Sick of Compiling Gentoo Linux? Then Try the New LiveGUI Distro!

Gentoo’s LiveGUI image lets users test the technical distro before installing. Artists have also been invited to submit artwork for a rebranding.

The Gentoo Linux distribution has announced a new LiveGUI image for download, as well as an art contest for the project’s artwork and branding. Here’s what you need to know…

What’s New in the Gentoo LiveGUI Image?

The Gentoo project has announced a new LiveGUI image in a post on its official blog.

The Gentoo Linux distribution is known for giving users as much manual control over what’s installed on the system, to the point where users are encouraged to compile most of Gentoo’s software from source to tailor its performance to the user’s CPU architecture.

However, the LiveGUI version is intended to allow prospective users to test drive a full desktop system by extracting the image to a USB stick or optical media before committing to the installation process.

True to the distribution’s fast-moving nature, Gentoo plans to offer a new LiveGUI version every week.

While the Gentoo project supports multiple architectures, the ISO image is for x86-64 systems. It weighs in at 4.8 GB and can be obtained from Gentoo’s download page.

The LiveGUI image boots straight into a KDE Plasma desktop and includes a number of desktop applications. Among these are the Firefox and Chromium browsers as well as the LibreOffice office suite. While compiling from source is not required on this live version, it includes a full suite of development tools including the Vim and GNU Emacs editors, as well as Perl, Python, and the GCC compiler.

The live version also encompasses networking tools like Nmap and disk management applications like GParted. The included utilities could make the live distro suitable for use in troubleshooting problems with the computer.

Gentoo: Artists Wanted for New Theme

With the resumption of weekly LiveGUI images, Gentoo has also announced an art contest to spruce up the project’s branding. As per the blog post:

Now, we need your help! Let’s make this the coolest and most beautiful Linux live image ever. We’re calling for submissions of artwork, themes, actually anything from a desktop background to a boot manager animation, on the topic of Gentoo!

Gentoo is calling for submissions that include its logo or its mascot, Larry the Cow. The artwork submissions need to work across multiple screen resolutions and provide a coherent experience for the user. They also want any submitted artwork to use a Creative Commons license.

You Can Now Test Drive Gentoo

Gentoo is known as a distro for experts. With the LiveGUI, more users might find it easy to test drive the system and take advantage of Gentoo’s bleeding-edge updates system that provides users with the very latest software.