environment and follow the above steps.

Christian Faulhammer and William Hubbs contributed this announcement.

After a lot of bug-wrangling both by upstream and by our Qt and KDE teams, we now feel confident that Qt 4.7.2 and KDE 4.6.2 are ready for stabilization. If you are a stable tree user (amd64, ppc, x86), the upgrade from current Qt 4.6.3 and KDE 4.4.5 will arrive at your machine soon, with lots of new features. (The KDEPIM applications such as kmail, kontact, or akregator will stay at trusty version 4.4 since development there is still ongoing.)

As a special bonus, the stable upgrade will also include newer versions of several popular applications that take advantage of KDE 4.6 features. These include Digikam 1.9.0, KOffice 2.3.3, and KDevelop 4.2.2. There is a new bluetooth framework called Bluedevil, we no longer need HAL, and, and, and... :)

The upgrade should go very smoothly; if you encounter any problems, we have a specific Gentoo KDE 4.4 - 4.6 upgrade guide to help you with that. In addition, there is always the Gentoo KDE guide with general tips and tricks.

Thanks to everyone who made this possible!

Gentoo has been accepted for its 6th consecutive year in the Google Summer of Code! GSoC pays college students $5000 to work full-time on an open-source project for a summer. Check out our GSoC 2011 homepage if you are interested in this year's GSoC for Gentoo. We particularly encourage applications from students who are new to Gentoo development—many of our students become Gentoo developers after a successful summer.

Interested students can browse Gentoo's project ideas. Student applications will be accepted starting March 28 until April 8.

Developers, if you'd like to apply to be a mentor, you can do so on the webapp. Please read the mentoring guide before applying.

Software in the making edition

Gentoo Linux is proud to announce the availability of a new LiveDVD to celebrate the continued collaboration between Gentoo users and developers. The LiveDVD features a superb list of packages, some of which are listed below.

• System packages include: Linux Kernel 2.6.37 (with Gentoo patches), Accessibility Support with Speakup 3.1.6, bash 4.1, glibc 2.12.2, gcc 4.5.2, binutils 2.21, python 2.7.1 and 3.1.3, perl 5.12.3, and more.
• Desktop environments and window managers include: KDE SC 4.6, GNOME 2.32, Xfce 4.8, Enlightenment 1.0.7, Openbox 3.4.11.2, Fluxbox 1.3.1, XBMC 10.0 and more.
• Office, graphics, and productivity applications include: OpenOffice 3.2.1, XEmacs 21.5.29 gVim 7.3.102, Abiword 2.8.6, GnuCash 2.2.9, Scribus 1.9.3, GIMP 2.6.11, Inkscape 0.48.1, Blender 2.49b, XSane 0.997, and much more.
• Web browsers include: Mozilla Firefox 3.6.13, Arora 0.11.0, Opera 11.0, Epiphany 2.30.6, Seamonkey 2.0.11, and other favorites.
• Communication tools include: Pidgin 2.7.10, Quassel 0.7.1, Mozilla Thunderbird 3.1.7, Claws Mail 3.7.8, Qtwitter 0.10.0, irssi 0.8.15, and many more.
• Development applications include: KDevelop 4.2, KDESvn 1.5.5, qt-creator 2.1.0, Bluefish 2.0.2, and many more.
• Multimedia applications include: Amarok 2.4, MPlayer 1.0_rc4, DVDAuthor 0.6.14, LAME 3.98.4, ffmpeg 0.6, GNOME-MPlayer 1.0.0, SMPlayer 0.6.9, and several others.
• Special Features:
  • Writable AUFS support so you can emerge new packages!
  • Persistancy for $HOME is available; press F9 for more info!

The LiveDVD is available in two flavors: a hybrid x86/x86_64 version, and an x86_64 multilib version. The livedvd-x86-amd64-32ul-11.0 version will work on 32-bit x86 or 64-bit x86_64. If your CPU architecture is x86, then boot with the default gentoo kernel. If your arch is amd64 boot with the gentoo64 kernel. This means you can boot a 64bit kernel and install a customized 64bit userland while using the provided 32bit userland. The livedvd-amd64-multilib-11.0 version is for x86_64 only.

Please select your architecture to be redirected to a mirror for download:

• x86
• amd64
• Torrents are available at http://torrents.gentoo.org

Please read the FAQ on using the LiveDVD.

We have also started a discussion thread in our forum. Please post any bugs you encounter.

Thank you for your continued support,

Gentoo Linux Developers, the Gentoo Linux Foundation, and the Gentoo-Ten Project.

SCALE 9x is almost here, and Gentoo will be there!

Southern California's premier open-source software event is just around the corner, running from Friday, February 25 through Sunday, February 27. Several Gentoo developers will be there; it will be even bigger than last year.

We'll be showing off some nifty devices running Gentoo, and we'll be giving out installation media. Whether you're a developer, user, or simply curious, be sure and stop by booth #52. See you there!

Discuss this!

This week Gentoo Foundation joined Open Invention Network as a licensee. OIN is an organization which helps protect the Linux ecosystem by building a variety of defenses against patent attacks. These defenses include both traditional mechanisms, like defensive patent pools, and more innovative approaches, like the Linux Defenders project, which uses a variety of methods to pro actively prevent the publication of particularly egregious patents. As a licensee, we’ll have access to OIN resources in case we’re threatened by operating entities with patents, and over time we’ll likely become more involved in providing our own ideas and resources to OIN projects.

Patents owned by Open Invention Network are available royalty-free to any company, institution or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux System. By joining, Gentoo receives cross-licenses from other OIN licensees, but more importantly, for the long term, it affords us a chance to work with OIN in reducing IP threats to open source development and innovation. This may include a defensive publications program that would make it harder for others to patent work created by Gentoo contributors, sharing defensive tactics, and cooperation to minimize patent threats.

We believe that by becoming an Open Invention Network licensee, we encourage continued open source development and foster innovation in a technical community that benefits everyone. We recognize the importance of participating in a substantial community of Linux supporters and leveraging the Open Invention Network to further spur open source innovation.