What: Gentoo 10 Year Anniversary Party

Where: irc.freenode.net, #gentoo-birthday

When: Sun, 2009-10-04, in a timezone near you

Introduction:

Gentoo is turning 10. For the last ten years, Gentoo has been committed to bringing the cutting edge source based distro to users that need more flexibility than binary packages can give them. With a vibrant community and over 300 developers, much has been accomplished since the beginning, Gentoo remains true to its origin.

History:

The anniversary date of 1999-10-04 was decided on by a couple of key dates in Gentoo's history. The name Enoch was changed to Gentoo and the domain name gentoo.org was registered. The founder of Gentoo Daniel Robbins, gives us this chronology.

Daniel Robbins Gentoo Chronology

• 1997-07 : Started a new position at University of New Mexico, was using Debian 1.3
• 1998-11 : Was using/developing for Stampede Linux at home, but had not (yet) started Enoch?
• 1999-04 : Was working on Enoch - wrote xpak .tbz2 code that is still in Portage
• 1999-05-27 : First version of Enoch released, according to LWN.net. My blurb for Enoch: Enoch is an advanced GNU/Linux distribution for the x86 PC.
• 1999-09 : My new dual Celeron mobo would not run Linux, went to FreeBSD, Achim Gottinger kept Enoch going.
• 1999-10-04 : Domain name gentoo.org registered.
• 1999-Late : Must have came back to Enoch and done the Gentoo name change right about now - the "Gentoo" name was Bob Mutch's idea - started incorporating some FreeBSD ideas into Enoch - Portage (as we know it today) was born.
• 2000-07-26 : Gentoo 1.0 release "imminent", cvs online, rsync "coming soon"
• 2000-11-03 : Gentoo 1.0 Release Candidate 2
• 2000-12-11 : Gentoo 1.0 Release Candidate 3
• 2001-09-14 : New Gentoo Logo/Web site debut - designed by me! Still in use today! :)
• 2002-02-16 : Was in Brussels, Belgium to attend FOSDEM
• 2002-03-31 : Gentoo Linux 1.0 Released !!!
• 2002-04-08 : Gentoo Linux 1.1a released :)
• 2002-05-10 : Gentoo Listed as one of the top 10 Linux distributions on DistroWatch
• 2002-06-10 : Gentoo Linux 1.2 released :)

So, we're thinking of calling late 2009 the official 10th anniversary of the birth of Gentoo - whaddya think? If it sounds good, we need to get the party planning committee together...

—Daniel Robbins

Thanks to Daniel for the chronology you can read all about it here!

Discuss this!

Gentoo 1.0 Screenshots

Fluxbox

Fluxbox, Gimp, Mplayer, Freeamp, rxvt, Heroes, Gkrellm

XFCE

XFCE, Opera, Xine-ui, Terminal, Abiword

KDE

KDE, Think Free Office, Konqueror, Kedit, HancomShell2

David Abbott contributed the draft for this announcement.