Gentoo Seeds Project

One of the things that people like about Gentoo is that it is customizable. You can select the packages you want, in the versions you prefer, compile them with the options you select, and finally arrive at a system that is just the way you like it. What people don't like is that process is time-consuming and it can be difficult to duplicate the process for a number of machines. The comments attached to this article show exactly what LWN readers like and dislike about Gentoo.

The initial announcement for the Gentoo Seeds project came out this week, aimed at taking some of the pain out of Gentoo installs. Gentoo does offer staged installation. A stage 3 install provides pre-compiled packages for a basic installation fairly quickly. The Seeds project just takes that concept a step further.

The Gentoo Seeds Project is "currently exploring ways to quickly 'seed' fully-working copies of Gentoo onto boxes." That includes basic system configuration. Seeds are built using existing Gentoo tools such as catalyst, overlays, layman and custom profiles, so that each seed will provide a well-documented way of installing multiple servers with a similar setup. Different seeds will provide different setups.

The project is still quite young and the first seed under construction is a basic Gentoo LAMP Server edition. Hopefully this will become just one seed of many that people can choose to more easily install the same Gentoo system on multiple boxes.

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