Gentoo Linux is a special flavour of Linux that can be automatically optimised and customised for just about any application or need. Extreme performance, configurability and a top-notch user and developer community are all hallmarks of the Gentoo experience.

Gentoo comes in several formats..
1) as a minimal install cd, allowing a network capable boot environment that can be used for downloading stages, or using already downloaded stages, packages or GRP binaries.
2) as a universal install cd, containing a network capable boot environment, all compatible stages, a portage snapshot and necessary packages & binaries.
3) hardened versions of the install cds.
4) package cd, pre-built GRP binaries matching various sub-architectures to speed up the install process. The optimisations match the stage sub-arch build optimisations, and are very good.
5) downloads via ftp, http, rsync & torrent. The sub-arch GRP packages are only available via torrent.

Due to major updates to the stable x86 branch, is is recommended to use only the latest release.
Updates from earlier releases do not have GRP binary support and will require an almost complete rebuild of the installed packages, negating the advantage of prebuilt packages.