User:Zulu Foxtrott/GentooOnARM

Welcome
First of all, welcome to Gentoo! You are about to enter the world of choices and performance. Gentoo is all about choices. When installing Gentoo, this is made clear several times - users can choose how much they want to compile themselves, how to install Gentoo, what system logger to use, etc.

Gentoo is a fast, modern meta-distribution with a clean and flexible design. It is built on an ecosystem of free software and does not hide what is beneath the hood from its users. Portage, the package maintenance system which Gentoo uses, is written in Python, meaning the user can easily view and modify the source code. Gentoo's packaging system uses source code (although support for pre-compiled packages is included too) and configuring Gentoo happens through regular text files. In other words, openness everywhere.

It is very important that everyone understands that choices are what makes Gentoo run. We try not to force users into anything they do not like. If anyone believes otherwise, please file a bug report.

Installation options for Gentoo on ARM
Installing Gentoo on ARM is not always a straightforward process. Generally, two scenarios need to be distinguished:
 * 1) The user already has access to an ARM system running Linux
 * 2) The user does not yet have access to an ARM system already running Linux

Without a working Linux command line environment installing Gentoo on ARM is usually not possible. Furthermore it is necessary to have root privileges in that command line environment, as well as network access and access to the storage device on which Gentoo is to be installed.

Depending on the scenario at hand, different procedures of installing Gentoo are applicable and available.

Access to Linux on ARM is already available
If the user already has access to an ARM system that provides a Linux command line environment, Gentoo can be installed the traditional way.

Access to Linux on ARM is not available yet
In case the user only has access to a Linux command line environment running on a system based on an architecture other than ARM, there are two suitable approaches on how to install Gentoo:
 * Emulating the ARM system and installing Gentoo the traditional way
 * Cutting corners and installing Gentoo the easy way

To be able to emulate the ARM system the command line environment must support virtualization.