Tread lightly on the things of earth

Now this is way cool, from the Gentoo Linux site:

We’re pleased to announce that the Gentoo platform will soon be available for MacOS X. This means that users will be able to enjoy the the power and simplicity of the Gentoo platform and Portage where they happen to be, on the operating system they are currently using — even if that operating system isn’t GNU/Linux. We want to give our users more choices than anyone else, including the ability to use non-GNU operating systems and non-Linux kernels if they have that particular requirement or desire.

Gentoo’s Portage system will then take its place alongside Fink and DarwinPorts as yet another organized way to build and install free Unix/Linux software on a Mac OS X system. (Fink is a great choice already, BTW.) Mac OS X plus Gentoo — what an interesting juxtaposition!

(This is a different computing wonderland than I described in ‘Stones, Gentoo, Mac OS X, and a TiBook — here Unix software is running inside OSX, there OSX is running inside Linux. But either wonderland makes me tear up with computing happiness. :-) )

2003-06-20 update: Today I see at the Fink site (and paralleled at the Gentoo site) that

The Fink, Gentoo, and DarwinPorts projects are pleased to announce the formation of a cooperative development alliance forged to facilitate delivery of freely available software to Mac OS X. … Members of the alliance will share information using the www.metapkg.org Web site, which will provide a home for this cooperative effort.

2004-07-19 update:
This project is back in business! See today’s announcement at Gentoo MacOS X Released, check out its Wiki, and download from here. Standing in cyberline to get mine now. Thanks, guys.

Note: Whereas the announcement says —

Make no mistake: Gentoo MacOS is ready for consumption by Macintosh users who want, say, scientific DTP via TeX, something they will now be able to simply emerge in OS X just like they’d do in Gentoo Linux.

the Wiki warns —

Gentoo MacOS is very new and very Alpha. Portage installs things in / and could possibly overwrite important packages that were installed by OS X. Use this technology at your own risk!

Doobie careful out there.

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