Recent Community Updates: Live ISO, Website, Download Site, and Speedtest
A roundup of what the community has worked on recently, project by project. Each item links to its repo, so you can dig into the full history if you want.
Live ISO
The Chinese community’s custom KDE Plasma 6 desktop Live ISO (Gentoo-zh/Live-ISO):
- Three languages out of the box: the boot menu offers Simplified / Traditional / English, and the whole live environment follows your choice; the installed system also keeps whatever language you picked in the installer.
- Chinese input methods preinstalled: fcitx5 + rime, ready to type out of the box, with Luna Pinyin, Zhuyin, Wubi86, Cangjie, and Cantonese Pinyin built in.
- Proprietary NVIDIA, optional: pick the NVIDIA entry in the boot menu to load the proprietary driver normally (disable Secure Boot first); otherwise it uses open-source nouveau.
- Handy live-only desktop switches: the desktop has a few one-click toggles meant just for the live session, there when you need them — temporarily turn off auto-sleep / lock (so a long session or install isn’t interrupted), enable passwordless sudo, and start SSH (handy for a remote install or debugging).
- The installed system is clean: those live conveniences (along with the default passwordless SDDM autologin) only exist in the live session; the installer resets / clears them on install, so the installed system goes back to KDE’s normal defaults — login needs a password, sudo needs authorization, and sleep/lock behave normally.
- Out-of-the-box details: PipeWire audio, networking connects on boot, and MAKEOPTS / CPU instruction sets adapt to your machine.
For actually installing a system, following the Gentoo Handbook step by step is the more solid route; the live ISO also ships a graphical installer (Calamares) if you want a quick install.
The installer (Calamares)
The installer config lives in Gentoo-zh/calamares-settings-gig: after an install it clears out the live-only leftover settings and configures NVIDIA according to the GPU option you chose in the live session. The install flow has been tested with a real QEMU install.
The overlay the Live ISO uses
The packages the Live ISO builds from come from Gentoo-zh/gig — a fork of the Gig OS overlay, specific to the Live ISO, and not the same thing as the community’s main overlay, gentoo-zh. This round updated its Calamares to 3.3.14-r8 (which supports Python 3.14), fixed an emerge --sync error, and cleaned out a batch of redundant / broken packages.
Build and release
The build pipeline, Zakkaus/gentoozh-liveiso-infra: the Live ISO is compiled automatically every Monday, uploaded to the download site, and the landing page re-rendered. The pipeline does a byte-for-byte check that “what’s on the download site == what was just built”, and only publishes when they match; it also copes with the USE / keyword churn of a rolling-tree transition automatically (see the Python 3.14 post).
Website
The website, www.gentoo.org.cn (source: gentoo-zh.github.io), migrated from Blowfish to Hextra — lighter, faster, and friendlier to docs and text browsers (details in the migration post). The presentation layer was split out into a standalone Hextra patch package, gentoozh-theme, which also rounded out SEO, the footer, and accessibility. The download page was wired up to the download site, with notes on the Live ISO’s features and hardware requirements, plus a new FAQ page. This round also added English to the public pages, so you can switch between Simplified / Traditional / English.
Download site
The download site, mirror.gentoozh.org (source: Zakkaus/gentoozh-mirror): the landing page and the usage guide were reworked into Simplified / Traditional / English (with the i18n pulled into a shared module), it supports light / dark mode, cross-links with the speedtest site, and gained a Telegram channel link and an MIT license; it also fixed the SHA256 checksum overflowing sideways on mobile.
Speedtest site
The speedtest site, speed.gentoozh.org (Zakkaus/gentoozh-speed): a custom LibreSpeed-based speed test page, also in Simplified / Traditional / English.
Want to try the Live ISO? Head to the download page. Questions are welcome on Telegram or each project’s GitHub.