Recent developments have emerged from the Gentoo project as well as its derivative, Funtoo, which was initiated by Gentoo’s founder, Daniel Robbins.
The Gentoo Linux distribution, which is compiled from source and accommodates various CPU architectures, is set to drop support for Intel’s Itanium processors. Project leaders have announced this upcoming change due to essential upstream support that has ceased. The Linux kernel almost discontinued support for Itanium in February 2023 and effectively did so in kernel 6.7 by October of the same year. As we had anticipated in November, no one has undertaken maintaining the Itanium support separately.
Further affirming this trend, it was confirmed earlier that GCC 15 will also remove support for Itanium. While distributions with set release schedules might extend support — such as antiX Linux 23, which continues to support kernel 4.9 as detailed in their updates — Gentoo, with its rolling-release nature, must adapt continuously to the latest upstream code. The upcoming release of GCC 15 signifies that once a CPU architecture loses support in both the kernel and the compilers required for building the kernel, it ultimately becomes impossible for Gentoo to maintain support for Itanium.
Meanwhile, Funtoo, the distro that Gentoo founder Daniel Robbins started next, has a somewhat uncertain future. Robbins, who stepped away from Gentoo in 2004, went on to found another source-based distro, which uses different tooling. Late last month, he announced its end, saying:
There is not a successor BDFL for Funtoo nor am I interested in trying to find one, or hand the project off to someone else.
A few weeks later, though, Robbins has changed his mind. He now says that the project will continue:
Borrowing a phrase from Cameron Kaiser, developer of TenFourFox (a Firefox fork for PowerPC Macs) Funtoo Linux will be entering “Hobby Mode”.
Dr Cameron Kaiser, well-known for his restoration of the Canon Cat which we recently discussed, has worked on numerous projects, including maintaining the final web browser for PowerMacs until a few years back.
Additional information on the decision by Gentoo is available in a mailing list post that outlines the status of the various architectures supported by the distro. This suggests significant organizational changes could benefit the project, and possibly lead to a merger if Mr. Robbins finds managing his hobby project too burdensome.
We extend our gratitude to Register reader Rony Muniz for updating us on the potential conclusion of the Funtoo project.
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