Jay's Blog

Gentoo in a VM

Gentoo Virtual Machine

Gentoo Linux is a Linux distribution named after the Gentoo Penguin. It is designed to be modular, portable, easy to maintain, flexible, and optimized for the user’s machine. This is accomplished by building all tools and utilities from source code, although, for convenience, several large software packages are also available as precompiled binaries for various architectures. Gentoo achieves all this via the Portage system. Gentoo is also appreciated for its discussion forums and the large knowledge base they represent.

Even with all the fun and frills, Gentoo is primarily criticised for its long installation process, sometimes taking days on older hardware, especially very large ones such as X11 and OpenOffice.org take hours to compile and are incompatible with the needs of many users who require quick software installation.Having said that, working with Gentoo is a great learning experience and one is rewarded with much knowledge and insight into how various parts of Linux come together to work in a way it is supposed to and a wealth of information on minute details of each and every configuration option in the packages.

My endeavour with this VM is to enable the community use Gentoo and decide for them selves what the enigma of the Gentoo Linux really is.

Now about the VM itself.

Gentoo Linux Configuration
Distribution: 2006.0
Linux Kernel: 2.6-15-r1
Installation Type: Minimal (no Desktop Environment)
Networking: DHCP
User Name/password – none
Root Password: “gentoo”

Virtual Machine Configuration
RAM: 256 MB (configurable by editing the gentoo.vmx file)
Disk: 10.0 GB (sorry I had to err on the side of plenty)
Networking: Bridged
VMware Tools: Loaded
Monitor Resolution: 1024×768

Download Information
Available in the Downloads page.
File Size: 383 MB
Compression: ZIP
MD5SUM 41ca265fe7358c547889cee414d47b66 *Gentoo.zip

This VM just about gives you the head start with base installation. It has the shell and the basic networking installed. Everything there on needs to be downloaded and configured using emerge.I will be posting more expansive VM’s covering both GNOME and KDE Desktop environments individually as soon as i’m done with them.

Until then, hope ya have fun with this version.

Jay

8 responses to “Gentoo in a VM”

  1. LevT Avatar
    LevT

    Hi! Thanks for your effort. Running your bundle under VMware Workstation 5.5.1 for Windows, I get the resolution 640×480 and the status bar indicating that “You have not VMware Tools installed”.

    Any ideas to fix it?

    Reply
  2. jay Avatar
    jay

    Hi Lev,

    Please see my latest post
    http://www.vmwhere.net/?p=6

    Hope it helps

    Reply
  3. C Smith Avatar
    C Smith

    I am trying to download the Gentoo virtual machine.

    Reply
  4. gildas Avatar
    gildas

    Hi,

    thanx for the vm. was very usefule for testing Nagios and more.

    I want to build my own now.

    How did you make the screen smaller ? this is very useful to view the whole screen without a “full screen”.

    regards

    Reply
  5. brainwashed Avatar
    brainwashed

    Thanks alot for the VM! This will be great to play around and try stuff!

    Reply
  6. Alexander Avatar
    Alexander

    Thanks for the gentoo VM, I needed a few ebuilds that were removed from portage some time ago – and my own machines are –sync’d too often to still have it.

    Reply
  7. TJ Avatar
    TJ

    It wont let me log in. It asks for the username and lets me type anything, then asks for a password and wont let me type.

    Reply
  8. Igor Avatar
    Igor

    The download link is dead….

    I was looking for a Gentoo virtual machine yesterday. It weired, but I was unable to google anything with not too-outdated kernel.
    So, I had to make one myself. I took me half-a-day. That’s why,I think I should share my results.

    If anyone is looking for a Gentoo VM, like i was, take a quick look at the following link, maybe it suits you:

    http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/7977406/Gentoo-minimal-genkernel_2012.12.31

    Reply

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