The Gentoo project developers recently announced the release of official loading images in Qcow2 format, providing users with a complete operational environment that is ready to be launched in virtual machines. These images are updated weekly, allowing users to evaluate the current state of the distribution. Previously, Gentoo was only distributed through installation images and a Live-assembly for USB booting.
There are two options available for users: an image without network services and an empty Root password, or an image with network services, blocked accounts, and support for configuration via Cloud-Init. The former is meant for quick familiarization and testing on local systems, while the latter is designed for deployment in a cloud environment. Both versions utilize the xfs file system.
The images are available for AMD64 architectures (X86-64) and ARM64 (AARCH64), and are compatible with systems using EFI (BIOS unsupported). There are plans to release images for RISCV64 and Loongarch64 architectures in the future. Users can create bootable devices from these images using the QMU-IMG Convert command to convert the Qcow2 format to a disk image.