BD whitepaper gentoo

8/7/2019 BD whitepaper gentoo

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BlueDog White Paper

The Case for GentooThe case for a robust enterprise operating system

Secure: install only the operating system components

needed for the system.

High-Performance: kernel builds are optimized for the

CPU and other system hardware. Install only the

components necessary to reduce overhead.

Versatile and Reliable: the Gentoo Linux 2.4 version

kernel has been in wide use since 2003 and is used in

commercial Linux appliances, other federal agencies, and

driving many high-end systems.

Easy-to-Manage: the Portagé implementation of package

management means easy system maintenance that avoids

breaking working systems by checking/trackingdependencies. In the end, this is a flavor of Linux, so any

Unix system administrator should be right at home.




The Gentoo Flavor of Linux

Gentoo is a distribution of GNU/Linux designed for

enterprise server environments, and is an open source

product. Gentoo is a special flavor of Linux that can be

automatically optimized and customized for just about any

application or need. Gentoo Linux is a source based

distribution, with a powerful package management system.

Extreme performance, configurability and a top-notch

developer and support community are all hallmarks of the

Gentoo experience.

Open Source Software are programs with licenses that giveusers the freedom to run the program for any purpose, to

study and modify the program, and to redistribute copies of

either the original or modified program (without having to

pay royalties to previous developers). There is also a

community of developers around the world who support

these types of applications – not for direct income, but

because they want to. Of course developers make money

off of Open Source Software the same way commercial

vendors do – through support, upgrades, enhancements

and customization.

Why should one consider Open Source an alternative to

closed, commercial systems in the first place? Besides the

obvious up-front cost savings, four factors contribute to

making Open Source just plain better: First, many users

don't just report bugs, as they would do with commercial

software, but actually track them down to their root causes

and fix them.

Second, many developers are reviewing each other's code,

if only because it is important to understand code before it

can be changed or extended. It has long been known that

peer reviewing is the most effective way to find defects.




Third, the open source model seems to encourage a

meritocracy, in which programmers organize themselves

around a project based on their contributions. The most

effective programmers write the most crucial code, review

the contributions of others, and decide which of thesecontributions make it into the next release.

Fourth, open source projects don't face the same type of

resource and time pressures that commercial projects do.

Open source projects are rarely developed against a fixed

timeline, affording more opportunity for peer review and

extensive beta testing before "release."




Purpose of This Paper

This white paper compares a commonly-used enterprise

operating system with a commonly-used proprietary one,

Solaris, to show that in certain situations and by certain

measures, Gentoo is at least as good or better than its

proprietary competition. This is not meant as a wide ranging

apology of Open Source -- some Open Source software is

technically poor, just as some proprietary software is

technically poor, and even very good software may not fit

specific needs. Although most people understand the need

to compare proprietary products before using them,

sometime others fail to even consider Open Source

products. This white paper is intended to explain why you

should consider Open Source as an alternative.




Exhibit 1

Summary: Why Go Gentoo?

Area of

Importance

How

Gentoo Rates

Risks

Mitigated

Performance During the build process, Gentoo is automatically optimizedand customized the architecture, yielding extremeperformance and configurability. On a x86 architectureGentoo has proven to have among the fastest responsetimes in data input/output categories, real-world web andapplication serving situations, and other areas.Gentoo can be configured to utilize a feature of modernIntel-style chips. Intel (and AMD) CPUs support multiplepipelines, which essentially means they can do more thenone thing at a time. If you have two otherwise equivalentPentium-based machines, one running a program that keepsboth of its pipelines completely full, and the other running aprogram which only utilizes one, in theory the former willhave twice the performance of the latter. Combine that with

the fact that some optimizations speed up the program inother non-processor-dependent ways, and one may see thata multiplicative speed increase. In a multi-processorenvironment, the same gains are possible.Speed optimization is not the only a reason to run Gentoo.Because it allows the engineer to very easily customize thefeatures of all packages, you get a system designed for thejob at hand. Also it is very easy to apply custom patchesand still have the package managed by the portage(therefore knowing when there are a new versions orpatches available). Performance is easier to achieve in asystem customized for the task at hand. One of the drivingphilosophies is to know exactly what's installed on thesystem, and have nothing more.

For Java deployment, Gentoo is simply the best Linuxdistro: The major JREs are integrated in to the packagingsystem and the java-config utility allows developers toeasily switch from multiple JREs on the fly.

Leveraging thecost-effectiveDell (Intel)platform withits enterprise-class RAID, dualpower supplies,hot-swapdrives, andinexpensiveXeon multi-processorconfigurationmeans wringingthe mostperformancefrom theplatform.Gentoo beatsSolaris hands-down in thisarea.

Reliability Gentoo’s package library is well-tested. Security packagesare back-ported, keeping all packages in the distribution upto date.

Kernel-isolation means no reboots unless an emergedpackage addresses the Kernel specifically.Portage package management is kept reliable by rsync synchronization for the source tree and ftp and httpsynchronization for the distribution tree.

Whereas Solaris often runs up against hardwareincompatibilities, Gentoo mitigates driver problems with avast selection found in the portage.

Because theportal and webpresence arehigh visibilitysystems,reliability is akey issue. Whileany flavor of

Unix is highlyreliable, Gentoooffers an addedlevel of dependability.Patching everysubsystem (butthe kernel) canhappen with outa reboot.





Area of Importance

HowGentoo Rates

RisksMitigated

Support Because Gentoo is a distribution of Linux, it conforms to the“Unix-like” model of all the popular operating systems –Solaris, Linus, Irix, and OS X. Administrators comfortable inany of these environments can move freely to the others.

As Open Source, Gentoo Linux is a volunteer-drivendistribution and has a great Gentoo community that tests,helps and documents many aspects of the Gentoodistribution. Gentoo currently has over 200 developers andaccording to the group's statistics, "tens of thousands of users." It is not uncommon to direct support questions tothe Gentoo Forums, Gentoo Mailing lists or Gentoo ChatChannels; they represent a major part of the "common"knowledge about Gentoo Linux. The Gentoo Handbook

[http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/index.xml ] is thestarting point for information about software.

Bugs and patches are reported and made available via theGentoo site and via the Portage.

In addition tothe resources of the NGITengineeringgroup, thePortal Team’sengineer, PerryGolden, willmanage theinstallation,configurationandmanagement of

the systems.Once built andcertified byScott Chudy forsecurity, thesystems will bemaintained byperiodic reviewsof the Portage,which can berun by any of the Unixadministrators.

Ease of Maintenanceand Controlof the Build

Portage is the heart of Gentoo Linux, and performs manykey functions. For one, Portage is the software distribution system for Gentoo Linux. Gentoo's portage downloads thesources off a mirror and compiles them for your system,automatically solving dependencies.

To get the latest software for Gentoo Linux, you type onecommand: emerge sync. This command tells Portage toupdate your local "Portage tree" over the Internet. Yourlocal Portage tree contains a complete collection of scriptsthat can be used by Portage to create and install the latestGentoo packages. Currently, we have nearly 7000 packages in our Portage tree, with new ones being added all the time.

Portage is also a package building and installation system.When you want to install a package, you type emerge

packagename, at which point Portage automatically builds acustom version of the package to your exact specifications,optimizing it for your hardware and ensuring that theoptional features in the package that you want are enabled -- and those you don't want aren't.

Portage also keeps your system up-to-date. Typing emerge

-u world -- one command -- will ensure that all thepackages that you want on your system are updated

Emergingpackages formthe Portagemakesmaintenancemuch easierthan Solaris.

Control of thebuild matchesthe needs of theparticularserver to theoperating

systemcomponents.





Area of Importance

HowGentoo Rates

RisksMitigated

automatically.

Because you only install what you choose, you get a better

security posture and a less bloated system.Gentoo's Portage system enables the building of a customLinux installation from a tree of over 6,000 maintainedpackages. Gentoo’s from-source approach and totalflexibility means that it takes very little effort to deliver thekind of customized system an enterprise environmentrequires.




Linux vs. Solaris -- A Complex

Issue

The situation with Unix is complex; today’s Unix systems

include many Open Source components or software

primarily derived from Open Source. Comparing a single

proprietary Unix system to Open Source is often not as

clear-cut. We will use the term “Unix-like” to mean systems

intentionally similar to Unix; both Unix and GNU/Linux are

“Unix-like” systems. For example, Apple's MacOS OS X

presents the same kind of complications; older versions of

MacOS were wholly proprietary, but Apple’s OS has been

redesigned so that it’s now based on a Unix system with

substantial contributions from Open Source (BSD, most

notably). Indeed, Apple is now openly encouraging

collaboration with Open Source developers in the form of

Darwin.

Open Source is All Around Us

Some might think that a product is only a winner if it has

significant market share. While such logic is flawed, there is

a seed of rational discourse within the argument that can be

appropriate. Operating systems, for example, with big

market share get applications, trained users, and

momentum that reduces future risk. Some may argue

against Open Source in general or GNU/Linux specifically as

“not being mainstream”, but this view reflects the past, not

the present. There is no shortage of evidence that Open

Source has significant market share, and is in wide use at

many organizations:

• The most popular web server has always been OpenSource since such data have been collected. Forexample, Apache is currently the number one webserver with over twice the market share of its next-




ranked competitor. Netcraft’s statistics on web servershave consistently shown Apache dominating the publicInternet web server market ever since 1996. Itspredecessor was number one prior to that.

• Sendmail, an Open Source program, is the leading emailserver. A survey between September and October 2001

by D.J. Bernstein of one million random IP addressessuccessfully connected to 958 SMTP (email) servers(such servers are also called mail transport agents, orMTAs). Bernstein found that Unix Sendmail had thelargest market share (42% of all email servers),followed by Windows Microsoft Exchange (18%), Unixqmail (17%), Windows Ipswitch IMail (6%), Unix smap(2%), UNIX Postfix (formerly VMailer, 2%) and UnixExim (1%).

• A survey in the second quarter of 2000 found that 95%of all reverse-lookup domain name servers (DNS) usedbind, an OSS/FS product. The Internet is built from

many mostly-invisible infrastructure components. Thisincludes domain name servers (DNSs), which takehuman-readable machine names (like “yahoo.com”) andtranslate them into numeric addresses. Bill Manning hassurveyed (in April 2000) the in-addr domain and foundthat 95% of all name servers performing this importantInternet infrastructure task are some version of “bind.” This includes all of the DNS root servers, which arecritical for keeping the Internet functioning. Bind is anOSS/FS program.

• Tomcat is the popular open source Servlet enginefrequently used during application development, and is

widely deployed, with market share just behindWebSphere and WebLogic.

• GNU/Linux is the second-most-popular web servingoeprating system on the public Internet (counting byphysical machine), according to a study by Netcraftsurveying March and June 2001. Some of Netcraft’ssurveys have also included data on OSes; two 2001surveys (their June 2001 and September 2001 surveys)found that GNU/Linux is the numerb two OS for webservers when counting physical machines (and has beenconsistently gaining market share since February 1999).As Netcraft themselves point out, the usual Netcraft webserver survey counts web server hostnames rather thanphysical computers, and so it does not measure suchspecifics as the installed hardware base. Companies canrun several thousand web sites on one computer, andmost of the world’s web sites are located at hosting andco-location companies.

• According to a 1999 survey of primarily European andeducational sites, GNU/Linux is the number one serveroperating system on the public Internet (counting by




domain name), according to a 1999 survey of primarilyEuropean and educational sites. This survey (Zoebelein,April 1999) found that, of the total number of serversdeployed on the Internet in 1999 (running at least ftp,news, or http) in a sample of domain names, the mostused was GNU/Linux at 28.5%. It’s important to note

that this survey used existing databases of servers fromthe .edu and the RIPE databases, so this is not really asurvey of “the whole Internet” (it omits “.com” and“.net”). This is a count by domain name (e.g., the textname you would type into a web browser for a location)instead of by physical computer, so what is beingcounted is different from the Netcraft studies. Also, thisstudy counted servers providing ftp and news services(not just web servers).

Perhaps the simplest argument that GNU/Linux will have a

significant market share is that Sun is modifying its Solaris

product to run GNU/Linux applications, and IBM has already

announced that GNU/Linux will be the successor of IBM’s

own AIX. In fact, Sun has announced plans to move Solaris

into the Open Source model. Sun wants to foster a better

internal software development process, work more closely

with the community and then be able to drive innovation

outside its own organization.

[http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1647606,00.asp ]




How does Gentoo measure up?

Gentoo compares favorably to Solaris and other enterpriseoperating systems, such as Red Hat’s enterprise

distribution.

Similarities

Solaris and Gentoo can be thought of as different flavors of

Unix. File system structure, location of binaries, command

line interface, and other elements of each are either

identical or very similar. Unix, in all its variations (including

Linux), is a powerful computing environment,; to maximize

productivity users and administrators should understand the

"Unix way" of getting work done. Once mastered, the “Unix

way” is universal.

A moderately experienced Unix administrator can transfer

knowledge required to work with file and directory

permissions, user and group accounts, backups, device files,and peripherals with little effort.

Performance

Gentoo provides the means to fine tune installation on

specific hardware configurations to wring the highest

performance from the CPU, I/O channel, and other

subsystems. Overall, GNU/Linux offers better performance;

with Gentoo’s customization, we can expect the highest

performance.

In performance tests by Sys Admin magazine, GNU/Linux

beat Solaris (on Intel), Windows 2000, and FreeBSD. The

article “Which OS is Fastest for High-Performance Network




Applications?” in the July 2001 edition of Sys Admin

magazine examined high-performance architectures and

found that GNU/Linux beat its competition when compared

with Solaris (on Intel), FreeBSD (an OSS/FS system), and

Windows 2000. They intentionally ran the systems “out of the box” (untuned), except for increasing the number of

simultaneous TCP/IP connections (which is necessary for

testing multi-threaded and asynchronous applications).

They used the latest versions of OSes and the exact same

machine. They reported (by OS) the results of two different

performance tests.

Note: FreeBSD developers complained about these tests, notingthat FreeBSD by default emphasizes reliability (not speed) andthat they expected anyone with a significant performance needwould do some tuning first. Thus, Sys Admin’s re-did the tests forFreeBSD after tuning FreeBSD. One change they made wasswitching to “asynchronous” mounting, which makes a systemfaster (though it increases the risk of data loss in a power failure) -- this is the GNU/Linux default and easy to change in FreeBSD, sothis was a very small and reasonable modification. However, theyalso made many other changes, for example, they found andcompiled in 17 FreeBSD kernel patches and used various tuningcommands. The other OSes weren’t given the chance to “tune” likethis, so comparing untuned OSes to a tuned FreeBSD isn’t reallyfair.

Here are the results of two performance tests by Sys Admin

magazine:

• Their “real-world” test measured how quickly largequantities of email could be sent using their emaildelivery server (MailEngine). Up to 100 simultaneoussends there was no difference, but as the numberincreased the systems began showing significantdifferences in their hourly email delivery speed. By 500simultaneous sends GNU/Linux was clearly faster thanall except FreeBSD-tuned, and GNU/Linux remained atthe top. FreeBSD-tuned had similar performance toGNU/Linux when running 1000 or less simultaneous

sends, but FreeBSD-tuned peaked around 1000-1500simultaneous connections with a steady decline notsuffered by GNU/Linux, and FreeBSD-tuned had troublegoing beyond 3000 simultaneous connections. By 1500simultaneous sends, GNU/Linux was sending 1.3 millionemails/hour, while Solaris managed approximately 1million, and Windows 2000 and FreeBSD-untuned werearound 0.9 million.




• Their “disk I/O test” created, wrote, and read back10,000 identically-sized files in one directory, varyingthe size of the file instances. Here Solaris was theslowest, with FreeBSD-untuned the second-slowest.FreeBSD-tuned, Windows 2000, and GNU/Linux hadsimilar speeds at the smaller file sizes (in some cases

FreeBSD-tuned was faster, e.g., 8k and 16k file size),but when the file sizes got to 64k to 128k the OSesbegan to show significant performance differences;GNU/Linux was the fastest, then Windows 2000, thenFreeBSD. At 128k, FreeBSD was 16% worse thanWindows 2000, and 39% worse than GNU/Linux; allwere faster than FreeBSD-untuned and Solaris. Whentotaling these times across file sizes, the results wereGNU/Linux: 542 seconds, Windows 2000: 613 seconds,FreeBSD-tuned: 630 seconds, FreeBSD-untuned: 2398seconds, and Solaris: 3990 seconds.

Benchmarks comparing Sun Solaris x86 and GNU/Linux

found many similarities, but GNU/Linux had double the

performance in web operations. Tony Bourke’s October

2003 evaluation Sun Versus Linux: The x86 Smack-down

gave a general review comparing Sun Solaris x86 and Red

Hat Linux. [http://www.osnews.com/

printer.php?news_id=4867] He found that “Performance

was overall similar for most of the metrics tested, perhaps

with Linux in a very slight lead. However, with the web

operations test (arguably the most important and relevant),

Linux is a clear winner.” He found that, given the same web

serving programs and configuration, GNU/Linux supported

over 2,000 fetches/second while Solaris x86 supported less

than 1,000 fetches/second.

Reliability

An important reason to choose Gentoo over Solaris is

reliability.

There is quantitative data confirming that mature Linux

distributions are often more reliable than their commercial

counterparts.




• A University of Wisconsin analysis measured reliabilityby feeding programs random characters anddetermining which ones resisted crashing and freeze-ups. This approach is unlikely to find subtle failures, yetthe study authors found that their approach stillmanages to find many errors in production software and

is a useful tool for finding software flaws. Finally, thisapproach is extremely fair and can broadly applied toany program, making it possible to compare differentprograms fairly.

• They found that Linux had higher reliability by thismeasure. In section 2.3.1 they reported that, "It is alsointeresting to compare results of testing the commercialsystems to the results from testing “freeware” GNU andLinux. The seven commercial systems in the 1995 studyhave an average failure rate of 23%, while Linux has afailure rate of 9% and the GNU utilities have a failurerate of only 6%. It is reasonable to ask why a globally

scattered group of programmers, with no formal testingsupport or software engineering standards can producecode that is more reliable (at least, by our measure)than commercially produced code. Even if you consideronly the utilities that were available from GNU or Linux,the failure rates for these two systems are better thanthe other systems."

• IBM studies have found GNU/Linux to be highly reliable.IBM ran a series of extremely stressful tests for 30 and60 days, and found that the Linux kernel and other coreOS components -- including libraries, device drivers, filesystems, networking, IPC, and memory management --operated consistently and completed all the expecteddurations of runs with zero critical system failures. Linuxsystem performance was not degraded during the longduration of the run, the Linux kernel properly scaled touse hardware resources (CPU, memory, disk) on SMPsystems, the Linux system handled continuous full CPUload (over 99%) and high memory stress well, and theLinux system handled overloaded circumstancescorrectly. IBM declared that these tests demonstratethat “the Linux kernel and other core OS componentsare reliable and stable ... and can provide a robust,enterprise-level environment for customers over longperiods of time.”

• A study by Reasoning (www.reasoning.com) found thatthe Linux kernel’s implementation of the TCP/IP Internetprotocol stack had fewer defects than the equivalentstacks of several proprietary general-purpose operatingsystems. It equaled the best of the embedded operatingsystems.

Reasoning’s study compared six implementations of TCP/IP. Besides the Linux kernel, three of the




implementations were part of commercial general-purpose operating systems, and two were embedded incommercial telecommunications equipment. The studywas not commissioned by any of the GNU/Linux vendorsor companies who might be competing with GNU/Linux,and thus should be free of bias.

The company used automated tools to look five kinds of defects in code: Memory leaks, null pointerdereferences, bad deallocations, out of bounds arrayaccess and uninitialized variables. Reasoning found 8defects in 81,852 lines of Linux kernel source lines of code (SLOC), resulting in a defect density rate of 0.1defects per KSLOC. In contrast, the three proprietarygeneral-purpose operating systems (two of themversions of Unix) had between 0.6 and 0.7defects/KSLOC; thus the Linux kernel had a smallerdefect rate than all the competing general-purposeoperating systems examined.

A quick survey of the Solaris x86 packages finds a host of

niggling problems. By way of example, here are some

common ones: ACPI interface problems on Solaris are

solved by disabling the feature, versus working configs in

the Gentoo distro. Solaris places fixed limits on different

areas of the disk, meaning you have to guess the space

allocation by directory you think you will need. Solaris

duting installation does not require a default route out of

the segment so DNS does not work if you don't have a DNS

server in your LAN. The installer expects to find an A-record

matching the hostname and domain you entered into the

DNS configuration. If it can't query the DNS server or it gets

NXDOMAIN, an error is thrown and you can't configure DNS

while installing. Installing to pre-formatted partition can

throw an exception; the bug is known but has gone unfixed.

The solution to many hardware problems is to discard the

offending hardware. Overall, Solaris seems to have seriousdeficiencies: little hardware driver support; limited or no

USB, video card or PCMCIA support; slow boot times; slow

performance.




Support

Unix administrators can support the platform. The

differences in the command sets between the flavors of Unix

are minimal and easily adjusted for by consulting the MAN

pages or a quick Google search. Innovative thinking in the

FOSS community even engenders commercial endeavors

such as Starnet’s Linux support [http://www.starnet.com/

linux_support/], where you can get Gentoo support for free.

Patches are handled typically via the Portage system.

Developers can also deploy their applications by employing

their own secure portage server, pushing binaries to

subscribing (and authenticated) servers over SSH.

Vulnerabilities, bug tracking, and upgrades are managed at

the Gentoo web site.

Gentoo's package management system is so robust and

powerful that there is currently an effort to port it to Solaris

( http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=113387 ,

http://supportforum.sun.com/sunos/index.php?t=msg&goto

=1716&rid=0#msg_1716 ). The converse is not true.

The Portage package management system maintains the

latest stable secure code for the operating system and

allows for easy distribution with the issue of a few simple

commands. Solaris does not offer any such system.

Gentoo's "from source" system philosophy allows for code

to be compiled to take advantage of an architectures every

feature. In doing so binaries can be built to run optimally

for Xeon only processors whereas the binaries and kernelfor Solaris must maintain x86 backward compatibility

making them larger and slower.

The portage system mitigates much system management,

including addressing security vulnerabilities. As an example,

the month of September has seen two critical buffer




overflow vulnerabilities in Solaris Apache, whereas Gentoo's

"standards based" distribution of Apache saw one low rated

and one normal rated, both of which are mitigated simply

by running the current version in the portage repository.

Gentoo’s Handbook offers the most comprehensive

documentation on this distribution.

Gentoo will be providing periodic stable forks of the Portage

tree on a regular basis; a new quarterly release structure

unifies the releases. There is a snapshot of the Portage tree

every three months with the packages in it being very

stable. Gentoo's developers offer guaranteed support for

those packages including elements like security fixes for the

lifetime of that version.

Commercial Support Provider Contact Information

Direct System Support Inc.http://www.directsystemssupport.com/

Corporate Office9020 Kenamar Dr. Suite 201San Diego, CA 92121-2431P(858)[email protected]

IBM PartnerInterland Inc.http://www.interland.com

Interland, Inc.P.O. Box 406980Atlanta, GA 30384-69801.877.504.0091

IBM PartnerIneo Concepts Inc.http://store.ineoconcepts.com/ 923 Pheonix Ave. Ste 1

Peekskill, NY 10566Phone: (914) 737.4032

Cornerstone Systems Inc.http://www.csihome.com

Services, Security & Applications27200 Tourney Road, Suite 315Valencia, California 91355661-799-3200

IBM ParnerComputer Applications Specialists, Inc.http://www.comappspec.com

6201 Chevy Chase DriveLaurel, MD 20707301.776.3400

IBM Partner




Alabanza Corp.http://www.alabanza.com 10 East Baltimore Street

Suite 1500Baltimore, MD 21202(410) 779-1400

IBM Partner




Who Uses Gentoo?

Like many distributions of Linux, Gentoo is in wide use –

from individual developers to Federal government agencies,

cross-national corporations, and non-government

organizations. Here’s a sampling with brief descriptions.

Organization In What Environment?

National SecurityAgency

Gentoo Linux was chosen as the platform for this workbecause its growing success and open developmentenvironment provided an opportunity to demonstrate that the

"Secure Enhanced" promoted by NSA and DoD functionalitycan be successful in a mainstream operating system and, atthe same time, contribute to the security of a widely usedsystem. Additionally, the integration of these security researchresults into Gentoo may encourage wide-spread adoption maylead to additional improvement in system security.

U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security(formerly Healthand HumanServices)

Operating system for portal to provide emergency responsepersonnel in 120+ cities with (sometimes classified)information on fire, police, EMT and other emergencyresponse plans related to anti-terror activities. High levels of security required for sub-topic areas pertaining to National

Pharmaceutical Stockpile and other important national quick-response assets.

World Bank –General ServicesDivision

Intranet portal servers that provide access to SAP R/3deployment, department-specific work flow applications (printand multimedia job production tracking, digital assetmanagement, knowledge base).

U.S. Dept. of Defense

Installations at the Naval Research Lab - The Navy's corporatelaboratory. NRL conducts a broadly-based multidisciplinaryprogram of scientific research and advanced technologicaldevelopment directed toward maritime applications of newand improved materials, techniques, equipment, system, andother technologies.Related : A report commissioned by the U.S. military concludesthat open source and free software should play a greater partin the infrastructure of the world's remaining superpower.Mitre Corporation's 152-page study addresses the extent of FOSS-licensed (Free and Open Source Software) software usein various branches: "…It's all over the place already, concludethe authors, and there should be more of it . . ."

U.S. Department of Portal applications and web services run on Gentoo



www bluedog net 20 of 20

Organization In What Environment?

Justice appliances. Provides services to 1,200 internal users and 10sof thousands of external (general public) users.

Banca Populari diVicenze (Italy) Web-based banking solution running Gentoo for web andapplication tiers. High-availability, high-throughout andlocked-down systems were the main drivers in choosingGentoo Linux.

Other CommercialInstallations

Tek Alchemy chose this distro because by itself Gentoo Linuxis one of the most advanced GNU/Linux distributions available.The Portage software management system delivers a greatdeal of power and convenience for administrators who need tokeep software up-to-date for security reasons. A simple cronjob can download and install updates for the base distributionplus whatever else you have installed. In many ways Gentoois a lot like other flavors of Unix; the installation,configuration, and maintenance are very similar in practice.

Seven L Networks uses Gentoo Linux on almost all of its backroom production servers as well as most of the hosting anddedicated servers that it rents out. It runs its mail servicesand its own company Web site, and stores all of its databackups on Gentoo-based computers.

Documents

BD whitepaper gentoo