One of the Linux distributions we hear very little about in the industry for cloud/VM usage is Gentoo Linux. But that could change with the Gentoo project now putting out official QCOW2 disk images to make it easier deploying this source-based Linux distribution within virtual machines.

Gentoo Linux now offers official QCOW2 bootable disk images for both x86_64 and AArch64. This allows quickly booting Gentoo within QEMU's native QCOW2 format and will be updated on a weekly basis with a "fully functional" Gentoo installation.

While right now these Gentoo QCOW2 images are only for x86_64 and AArch64, moving forward they do plan to eventually support EFI-based RISC-V 64-bit and LoongArch 64-bit bootable images. Only EFI support is planned and no legacy support. With these QCOW2 images, the XFS file-system is their preferred choice used for its copy-on-write, reflinks, and other features.

[1]

Those interested in these bootable Gentoo Linux QCOW2 images can find more information via the [2]Gentoo.org announcement .



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=2025&image=gentoo_qcow2_lrg

[2] https://www.gentoo.org/news/2025/02/20/gentoo-qcow2-images.html