List of Gentoo Linux derivatives

• Fireball Release 1 - March 3, 2009
• Fireball Release 1.1 - June 22, 2009
• Fireball Release 1.2 - December 30, 2010
• Fireball Release 1.3 - January 13, 2012
• Fireball Release 1.4 - March 6, 2015
• Fireball Release 1.5 - June 9, 2017

In early 2008, Robbins proposed to resolve[3] the Gentoo Foundation problems.[4] But he had left the project in 2004, and his offer was refused.[5] The Funtoo project was born as an initiative to implement his vision, with aims to share innovations.[6]

Funtoo is a source based Linux distribution.

Funtoo features in addition to native UTF-8 by default include:

In July 2017 Funtoo switched from plain portage approach to splitting the portage tree into kits.[7] This should tie software updates together and help with the dependency problems of a rolling release distribution. Kits also are gaining maturity status as they are tested and as patches are applied.

Funtoo uses Git to store the Portage tree. The tree is split into kits now with meta-repo[8] being the repo holding all the kits as submodules.

Metro[9] is an automatable software package for building stages used in installing Funtoo.

boot-update[10] provides a unified mechanism for configuring the GNU GRUB2 and GRUB Legacy boot loader versions.

Funtoo has its own core networking solution to allow users to simplify the creation of complex network interfaces based on pre-created profiles.[11]

Since May 2015 Funtoo offers a pre-built generic kernel with stage3.[12] Although Funtoo is a source-based distribution, it should be possible to use a prebuilt Linux kernel.[13] Funtoo no longer encourages the use of the Sabayon kernel; however, with many improvements to Funtoo's design and init process, one should be able to load a binary kernel plus initrd from a preferred distribution hosting a precompiled/preconfigured kernel. Ubuntu's kernel linux-3.2.0-17-generic has been tested and is known to work. This can benefit those who like to avoid building custom kernels. Using a generic kernel from another distribution should be straightforward if using boot-update Archived 2013-08-09 at the Wayback Machine.

There are multitude of users blog posts or discussions about difference between Gentoo and Funtoo.[14] The most marked difference between the two would be no systemd support in Funtoo, but still delivering for example a working Gnome desktop[15] without the systemd need.[16]

The central design consideration in Tin Hat is to construct an operating system that can hide data from an attacker even if he has physical access to the computer.[17] Physical access to a computer with unencrypted filesystems does not secure the data and an attacker could easily retrieve the data. Encrypting the filesystem provides protection from such an attack, but many implementations of encryption do not hide the fact that data is encrypted on the filesystem. For example, the LUKS encryption system includes metadata which detail the block cipher and block cipher mode used in encryption. This information does not help the attacker decrypt the filesystem, but it does reveal that it contains encrypted data and not random data. However, Tin Hat stores its filesystem in the RAM, leaving no data in the computer's hard drive. If the user stores any data via a more permanent means than RAM, the encrypted data is indiscernible from random data.

Tin Hat's preferred method of encryption is via loop-aes v3.

Beyond these considerations, Tin Hat has to also protect against more common exploits based on networking or security holes in software. The hardening model chosen is PaX/Grsecurity which is already provided by the Hardened Gentoo project. Hardening of the kernel and the toolchain make most code born exploits less likely. A non-modular compiled kernel further frustrates the insertion of malicious kernel modules.[18]

As of December 3, 2009, VLOS has been rebuilt with Daniel Robbins' fork of Gentoo Linux called Funtoo.[19]

Vidalinux comes in two different flavors; one can be downloaded, while the other must be purchased. While the downloaded version technically has all the same software packages as the purchased version, the difference is that the purchased version (which can be bought for 25 USD) contains many binaries of often used programs, while the downloaded version forces the user to download ebuilds of these packages and build the binaries themselves, which requires more time.

• 1.0 October 4, 2004
• 1.1 December 20, 2004
• 1.2 August 1, 2005
• 1.2.1 January 18, 2006
• 1.2.1-r2 January 30, 2006
• 1.3 18 October 2006