exGENT Live Distro Makes Gentoo Linux Fun to Use in 2021 with the LXQt Desktop

exGENT 2021

It’s 2021 and powerful distributions like Gentoo are no longer a thing, but a small distro called exGENT developed by Arne Exton still makes Gentoo fun to use these days.

It’s been about eight months since the last update to the exGENT distribution, which aims to offer the Linux community a live and installable operating system based on Gentoo. I’ve highlighted live and installable because Gentoo no longer generates regular live ISO images you can try without installing the system.

The exGENT 2021 release makes things even more interesting since it uses the latest Linux 5.10 LTS kernel series, which automatically translates to better hardware support and support for newer hardware. However, the kernel included in the live system is Linux 5.6.7 and Linux kernel 5.10 LTS will be used in the installed system.

Yes, that’s right, you can install exGENT 2021 on your personal computer in only a few minutes (something that’s not possible with Gentoo) using the Calamares universal installer.

On top of that, exGENT 2021 ships with everyone’s favorite lightweight Qt desktop environment, LXQt, which has been updated to version 0.15.1. Yes, I know LXQt 0.16.0 has been out since early November 2020, but for some reason Arne Exton packed version 0.15.1 instead of 0.16.0, the latter being available in Gentoo’s stable repository.

Other than that, most of the packages look to have been updated to their latest versions at the moment of the release. You can study the full list of installed packages here, but there aren’t so many packages installed in the exGENT live system.

If you want to try or use Gentoo Linux in 2021, you should download exGENT 2021 right now. You can even use it in a VirtualBox and VMware virtual machine. Keep in mind that to enter the live system you’ll have to use the live or root user with password exGENT21$.

Last updated 3 years ago

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