Gentoo

Summary

Gentoo Linux (/ˈdʒɛntuː/ jen-too) is a computer operating system built on top of the Linux kernel and based on the Portage package management system. It is distributed as free and open source software. Unlike a conventional software distribution, the user compiles the source code locally according to their chosen configuration. Where source-code is available, Portage normally supplies no precompiled binaries, continuing in the tradition of the ports collection, although for convenience, some software packages (such as Mozilla Firefox and LibreOffice) are also available as precompiled binaries for various architectures where compiling would otherwise be very time consuming. The development project and its products are named after the fastest-swimming penguin, the Gentoo, to reflect the potential speed improvements of machine-specific optimization. Gentoo package management is designed to be modular, portable, easy to maintain, flexible, and optimized for the user's machine. Gentoo describes itself as a meta-distribution, "because of its near-unlimited adaptability", in that the majority of users have configurations and sets of installed programs which are unique to themselves

Requirements

Gentoo Linux can be as heavy as you want, or as small as you want. Yet unless you deviate from the documented approach, Gentoo Linux remains a source-based distribution. Because of that, it has a slightly higher disk space requirement than other distributions. A minimal (base) Gentoo Linux installation takes a little less than 2Gbyte of diskspace (including Linux kernel source code and the Gentoo Portage tree, which take about 640 Mbyte in total). But with 2Gbyte, you don't have room for much more than a base installation.

To have a comfortable installation, yet with room to spare for additional installations, you should consider a total diskspace of at least 20 Gbyte for the applications alone. With current disk sizes, this should not be a problem. If you don't install a full-blown KDE or GNOME, you should have enough with 10Gbyte or less.

Disk space aside, Gentoo Linux can run and install with almost any system specification. Of course, the lower the specs, the higher the duration of an installation. Installing Gentoo Linux on a i486 with 32 Mbyte of memory is doable (but not recommended).