Gentoo Linux 2006.0, the first release in the 2006 series has been available since 0:00 UTC today. Notable highlights include three desktop environments (KDE 3.4.3, Gnome 2.12.2, XFCE 4.2.2), GCC 3.44 and a 2.6.15 kernel. Also, the release is the first to include the new Gentoo Linux Installer, official support for EM64T, a full Gnome environment, and NPTL toolchains in various architectures.

Officially supported architectures for this release are alpha, amd64, hppa, sparc, x86, ppc and ppc64, thus making Gentoo the first Linux distribution to provide optimized packages for the POWER5 architecture out-of-the-box. Release notes will be available on the Gentoo Release Engineering team's page.

Visitors to this year's FOSDEM, Europe's most important meeting for open-source development, could grab a 2006.0 release on CD for x86, PPC and AMD64. Expectedly, the demand was high. "The first CDs of the 2006.0 release were selling faster than the three busy burners could produce them, and T-Shirts were sold out by tea time on the first day."

You may obtain Gentoo Linux 2006.0 via the bouncer system or via BitTorrent.