Funtoo

I sit here watching the first emerge --sync go slowly scrolling by in preparation for my second go around with Funtoo. The Funtoo creator Daniel Robbins, the same man who gave us Gentoo, has started a new project for us geeks to play with. My first pass with it was fine, and I still have it going, however while it has a functional X server and environment, it never made it past being a chroot playtoy. This time I'm putting the code to the metal as it were.

Setting up a Funtoo system should be old hat to anyone who has ever played with Gentoo, your doing a stage3, either x86_64 or i686 are the prime focus of Funtoo. So if you want/need, grab the handbook and maybe one of Daniels stage3's (normal Gentoo stage3 works just fine too) and get busy. Alternately if you already running Gentoo, switching to Funtoo is so easy it should be illegal. The first thing you'll be happy to know is, emerge --sync is gone, Funtoo and pulling Gentoo repos is done via Git, a much smoother and simpler operation IMHO. Overlays however remain the same as always, being handled via layman. Which is fine, because like it or not, there are some things in the Sabayon overlay that I really like, as well as in a few other overlays. So without a doubt the system will very quickly become uniquely mine.

I think thats one of the things that I really like about the group of people that are around Funtoo at the moment. The cross section of people who are working on it for the right reason, fun. There are well known names from the Gentoo community, some from Sabayon, one from Arch Linux and a smattering of interested others. We all seem to get along, in a gun toting, meat eating, beer swilling, redneck kind of way. No one is giving up their other projects really, just adding Funtoo to the list of things to tinker with when time and inclination allows. No pressures, dead lines, or people clamoring for some odd function to be added. Like I said, it's all for the fun of doing it.

Funtoo however is very much a solve it on your own project. If you aren't capable of getting into the guts of your system without someone holding your hand and spoon feeding you the commands you will be in over your head with a quickness. If you cant get the same response to any given question out of Google two times out of three, or aren't inclined to spend an hour pouring over Gentoo documentation you may end up being hopelessly lost. Funtoo is exactly that, fun, for geeks. It's perfectly capable of being your daily driver, as it is in a large part still Gentoo. However I remember when I used to refer to Gentoo as the Linux for those with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

If your not scared yet, and want to give something new and challenging a try head over to http://www.funtoo.org/

Have fun
~Az