Gentoo/Alt

Gentoo/Alt is a Gentoo Linux project created to manage porting the Portage framework and other features to other operating systems, such as Mac OS X and the free BSDs. Gentoo/Alt was set up by Pieter Van den Abeele and Daniel Robbins after Pieter Van den Abeele founded Gentoo for Mac OS X.

Gentoo for Mac OS X

Gentoo for Mac OS X was the first non-Linux project of Gentoo and focusessed on making the Gentoo experience available on Apple's operating system by introducing the Portage system as a separate entity. This was roughly similar to Fink and Macports, but it used Portage instead of a Debian-like or Ports-like system. Lateron, Gentoo for Mac OS X was made a subproject of Gentoo/Alt. Currently, the project is no longer active, because its prime assumption of using and not modifying the host OS appeared not to be realistic and eventually broke most packages or made them hardly maintainable. Gentoo for Mac OS X has been superseeded by Gentoo Prefix, which is currently what Gentoo offers to Mac OS X users.

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo-alt/macos/targets.xml

Gentoo/* BSD

Gentoo/* BSD is a subproject which covers ports to BSD-derived operating systems. Currently it consists of three sections: Gentoo/FreeBSD, Gentoo/NetBSD and Gentoo/OpenBSD. The Gentoo/* BSD project is an umbrella to better classify these three subprojects, which often have a lot of similar issues: in practice, most of the decision-making and development is handled in the Gentoo/Alt project or in the subprojects themselves.

Gentoo/FreeBSD

Gentoo/FreeBSD is a Unix-like operating system developed by Gentoo Linux developers in order to bring Gentoo Linux design principles such as Portage and the Gentoo Linux baselayout to the FreeBSD operating system.

Gentoo/NetBSD

Gentoo/NetBSD is a project to provide a GNU userland managed by Portage with a NetBSD kernel. The project was started by Damian Florczyk. Currently only the x86 architecture is targeted and the system as a whole is in an incomplete state.

Gentoo/OpenBSD

Gentoo/OpenBSD is a Gentoo/* BSD subproject to port Gentoo features such as Portage to the OpenBSD operating system. It was originally started by Grant Goodyear and is currently on development hiatus. An ISO image based on OpenBSD 3.8 is currently maintained by Karol Pasternak and can be downloaded from the project's web site.

Gentoo/DragonflyBSD

Gentoo/DragonflyBSD is an unofficial (for now) port to the DragonflyBSD kernel. The project is developed by Robert Sebastian Gerus. [ [http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo-alt/bsd/index.xml Gentoo Linux Projects - Gentoo/*BSD ] ]

Gentoo/Interix

Gentoo/Interix (eprefix) is an unofficial port of Gentoo that runs atop an Interix Subsystem for Windows which is also known as [Microsoft Services for Unix] (SFU) or Subsystem for Unix-like Applications (SUA). The project has a page on sourceforge. [http://prefix-launcher.wiki.sourceforge.net/]

Gentoo/OpenSolaris

An unofficial port to the OpenSolaris kernel, Gentoo/OpenSolaris (aka »Portaris«), was announced around 2006, but never got into a public state.

Gentoo/Hurd

An unofficial port to GNU Hurd is also being developed. [ [http://mundurat.net/ggh/ Gentoo GNU HURD ] ]

Gentoo Prefix

The youngest member of Gentoo/Alt, is the Gentoo Prefix project. It emerged from the Gentoo for Mac OS X project, which suffered from multiple practical problems. Initially, the Prefix project only supported ppc-macos hosts, but nowadays the list of platforms includes amongst others Darwin, Solaris, AIX, Interix, and several flavours of Linux all running on various processors and word-sizes.

The core principle of Gentoo Prefix is that installation of packages by Portage are done in an offset, thereby leaving the host OS unmodified. A side effect of this, is the absence of the requirement for administrative privileges, as with most other similar systems.

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo-alt/prefix/

See also

* Comparison of BSD operating systems

References

External links

* [http://gentoo-alt.gentoo.org/ Gentoo/Alt project homepage]