Górny: Gentoo: profiles and keywords rather than releases

[Posted August 21, 2024 by jzb]

Gentoo developer Michał Górny has written a lengthy blog post that explains how Gentoo approaches releases:

Gentoo is something of a hybrid, as it combines the best of both worlds. It is a rolling release distribution with a single shared repository that is available to all users. However, within this repository we use a keywording system to provide a choice between stable and testing packages, to facilitate both production and development systems (with some extra flexibility), and versioned profiles to tackle major lock-step upgrades.

Thanks for the detailed explanation

Posted Aug 27, 2024 18:09 UTC (Tue) by marduk (subscriber, #3831) [Link]

This was actually a good write-up. As someone who has been using Gentoo Linux for two decades, I sometimes take for granted the subtle nuances of the system that perhaps need a deeper explanation to those who are not familiar with the platform, and Górny did a darn good job of taking it to task. For anyone who is not too familiar with Gentoo but is interested in what makes it unique and special, or maybe you think you understand but want to be sure, this is a recommended read. Gentoo is in a class by itself.