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---
title: '2020 in retrospect & happy new year 2021!'
---

<img align="right" height="100" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2021/2021.png" alt="Gentoo Fireworks">
Happy New Year 2021!  Due to the COVID pandemic, 2020 was a year unlike any other, and this has also 
impacted many open source projects.  Nevertheless, at Gentoo we have made some great strides forward.
While we now start into 2021 with fresh energy (and maybe soon antibodies), let's also take a look 
back. <a href="https://www.gentoo.org/news/2021/01/15/new-year.html">We're happy to share with our 
community the most exciting news of the past 12 months</a> -- including numbers on Gentoo activity, our
new developers, and featured changes and improvements!

<!--more-->

## Gentoo in numbers

**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

We've finished 2020 with **three significant additions to the Gentoo
family** (in chronological order):

1. **[Max Magorsch (arzano)](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Arzano)**

   <img align="right" height="65" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a6af814e6576794883a412946837a253?s=65&d=retro">
   Max joined us in February to help out with Gentoo Infrastructure. Since
   then, he already did tons of work.  Just to list a few things, he has
   redesigned and modernized the Gentoo websites and rewritten
   <a href="https://packages.gentoo.org/">packages.gentoo.org</a>
   into the super cool form we have today.

2. **[Sam James (sam)](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Sam)**

   <img align="right" height="65" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/786f3a957bcc3a8d19160e824fc64b8e?s=65&d=retro">
   Sam joined us in July, and has contributed to a lot of different
   projects since.  He is known as an active member of the Security team
   and multiple arch teams, as well as someone who fixes lots of bugs
   in different packages.

3. **[Stephan Hartmann (sultan)](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Sultan)**

   <img align="right" height="65" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/03baaedf1ab4d4c7cf3336c101562e4c?s=65&d=retro">
   Stephan joined us in September, and immediately started working on our
   Chromium-related packages.  He has pushed commits
   to upstream Chromium; hopefully he'll deal with all the specific problems
   that come up in Gentoo here.  Thanks to him we also have finally caught 
   up with Windows, offering our users a packaged version of Microsoft Edge.


## Featured changes

The following major changes and improvements have happened in 2020:

### Packages

- <img align="right" height="65" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2020/larry-cowboy.svg">
  <b><a href="https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Distribution_Kernel">Distribution Kernels</a>:
  Gentoo now supports building and installing kernels entirely
  via the package manager.</b>  The new kernel packages also come with an (optional)
  stock configuration based on well-tested Fedora kernels, to ease
  the entry barrier and maintenance effort of Gentoo systems.

- <img align="right" height="50" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2021/logo-wayland.svg">
  <b><a href="https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Wayland">Wayland</a>:
  Wayland support in Gentoo has progressed greatly, making it
  possible to run an Xorg-free desktop.</b>  Wayland is supported
  with large desktop environments such as KDE Plasma and GNOME, as well
  as with lightweight alternatives such as Sway and Wayfire.  The latter
  makes it also possible to use Wayland to a large extent without
  resorting to XWayland.

- <img align="right" height="50" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2021/logo-lua.png">
  <b><a href="https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Lua">Lua</a>:
  A new framework has been created that permits multiple versions
  of Lua to be installed side-by-side.</b>  The vast majority of ~arch
  packages have already been migrated to this framework. This way, we have
  finally been able to unmask new (slotted!) Lua versions.

- <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>:
  We have managed to almost withdraw Python 2.7 from Gentoo,
  and upgrade the default to Python 3.8.</b>
  Python 2.7 is still available as a build-time dependency for a few
  packages.  We have additionally patched all the 
  <a href="https://blogs.gentoo.org/mgorny/2020/09/12/new-vulnerability-fixes-in-python-2-7-and-pypy/">vulnerabilities</a>
  known from later versions of Python.

### Architectures

- **[ARM64](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:ARM64):
  ARM64 (AArch64) support has been elevated to stable status** and is no longer experimental.
  The ARM64 project now provides automatically generated [stage3 files](http://distfiles.gentoo.org/releases/arm64/autobuilds/),
  and is usually one of the fastest arch teams to test packages. We
  have worked to bring more packages to ARM64 and make it more
  feasible to run a full desktop!

- **[PPC64](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:PowerPC):
  KDE Plasma is now available on PPC64**, thanks to extensive testing and keywording
  efforts by Georgy Yakovlev.

- **[RISC-V](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:RISC-V):
  Work on RISC-V support has started**, with particular focus
  on the riscv64 architecture.  The RISC-V project provides [stage3 files](
  https://dev.gentoo.org/~dilfridge/stages/) and stable profiles
  for the soft-float (rv64imac/lp64) and hard-float (rv64gc/lp64d) ABIs, 
  in both systemd and OpenRC variants. The arch team has
  managed to run Xorg already!

- **[Prefix](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Prefix):
  Gentoo Prefix is once again capable of bootstrapping on the latest
  macOS releases**, and work is underway to modernise prefix-specific
  ebuilds and merge them back into the main tree - this way ensuring that
  users get the latest software and that maintenance burden is reduced.

- <img align="right" height="50" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2020/logo-gentoo-android.png">
  <b><a href="https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Android">Android</a>:
  The Gentoo Android project has released a new 64bit Android prefix tarball</b>, 
  featuring gcc-10.1.0, binutils-2.34 and glibc-2.31 in your pocket!


### Infrastructure

- <img align="right" height="50" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2020/gentoo-package.svg">
  <b><a href="https://packages.gentoo.org/">packages.gentoo.org</a>:
  The packages website has received many improvements towards being
  a central source of information on Gentoo packages.</b> It now shows
  the results of QA checks, bugs, pull requests referencing
  a package, and a maintainer dashboard indicating stabilization
  candidates and outdated versions (according to <a href="https://repology.org/">Repology</a>).
  Additionally, the display can be <a href="https://packages.gentoo.org/user/preferences/">configured</a>
  for your personal preferences!

- <img align="right" height="55" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2021/logo-bugzilla.svg">
  <b><a href="https://bugs.gentoo.org/">Bugzilla</a>:
  The Infrastructure team has implemented a major improvement to Gentoo
  Bugzilla performance.</b>  The database has been migrated to a newer
  database cluster, and the backend has been switched to mod_perl.

- **[CI / Tinderbox](https://blogs.gentoo.org/ago/2020/07/04/gentoo-tinderbox/):
  A second active tinderboxing (build testing) effort has been started**, 
  resulting in more bugs being detected and fixed early.  This also includes 
  running a variety of QA checks, as well as minimal environment builds that are
  helpful in detecting missing dependencies.


### Other news

- <img align="right" height="55" style="margin-left: 30px;" src="https://www.gentoo.org/assets/img/news/2021/hpc-paper.png">
  **HPC adoption: The [Prefix](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Prefix) Project
  has published a [conference proceeding](https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202024505036)** on a case
  study of Gentoo in high energy physics.  Gentoo also sees **wider adoption in the HPC community**
  such as [Compute Canada](https://www.computecanada.ca) and [EESSI](https://www.eessi-hpc.org).



## 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 2020 were:

- **Architectures**: Alpha and IA64 keywords were reduced to ~arch (i.e. unstable/testing only).
  HPPA stable keywords were limited to the most important
  packages only.  SH (SuperH) was removed entirely.  With very small number
  of users of these architectures, our arch teams decided that
  the effort in maintaining them is too great.  In case of SuperH,
  our last available hardware died.

- **[LibreSSL](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:LibreSSL)**:
  By the end of 2020, we have decided to discontinue support
  for LibreSSL.  With little to no support from various upstream projects,
  the effort necessary to maintain package compatibility exceeded
  the gain, especially given that OpenSSL has made a lot of progress
  since the forking point.


## Thank you!

We can here describe only a few major items, and these cover by far not all that is going on.
**We would like to thank all Gentoo developers for their relentless everyday Gentoo
work.**  While they are often not recognized for this work, Gentoo could not exist without them.
Cheers, and let's make 2021 even more productive!