path: root/_posts/2022-01-01-new-year.md

---
title: '2021 in retrospect & happy new year 2022!'
---

Happy New Year 2022! 

<img align="right" height="100" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2022/2022.png" alt="Gentoo Fireworks">
The past year 2021 brought us all both great and sad news, with the world 
still fighting the COVID pandemic.
Gentoo is going strong however, and we are happy to present once more our 
<a href="https://www.gentoo.org/news/2022/01/01/new-year.html">look back
at the events of the last 12 months</a>. Read on for new developers,
exciting changes and improvements, and last but not least up-to-date numbers
on Gentoo development.

<!--more-->


## Gentoo in numbers

XXXXXXXX TEXT STILL MISSING (since we dont have the numbers yet) XXXXXXXXXXXX

<!-- obviously this needs to be updated

**2020 has featured a major increase in commits to the [::gentoo](https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/)
repository**, and especially commits from non-developers.  The overall *number of commits* has grown 
from *73400* to *104500* (by 42%), while the number of *commits made by non-developers* has grown from *5700*
(8% of total) to *11000* (10.5% of total).  The latter group has featured *333* unique authors in 2019, and 
*391* in 2020.

The [::guru](https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/proj/guru.git/) repository
has thrived in 2020.  While 2019 left it with merely *7* contributors
and a total of *86* commits, 2020 has featured *55* different
contributors and *2725* commits. GURU is a user-curated repository with
a trusted user model. [Come join us!](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:GURU)

There was also a major increase in Bugzilla activity.  2020 featured
almost 25500 bugs reported, compared to 15000 in 2019.  This is probably
largely thanks to Agostino Sarubbo's new tinderboxing effort.  The total
number of bugs closed in 2020 was 23500, compared to 15000 in 2019.

-->

## New developers

In the past year 2021 we have gained an outstanding number of  **seven new Gentoo developers**, much more than in recent years. In chronological order:

1. **[John Helmert III (ajak)](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Ajak)**

   <img align="right" height="65" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/0d893d3dabb88ade5c41f0dd97b1da30?s=65&d=retro">
   John was the first one to [join in February](https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-project/message/eb5f3efb9725a31d93ae30cae18dd4b5). He's focusing 
   on the never-ending security work, wrangling bugs and issuing GLSAs but also developing the internal applications and infrastructure of the 
   security team. We will hopefully have a fresh new GLSAmaker soon! 

2. **[Andrew Ammerlaan (andrewammerlaan)](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:AndrewAmmerlaan)**

   <img align="right" height="65" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/1211c489de44db2f60c5b44af2648e71?s=65&d=retro">
   Andrew [signed up in May](https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev-announce/message/b9c2ec909212fc3c8bc88c4d10949d78)
   and is well known for working on our scientific software stack (specifically physics and electronics), and also handling
   user contributions for both the Gentoo repository and the sci overlay. Beyond this he active in the GURU team and also
   in Python packaging.

3. **[Ionen Wolkens (ionen)](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Ionen)**

   <img align="right" height="65" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/eaa3cff502cdba37e308fedbfc3c3286?s=65&d=retro">
   Ionen [started in June](https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev-announce/message/158d8d7c0737c9a07ad8537b5b7f55d0)
   and by now is active in many corners of Gentoo. His specific focus area, however, is games, games, games!!! 
   In addition, he's also taken over one of our somewhat "special fun" packages, nvidia-drivers, and is the
   author of [a whole set of development tools](https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/app-portage/iwdevtools) ... 

4. **[Florian Schmaus (flow)](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Flow)**

   <img align="right" height="65" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/d61bfcb0536111f32b3669fed1038a23?s=65&d=retro">
   Also having [started in June](https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev-announce/message/3806eb498e53f00c9851a0835ef59362),
   Florian is busy with Java support, co-administrating the GURU overlay, and the
   proxy maintenance team. In addition he contributes to Erlang packaging - one of the more exotic programming 
   languages present in Gentoo.

5. **[Arthur Zamarin (arthurzam)](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Arthurzam)**

   <img align="right" height="65" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/7c3755d199857c933a5213fe17c3e9db?s=65&d=retro">
   Next, [in August](https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev-announce/message/bdd3eff9c70806cb9748c908306fdcd3), came 
   Arthur. He's contributing a lot to our Python team, keeping the large number of
   Python packages maintained there up-to-date. In addition, he recently joined several architecture teams, so we
   can keep offering Gentoo for highly diverse hardware.

6. **[Jakov Smolić (jsmolic)](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Jsmolic)**

   <img align="right" height="65" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/d5972a8e23045ac76b1639bd3bb50f5c?s=65&d=retro">
   Our second new recruit [in August](https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev-announce/message/6b1c3d06be26877d295121a1fca742d0)
   was Jakov. Master of odd jobs, he's fixing bugs across the gentoo tree, solving
   QA problems, and also weeding out old packages. Last but not least, he has also joined our
   recently renewed architecture team efforts.

7. **[Maciej Barć (xgqt)](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Xgqt)**

   <img align="right" height="65" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/bffdcbbb8835c4081a88052c7b4a785f?s=65&d=retro">
   Finally, [November](https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev-announce/message/bff150221efaf417a83271af07ef71c1)
   brought us Maciej. He's coming from the mathematics corner, and consequently his areas
   of specialization are scientific and in particular mathematical packages, Scheme, but also, for
   example, OCamML.

<br><img align="left" height="85" style="margin-right: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2022/kent.png">
[Very sad news reached us in February.](https://www.gentoo.org/news/2021/02/12/in-memory-of-kent-kentnl-fredric.html)
**Kent Fredric (kentnl)**, a driving force behind our Perl and Rust efforts, died in 
a drowning accident - just when he had moved to Florida to start a new phase in his life. 
We will all remember his enthusiasm, helpfulness and love for detail, and wish his family
all the best.


<br>
## Featured changes

Let's look at the major changes and improvements of 2021 in Gentoo now.


### Packages

- <img align="right" height="65" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2022/logo-musl.svg">
  <b><a href="https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Hardened_musl">Musl</a>:
  Stage 3 tarballs for the alternative libc musl</b> are now built using the
  main Gentoo repository only and have been published for several more arches and
  configurations. Work is ongoing to import more musl-related fixes and support patches
  from the musl overlay, with the objective that musl-based installations
  eventually work out-of-the-box in Gentoo.

- **libxcrypt:** GNU glibc based installations have this year migrated from the deprecated internal 
  crypt support to the external, new [libxcrypt](https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/sys-libs/libxcrypt). 
  With this we follow several other distributions; we gain modern algorithm support for one-way 
  hashing of passwords and much easier bugfixing outside the glibc release cycle.

- **[ROCm: the AMD open software platform for high performance / hyperscale GPU 
  computing](https://rocmdocs.amd.com/en/latest/) is now fully packaged in 
  Gentoo**, thanks to a [contribution](https://summer.iscas.ac.cn/#/org/prodetail/210160212?lang=en) 
  within the [Summer 2021 Open Source Promotion Plan OSPP](https://summer.iscas.ac.cn/#/?lang=en) of 
  the [Chinese Academy of Sciences](http://english.is.cas.cn/) and the [openEuler 
  community](https://www.openeuler.org/en/). Stay tuned for ROCm-enabled applications from Gentoo, such 
  as Numba, CuPy, [TensorFlow](https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/sci-libs/tensorflow), and PyTorch.

- <img align="right" height="50" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2021/logo-python.svg">
  <b><a href="https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Python">Python</a>:</b>
  In the meantime the default Python version in Gentoo has reached Python 3.9. Additionally we have
  also Python 3.10 available stable, which means we're fully up to date with upstream, and
  our Python has gained support for link-time and profile-guided optimization (LTO and PGO)
  during compilation.

- **Stable but up-to-date:** As examples of the fast pace of Gentoo, our stable set
  contains among other things gcc 11.2, glibc 2.33, binutils 2.37, LibreOffice 7.1.7, KDE Frameworks 5.88,
  Plasma 5.23.4, Gear 21.08.3, GNOME 40, and many more packages. If you want to go
  bleeding edge, then the very latest code releases are often available as testing packages.


### Architectures

- <img align="right" height="30" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2022/logo-ppc.svg">
  <b>[PPC64](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:PowerPC): The PowerPC profiles and downloads have
  seen significant updates and enhancements.</b> Several new ppc64 little-endian profiles (desktop, 
  plasma, ...) have been added to the Gentoo repository. Our weekly updated downloads now include 
  little-endian stages optimized for the POWER9 CPU series, and big- and little-endian Hardened musl
  stage files.

- <img align="right" height="50" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2022/logo-riscv.svg">
  <b><a href="https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:RISC-V">RISC-V</a>:
  Support for RISC-V has improved enormously over the past year.</b> Modern desktop environments such as
  KDE Plasma, Gnome, but also Lxde, Xfce4, and Enlightenment are fully available, as are other
  packages ranging from Rust to ZFS. Many more are in preparation. Gentoo is running nicely and 
  is actively used on many of the first physical RISC-V systems. [Stage files
  are now published weekly](https://gentoo.osuosl.org//releases/riscv/autobuilds/) for 
  all supported ABI in both systemd and OpenRC variants. We have adapted the library directory paths to 
  those used by other distributions for better binary compatibility.

- **[M68k](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:M68k):
  Gentoo on Motorola 68000 is back!** We have regularly updated stages for download again, 
  and keywording of packages is ongoing.

- **LoongArch64**: 
  While this is not an official Gentoo project yet, we have already received first code contributions
  for Gentoo on [LoongArch64](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson#LoongArch), a Chinese development 
  originally based on MIPS.


### Infrastructure

- <b><a href="https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:RelEng">Release Engineering</a>: This year brought big
  updates of our build hardware as well as improvements in [Catalyst](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Catalyst)</b>.
  A new AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-core machine at Hetzner now handles our builds for *amd64*, *x86*,
  *alpha*, *m68k*, and *riscv* (the latter via [qemu](https://www.qemu.org/)); a new ARM64 Ampere Neoverse-N1 80-core
  machine provided by [Equinix](https://www.equinix.com/) through the [Works On Arm program](https://www.worksonarm.com/)
  handles *arm64* and *arm*; and two 16-core POWER9 machines provided by [OSUOSL POWER Development 
  Hosting](https://osuosl.org/services/powerdev/) handle *ppc64* and *ppc*.
  This means we have had the capacity to add a [large variety of builds](https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/), from openrc and systemd variants
  to musl-based builds whereever possible.


### Other news

- **[GKernelCI](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Gkernelci), the Gentoo kernel testing system 
  (see also its [dashboard page](https://gkernelci.gentoo.org)), reached its 
  [v2.0 milestone](https://github.com/GKernelCI/Gdocker/releases/tag/v2.0).** 
  New features include full docker integration, the addition of many more (currently only emulated)
  architectures, and the automated sending of test results to [KernelCI](https://kernelci.org/) using KCIDB.

- **Online Gentoo workshops: A series of online workshops in German language started in 2021.**
  The meetings take place in BBB every 2 months on the 3rd Saturday of the
  month. The events have been very well received, and we also want to provide workshops in 
  English starting on 2022-02-19. All events are listed on [https://gentoo-ev.org/](https://gentoo-ev.org/).

- <img align="right" height="50" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2021/logo-liberachat.svg">
  **The move to [Libera Chat](https://libera.chat/):** After major changes in the governance of Freenode IRC, **Gentoo
  and many other open source projects moved their IRC presence to [Libera Chat](https://libera.chat/).** This new
  IRC network, founded by former Freenode staffers, has in the meantime become the de-facto replacement of Freenode;
  we can certainly say that we feel very welcome and at home there and have a very strong presence with over 100
  Gentoo channels.

- **Experimental binary package hosting:** First steps have started to also [provide binary package
  hosting](https://dilfridge.blogspot.com/2021/09/experimental-binary-gentoo-package.html) on the Gentoo mirrors.

- anything else?


## Discontinued projects

While Gentoo would like to support as much as our users wish for,
we could not manage to continue all of the projects we've started
in the past.  With limited resources, we had to divert our time
and effort from projects showing little promise and activity.  The most important
projects discontinued in 2021 were:

- **Eudev**: After several years, Gentoo maintainers decided that keeping
  this barely modified fork of systemd-udev alive was not worth the effort, in particular
  since also musl-based installations now work with the original.
  In the meantime, maintenance of eudev has been picked up by a [cross-distribution
  team](https://github.com/eudev-project/eudev), which means it may be
  available for longer.

- anything else???


## Thank you!

Of course, if you look in detail, there has been much more news; we can't cover everything here.
**We would like to thank all Gentoo developers and everyone submitting contributions
for their relentless everyday Gentoo work.** As a volunteer project, Gentoo could not exist 
without them.

And now it's time to break out the champagne - let's celebrate the new year 2022, 
let's hope for good days, and let's make it even more productive!