this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2026
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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With the caveat that I last played with Gentoo 20 years ago.... I am almost certainly a bit out of date.
If I remember correctly it, it explicitly recommended that you use at least the minimal gentoo live disk to get your system into a running state. You'd be working from the live cd for the first couple of sections before booting into a very basic install on your hard disk. From there you would compile the rest of your system.
Even the minimal disk provides all of the tools that you need to bootstrap the system. Sources for everything else are downloaded as they are needed. Come to think of it, I think the full desktop live dvd was fairly new at that time, in it's first or second release.
Even at that time the Gentoo manual was incredibly well written and is in my opinion the gold standard for how user documentation should be written. I had been toying with linux for about 3 months at that point and was able to get a working desktop system up and running in about a month , mostly just waiting for things to compile on the slow processors we had back then. I would run a few commands and then go off and do something else for a few hours. rinse and repeat.
@StrawberryPigtails @pixeldaemon Round that time, I remember the goto advice was to use whatever #systemrescuecd you had layin around; they were gentoo discs back then, always worked a charm.