The Gentoo Linux project team today announced its first release of the year: Gentoo Linux 2007.0, code-named "Secret Sauce." GL 2007.0 comes as an installable/live CD, features a 2.6.19 Linux kernel, and offers a choice among KDE, GNOME, and Xfce desktop environments.

"This release includes a completely rewritten version of the Gentoo Linux Installer on the AMD64 and x86 live CD and live DVD images," a spokesperson for the team said. "Updated hardware support is also among the highlights."

New features, according to the team, include:

• GNOME 2.16.2, KDE 3.5.5, and Xfce 4.4 desktop environments
• Firefox 2.0.0.3 browser
• OpenOffice.org 2.1.0 office suite
• update to glibc 2.5 for x86 version
• updated 32-bit emulation libraries for amd64-bit version, which improves support for many closed source applications and browser plugins

Gentoo offers many standard features. Here are some of the highlights, as listed by the project team:

• MPlayer 1.0 audio player
• GIMP 2.3.16 graphics editor
• SendMail 8.14.1 mail client
• Thunderbird 2.0 email client

Gentoo Linux is positioned a versatile and fast, completely free Linux distribution geared toward developers and network professionals. Gentoo Linux has a unique, "advanced" package management system called Portage. Portage is a "true ports" system in the tradition of BSD ports, but is Python-based and sports a number of advanced features including dependencies, fine-grained package management, "fake" (OpenBSD-style) installs, safe unmerging, system profiles, virtual packages, config file management, and more, according to the project.

You can download Gentoo Linux 2006.1 from the distro’s website, here, or via BitTorrent, here.

Alternatively, you can link directly to the live CD i686 version (700 MB) here, or to the amd64-bit version here.

Screenshots, courtesy of The Coding Studio, are available here.

Tags | Linux