News:The Many Builds of Funtoo Linux

The Many Builds of Funtoo Linux

We now have lots of different builds of Funtoo Linux, for lots of different processors, as well as Hardened, Stable and ARM. Learn more about them here.

By Drobbins / December 25, 2014

Hey everyone,

I have been spending the last month adding new hardware and updating our Metro distributed build infrastructure that builds Funtoo Linux. The benefit for our user community is that it's now super-easy to find the ideal build of Funtoo Linux for your particular hardware, and we have lots of up-to-date builds to choose from.

Let's take a look at what has been done:

Subarch Pages

A technology improvement isn't useful unless people can easily find and use what they need -- and that's where the new Subarches page comes in. The Subarches page has been improved and enhanced, so it is now a full catalog of all the subarches and builds available for Funtoo Linux.

Here's how to use it. Head to the Subarches page, and you'll see a listing of all the types of subarches supported by Funtoo Linux, Click on a particular Subarch on the left, and here's what you'll be able to see:

• Information on the Subarch -- what CPU types are supported.
• Associated CFLAGS, CHOST, USE settings with the build.

...And nicest of all, you can now see all Funtoo Linux builds for this particular CPU, including download links, and the date the last stage3 was built! This makes it incredibly convenient to browse what's available and get exactly what you need without wasting a lot of time poking around on the mirrors.

Our Builds

Let's review what Funtoo Linux offers to users. We have two basic builds of Funtoo Linux -- Funtoo Linux "current" and Funtoo Linux "stable". Funtoo Linux "current" receives updates from the upstream Gentoo Linux "unstable" branch, while Funtoo Linux "stable" receives updates from the upstream Gentoo Linux "stable" branch. Most Funtoo Linux users run Funtoo Linux "current", and historically it has been the one we test the most. However, quite a few people are now running "stable", and we are testing and using this more.

Our Variants

Funtoo Linux also offers "variant" versions -- these include our Pure64 variant, which is a 64-bit build that drops multilib (32-bit compatibility) support, which can be ideal for server systems. In addition, we have a "hardened" build of Funtoo Linux which provides a version of Funtoo Linux build with a PIE/SSP toolchain for ehanced security. (PIE does require the use of PaX in the kernel, while SSP works with any kernel, and provides enhanced security in user-space to avoid stack-based exploits.

Our Subarches

We have a lot of options when it comes to builds and variants, but then take a look at what we are offering for CPU-optimized subarches! Our selection is very extensive and will continue to grow. We now have optimized builds for amd64-bulldozer, amd64-piledriver, amd64-steamroller as well as AMD's low-power Jaguar CPU, which is available for building HTPC/microserver systems, and also happens to be the CPU used for the XBox One and Playstation 4. On the Intel side, we are offering optimized builds for Nehalem architecture-based Core i7 CPUs, as well a Intel's new Haswell architecture. In addition, we are now building ARM stages in-house, to provide better support and testing our ARM community.

Summary

All in all, this represents an incredible improvement in offerings when it comes to giving you what you want when you build your next Linux system. Enjoy these new changes, and Merry Christmas and happy holidays :)