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Developer Arne Exton is experimenting with new projects and released a version of his exGENT Linux distribution for the latest Raspberry Pi 4 single-board computer.
Based on Gentoo Linux, exGENT is a distro created by Arne Exton and designed for advanced Linux users and anyone else who really wants to learn Linux. It’s one of the very few up-to-date live Gentoo systems.
While exGENT Linux is fun to use on the desktop, you can now use it on your tiny Raspberry Pi computer thanks to the hard work by developer Arne Exton.
“I’ve built a Gentoo system for Raspberry Pi 4. Just for fun, but it took me four days to compile everything from “scratch”. Six days if I include failed attempts to install Firefox and Chromium,” explains Arne Exton.
Having a look at exGENT for Raspberry Pi, I can notice that it’s a complete Gentoo Linux system featuring the lightweight LXDE desktop environment.
It ships with a bunch of popular apps including the Vivaldi web browser, GIMP image editor, SMPlayer video player, and NetworkManager network connection manager.
Under the hood, exGENT for Raspberry Pi 4 is using Linux kernel 4.19.113-exton-v8, optimized for ARM architectures and Raspberry Pi devices.
While exGENT has been optimized for the Raspberry Pi 4, you can also run it on older models, such as Raspberry Pi 3 Model B and B+, but it’s not recommended due to poorer performance.
On the Raspberry Pi 4, exGENT Linux is quite fast, the developer reports, but you should use it on the 2GB or 4GB models, not the 1GB model as the system might hang often when watching videos.
If you want to give exGENT Linux a try on your Raspberry Pi computer, you can download the image right now from the developer’s website, where you’ll also find installation instructions and usage details.
Images: Arne Exton
Last updated 4 years ago
