Give Gentoo a Try!

[Trogdor]

I love Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org). It is a source-based distrobution, and you really get to look under the hood. It also has a great community. If you are comfortable with Linux, try it out! You won't regret it!

The packaging system is based upon BSD's ports, and is called "portage." To download and compile the source of, say, nethack, you need only type "emerge nethack." If you like Slackware, chances are you will like Gentoo, as they fill a similar niche.

To quote Gentoo's website,
Gentoo Linux in a paragraph

We produce Gentoo Linux, a special flavor of Linux that can be automatically optimized and customized 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.

Thanks to a technology called Portage, Gentoo Linux can become an ideal secure server, development workstation, professional desktop, gaming system, embedded solution or something else -- whatever you need it to be. Because of its near-unlimited adaptability, we call Gentoo Linux a metadistribution.

[hammer123]

<edit> Too many people did not realize I was being sarcastic early in this thread. My purpose was to have fun while explaining why gentoo is so great. Keep this in mind </edit>

gentoo sucks I mean more programs are ready for download then probably any distro and the packages are recent. You loose the typical experience of wanting to install some program that is not available and then hunting for a bunch of libraries that are not available.

And besides if you stick with the other distros then you can download binary packages so you don't have to worry about optimizing or saving bandwidth.

[cybertron]

gentoo sucks I mean more programs are ready for download then probably any distro and the packages are recent. You loose the typical experience of wanting to install some program that is not available and then hunting for a bunch of libraries that are not available.

And besides if you stick with the other distros then you can download binary packages so you don't have to worry about optimizing or saving bandwidth.

Careful, that almost confused me and I've actually tried gentoo. This is supposed to be newbie friendly after all. :D

[hammer123]

Its users are also too stupid to detect sarcasm. I love etc-update though, everyone knows how to use diff to merge files correctly and the assumption that help is completely uncessary is useful. I mean hammer123 is an idiot (http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=122660) and his problem never happens. You can use gentoo if you are completely clueless about linux. For example the simple base system installation only took me a week to complete.

[If you have not figured it out I am being sarcastic. On a serious note I think gentoo is well fit for desktop usage if you have lots of free time and want something that is functional though sometimes difficult.]

[EnigmaOne]

It must be a "Long Beach Thing." :rolleyes:

[JThundley]

Yeah, Gentoo is kickass, welcome to the club Trogdor!
because... He was a dragon, I mean he was a dragon-man... Well, he was just a dragon.. but he was still TROGDOR!!!:D

[Trogdor]

hammer123, I can't believe you tried to troll me. We were friends. Don't you recognise the avatar?? I AM HOMEOBOCKS! EDIT: Wait . . . you were being sarcastic. Never mind.

Gentoo isn't too hard on the newbies. You should be comfortable with the shell . . . that's all!

[Trogdor]

Originally posted by JThundley
Yeah, Gentoo is kickass, welcome to the club Trogdor!
because... He was a dragon, I mean he was a dragon-man... Well, he was just a dragon.. but he was still TROGDOR!!!:D TROGDOR!
TROGDOR!
Trogdor was a man . . .
I mean, he was a dragon-man . . .
well . . . maybe he was just a dragon,
but he was still TROGDOR!
TROGDOR!
Burninating the country side.
Burninating the peasants.
Burninating all the peoples,
in their thached-roofed COTTAGES!
COTTAGES!
And the Trogdor comes in the NIGHT!

[asklepios]

umm...sorry but i have never used Gentoo. rather i m a Slackware fanatic. i have given RH 7 and 9, MDK 9, 9.1 and 9.2 and a bit of dabbling with Debian (now stuck with Slackware-Current) but not Gentoo.
i have heard lots of good things about Gentoo but then one thing makes me back off..."one week to install" or "two days for a basic system". is that true? can someone live away from his/her puter for a week? :eek:
okay portage must be a divine thing but is there anyway to install a basic system in 10 minutes flat?
mind it: i m on dial-up but i don't mind leaving my puter on for a whole night for downloads. so is there anyway i can try Gentoo (no, no live CD)

[hammer123]

know how to compile a kernel

[mengle]

"one week to install" or "two days for a basic system". is that true?

It was for me. I had KDE and Open Office up and running after 3 days. After that you just need to emerge programs here and there. Yeah it's some time without a computer but just go read a book or go skiing or something. The best part is the portage system though. I couldn't think of a much faster way of keeping your system up to date. Way better than RPMs. Never used a Debian-based distro so I can't comment on how it compares to apt-get.

TROGDOR!

[ArthurFortune]

well technically it's a live CD, but all you have is a shell. you can do a stage 3 install (ie no compiling). unless you want the most up to date packages. I would say if you have installed gentoo before you could do a stage 3 install in under 45 minutes. However, you will not have the most up to date packages

[jrbishop79]

Originally posted by asklepios
"one week to install" or "two days for a basic system". is that true?

what takes up most of that time?? is it compilation/installing or download?

[mengle]

For me, it was certainly compiling (PIII, 933 MHz + cable modem). All those crazy characters going across my screen for hours on end were kind of mezmorizing. Much like watching a fire.

[jrbishop79]

it took that long on a 933 and broadband?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

I shudder to think how long it would take on a AMDK6-2 500 and dial-up... I'd probably still be compiling into next year...

[hammer123]

The downloading is fast, its source based so your downloads for any package will be the fastest of any system. Compiling makes installation longer, true, but that is only an issue if you make mistakes. The mistakes are why it takes a week.

[jrbishop79]

so it isn't for those seeking instant gratification?

[hammer123]

nope, its for people with the time and urge to tweak and delayed gratification is more rewarding.

[The Linux Kid]

Just want to add my $0.02,

a) No flaming pls

b) Gentoo takes quite a while to install. While I do agree that it is a great OS, generally I don't have the time resources available to do it. I prefer Slack 9.1 for quick installs because you can have a fully workking install in less than 30 mins.

Please no flaming me like I said above.

The Linux Kid

[asklepios]

Originally posted by hammer123
know how to compile a kernel yup. currently using 2.6.4-rc1, so no problem on that front but looks like Gentoo is not for a hyperactive gemini like me :p

[soda_popstar]

Don't let the "Live CD" name scare you. That's the CD that most people use to install Gentoo. If you don't want to compile everything, you can use GRP (Gentoo Reference Platform, if I'm not mistaken) which has precompiled binaries for the most popular packages.

The time it takes to install Gentoo will vary depending on your processor speed. On my laptop (1.4 GHz) and my desktop (1.5 GHz), it took about two days for a fully functional desktop. This is the way I do a Gentoo install... times are an estimate as I can't remember exactly how long everything took to compile:

Day 1
6pm: Bootstrap
8pm: Emerge system
10pm: Compile kernel
10:30pm: Compile Xfree
11:30pm: Compile KDE
12am: Sleep

Day 2
7am: Wake up, compile GNOME, go to school :D
5pm: Get home from school, start doing work, compiling Mozilla Firefox, XMMS, Gaim, etc. in the background
11pm: Compile Ximian OpenOffice
12am: Sleep

Day 3
7am: Wake up and it's pretty much done, besides a few more packages

If you look carefully, I really only have to live without the computer on the first night. I'm at school in the morning of the second day, so I'm multitasking in a way. :p And after all that compiling, there's not much more that I need to install afterwards.

[MighMos]

I love gentoo and have it installed on all my computers. It makes old ones less slow, and new ones even faster :-D But, despite all its love, I could not honestly recommend it to anyone on dialup. Downloading ~80 packages for a bare system on dialup would suck.

My $0.02

[hammer123]

its faster than downloading the binaries for a system you just want a hotter system than mine so stuff compiles in 10 minutes

[DarkJedi9]

Originally posted by The Linux Kid
Just want to add my $0.02,

a) No flaming pls


Fair enough :)

b) Gentoo takes quite a while to install. While I do agree that it is a great OS, generally I don't have the time resources available to do it. I prefer Slack 9.1 for quick installs because you can have a fully workking install in less than 30 mins.


A valid point. If someone ever said to me "Quick I need a working Linux install," I'd throw them Slack 9.1, but when a friend tells me he wants to try and linux (with no big rush) and I will be able to help him through the process, I immediately recommend Gentoo. Honestly with a decent handle on the shell and the ability to ask questions/follow directions intelligently, installing Gentoo is entirely managable. I will not however, claim it is ever fast, and I have an Athlon XP 2100+! :rolleyes:

[JuiceWVU202]

I came across just after I started installing gentoo on a spare pc. I am doing a stage one install and so far everything seems to rock except for it taking forever.

[aNoob]

I adventured once to install Gentoo.But bored to wait emerging all the stuffs,seriously, I have other things to do. I was trying Gentoo because my laptop is crap and thought it will optimize for my system(which I believe), but I don't have the patience.I think I will go for something else,or buy another laptop to run any distro on it.

[Trogdor]

Originally posted by DarkJedi9
I will not however, claim it is ever fast, and I have an Athlon XP 2100+! :rolleyes: It's not a 7-minute lindows install, but if you have an athlon 64, it can be bootstrapped in 45 minutes!:D

[JThundley]

Do what I do to speed up compile times: use distcc! I got my system up somewhere between one and two days. I know I could have done one day if I had just sat and watched, but I did stuff on my other computer and went out of the house here and there....

[j79zlr]

again, no flames :)

Reasons why I wont install Gentoo

i) Patience, have little.

ii) Time, why would I want to spend DAYS compiling my system?

and my mini-rant

iii) I dont think gentoo's portage is not all that its cracked up to be. If I want portage I install FreeBSD. From what I've read the use-flags are a pain in the @ss, and this is done by the port maintainers for BSD. Continuing, I can build a base FreeBSD system, installing the minimum, upgrade the port/src/doc's via cvsup, buildworld, buildkernel and portupgrade then install in less than the time it would take to get a gentoo system to the same state. With KDE and gnome on a P4, maybe 6-8 hours.

iv) I see alot of failure problems in the gentoo forums, I have only had one major problem using buildworld in BSD, and it my fault for trying to buildworld to -CURRENT src.

--------------------------------------------------------
just my thoughts.

[asklepios]

okay i have another question.
looks like Gentoo install takes fair amount of time downloading sources especially on dial-up.
my questions is: is there a way that i download all the packages Gentoo will need before i start the installation and i supply them at the time of install. if it is possible then how much time will it take to compile a full working KDE desktop on a P-4 1.6 system?
also tell me which stage of install will it be know as?
i have loads of patience i have downloaded like 12 ISO of various distros on dial-up so downloading isn't a problem for me but this waiting for a week is not my cup of tea.

[hammer123]

I must insist that the downloads for gentoo will be the fastest that anyone will have because they are source and NOT binary (or in the case of slack binary+source I understand). Directions to download just the files are given in the installation manual which you must read. The command to just download the files for system is
#emerge -f system
compiling takes time, you can have a gentoo system up in 24 hours on your second try, it just takes a while because of mistakes. As for USE flags, I think most people want their desktops to have programs with everything compiled in so they can just put everything into the USE flags. The real reason to go for gentoo is the way it lets you globally set what arguments (like cflags and use flags) and now you can even micromanage and do it on a per package basis.

[Trogdor]

Originally posted by asklepios
okay i have another question.
looks like Gentoo install takes fair amount of time downloading sources especially on dial-up. Since all packages are source, they are really small. Don't worry about dial-up. Not a problem.

[Hayl]

Originally posted by j79zlr
iii) I dont think gentoo's portage is not all that its cracked up to be. If I want portage I install FreeBSD. From what I've read the use-flags are a pain in the @ss, and this is done by the port maintainers for BSD. Continuing, I can build a base FreeBSD system, installing the minimum, upgrade the port/src/doc's via cvsup, buildworld, buildkernel and portupgrade then install in less than the time it would take to get a gentoo system to the same state. With KDE and gnome on a P4, maybe 6-8 hours.

The USE flags are not a pain, they make your system more customized rather than having a developer hard code that stuff into a build. Especially not difficult now with the per-package USE flags you can set. People who can't read documentation are the ones who run into troubles with them.

If you use GRP pacakges to install you can have a complete install in the same time as it would take to build a BSD System.

iv) I see alot of failure problems in the gentoo forums, I have only had one major problem using buildworld in BSD, and it my fault for trying to buildworld to -CURRENT src.

yes, failures and again - by people who can't read docs or follow instructions - which is 99.9% of the time why people fail when installing Gentoo. or by people with weird CFLAGS set.

PS: I have nothing against BSD.

[JThundley]

Gentoo is the crap, it rules, and I know how to defend it, so I'll just say try it. And if you fail, it's because the world hates you.

[trc]

Originally posted by Trogdor
Since all packages are source, they are really small. Don't worry about dial-up. Not a problem.

this just doesn't make any sense. so you're saying that if I wanna compile firefox, XFree, or even KDE the packages are small enough to not be a problem? gentoo is not very dial-up friendly at all. I would rather purchase a binary distro with 3 cds worth of extra packages then wait for KDE to download and compile on gentoo.

[Trogdor]

Originally posted by trc
this just doesn't make any sense. so you're saying that if I wanna compile firefox, XFree, or even KDE the packages are small enough to not be a problem? gentoo is not very dial-up friendly at all. I would rather purchase a binary distro with 3 cds worth of extra packages then wait for KDE to download and compile on gentoo. If you want up-to-date apps, then gentoo is the way to go. If you want the old biniaries on cds, go with . . . fedora, maybe?

[hammer123]

trc, binary size about 3x as big as source size. The process of downloading kde is faster in source than in binary. You can download binaries (and source due to the GPL) of all the programs that some other distro gives you, or you can cur your DOWNLOAD time by just downloading the small source so it makes sense. Compiling is slower than downloading but you can be downloading some stuff and compiling other stuff. So with another distro you are downloading 4x the amount of stuff you do with gentoo, it is dialup friendly because you download just as many packages but they are MUCH smaller. If you have a great processor to cross compile on it is even friendly to slow computers because you can optimize the code (I would not compile on an old computer). Downloading gentoo is faster and a 56k has zero effect on compiling time. That is all about CPU power. SOOOOOOOO gentoo is 56k friendly.

[hammer123]

I thought about it some more and as far as going to another distro to get something that is already compiled GRP was mentioned, if you use it your downloads are faster than most other distro's and you get to take advantage of the 2.6.3 kernel without even having to upgrade to it.

[michaeln]

While I would admit that installing gentoo on a dialup may be a bit more cumbersom than with DSL or cable that would be the only drawback.

Look at it like this. After you have done it the once you never have to download all of that at one time again. In the meantime after you have a working system just always do your
emerge -puDv world
when you are ready to go to bed. When you get up in the morning your system will be up to date.

Having said all of that I swear by Gentoo. I think it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Updating is really easy. EMERGE.

My first Gentoo install took me 3 days to get my complete system up. after that I redid it to see if I could do it faster. The second time only took me a day and a half to get to a full working system.

You may think it isn't worth the time. I would have to say it is most definately worth the time. And while someone did mention portage has problems, I have ran into some small glitches where there was a typo. Ok, so no one is perfect. It isn't like these are hard to fix. And if you arn't knowledgable enough to figure it out someone will have already posted the solution on the board.

Conclusion. I have been running gentoo for approx 2 months. I would have to say it is the best distro I have used so far which I will admit aren't that many (RedHat, Suse, Corel Linux [STUNK], Mandrake). My computer speed has most definately faster.

-Michael

[hammer123]

And I took a week because I was buying hardware to set up a RAID 1, I realized I did not want RAID, I returned the hardware I bought, I wanted to put LVM on top of the RAID, I used cflags that broke my system, I never had compiled a kernel before, and after getting it done right I decided to do it again. I guess gentoo really took me under 24 hours to install.

[JesterDev]

My attempt at using Gentoo took me about three days, and I got it installed 3 times. But everytime something went wrong. First xWindwos would not work. I got the evil 'no screens' error, and my network wasn't set up properly. When I tried to get help from the Gentoo forums all I got was a few emerge the drivers for your card replies. I figured it only took me a few hours (stage 3 install) so I'll do it again.. Well that was a mistake. First after getting everything copied over from the cd the kernel would crap out on me and just flat out refuse to let me do anything. This happened about 12 times before I just copied everything over by hand and then extracted. Then I couldn't download any kernels I kept getting some error about it not being able to find it or something. Then when trying to get some drivers for my video card, and sound card all I got was 404 errors and time outs from every ftp about some icons file that for some reason I needed to have.. I think xfree86 needed it, but why it was needed for my sound card I'll never know.
This went on all weekend, and into the wee hours of monday morning. The second install was no good either. Again my networking wouldnt work, and I double and triple checked everything, my home dir was non-existant, and there was no xwindows installed, even though I emerged before hand. That was the breaking point for me. I said f*ck it, and gave up (for now).

(The third attempt was just a dream. I dreampt about it all night! It drove me crazy and the next morning I almost believed that it was real.:confused: )

But there is something good that came out of it all. I learned a lot about linux, compiling the kernel, (how not to spell kernel like kernal repeatedly), grub, and a lot more. I wouldnt say it was a wasted weekend, but I sure is not something I plan on doing again for a long time. I'm going to give Slackware or Debian a try next. And continue till I find that one true distro that I can live with.

[Vaseline]

I'm tempted, but scared..

I have plenty of patience for compile/download time.. But as soon as I hit an error that I'm not expecting, I'll get upset and shout at people on IRC..

...Convince me. :p

[roamingnomad]

One of the really cool things about Gentoo is that you can see your system come together as it happens. For me, it was first Links, then X, then Mozilla, then Gnome, KDE, and ending with Fluxbox. Of course, on the other hand, I'm seeing new packages coming to this box every week or so now, so I guess its not really done.

[moveek]

Strangely this was the first distribution of linux I cut my teeth on and needless to say, it's not
the easiest version of linux to install. But the documentation was good enough
that I was able to install despite my having little idea of what I was actually doing.

That aside, I changed distributions because frankly, compiling every program
I wanted to use took way too much time for me. Patience is a virtue with this OS. I'm
not knocking gentoo, but for my purposes precompiled programs are preferrable simply
because I can install them in under 30 secs and be on my way.

[JesterDev]

That's exactly it. I like the abilty to just install and be done with that part. I like Gentoo, and I like the idea of having a total custome Linux install, but I just don't have the time to spent getting it all up and running. I wish I did, because this way you get so much more from it, and you know what goes into it. Either way, I learned a lot from my attempts, things that would have taken more time to learn with a another installer friendly distro.

[asklepios]

damn man...all you Gentoo users should be executed :p (joking)
just a few minutes ago, out here on JL, i came to know that i can stop Gentoo installation in between. i can use my PC like i want to (with Windows or Slack), then come back to installation of Gentoo and carry on whenever i want to.
why in this world did none of you mentioned that? it is a huge point in favour of Gentoo man!!! i think i will give it a try now :)

[mengle]

I hate to ask such as n00b questions but I really don't know the answer so here goes: Since I already have gentoo installed and have kept everything up to date is their any purpose in using the new Gentoo 2004.0 CD? It just lets you install from stage 1 right? One reason is that I really don't want to go through the hastle of moving up to the 2.6 kernel by hand and would like a very easy way of upgrading.

[hammer123]

Gentoo 2004. is a boot cd that uses the 2.6.3 kernel. Unless you need some device driver that is only supported in the 2.6 kernel and not in 2.4 then I see no reason to use the gentoo cd at all. Again, the gentoo cd is just a live cd distro that provides a more minimalist linux environment than Knoppix or another distro.

As for the kernel just
#emerge gentoo-dev-sources
then configure the kernel because you can't
$make oldconfig
also you no longer have to
$make dep
but you would have been told that while installing.
If you use LVM like me then you will need to
#emerge -C lvm-user && emerge lvm2
but most people don't

The 2.6 install is just like any other kernel and if you can't do it then I bet you have not upgraded 2.4 since you installed. JL still has help files that are pretty relevant.

[Wolface]

Originally posted by hammer123
The 2.6 install is just like any other kernel and if you can't do it then I bet you have not upgraded 2.4 since you installed. JL still has help files that are pretty relevant.

maybe we should start a small project to update the JL help files. Including all the information from the forums and specific examples for the various distros
im in!:cool:

[bandwidth_pig]

Actually, the 2.6 kernel install is not just like all other kernel installs. For example, there is no make dep.

[Wolface]

I compile the kernel with just "make && make modules_install" and that's it

[SA_99]

I'm using Gentoo right now, and for anyone with little patience, I'll tell you now, don't bother. Compiling everything takes a long time (as stated elsewhere in this thread). I'm thinking about switching just because of this. I recently had to do a project on the computer, and I had put off emerging openoffice (I hate leaving my laptop on overnight - it's a bit prone to overheating), and let me tell you, that was not fun. It's pretty much my fault for procrastinating, but I do wish there were more binary packages in portage, it would have saved me a lot of time and gained me a lot of sleep.

As far as installation goes, it took me about two days to install gentoo the first time, and around 3 the last, because of a ton of 404's, file not found's, etc. on all the mirrors when I tried to emerge system. If anyone tries to install gentoo, make sure you find some good mirrors (I prefer the wisconsin one; never let me down yet).

[JThundley]

I use distcc and make binary packages on my server. I've also flat out compiled entire systems in a chroot on my server, then tarred it up and extracted it onto the new system.
It's not terribly hard, you just need to read through the instructions twice and skip around.

As for openoffice taking forever, of course it does! You should have done emerge openoffice-bin :cool:

[SA_99]

I wish I had a server, or anything to distcc with (besides a P233) :( .
What's the difference between -bin and normal? I've seen a few -bins, but never really investigated what they were. Is it a binary package?

[JThundley]

You betcha. I couldn't even get openoffice to compile.
And a distcc with the 233 should still help out.

Also, The reason KDE and OpenOffice takes so long to compile is because it's written in C++ which I hear GCC does the slowest with.

[SA_99]

I just did an emerge search for "bin" and it only came up with 56 packages, only around half of them actually binary (others things like binutils). That's not a whole lot. A few of the most important ones are there, but I'd still like better binary support in gentoo overall. I shudder at the though of gentoo on my P233. I'd still say that someone without lots of patience or powerful machines wouldn't be happy with gentoo. Then again, I guess it's not really aimed at that crowd.

[Wolface]

why dont u try using GRP's ??

[hardcore]

Originally posted by mengle
I hate to ask such as n00b questions but I really don't know the answer so here goes: Since I already have gentoo installed and have kept everything up to date is their any purpose in using the new Gentoo 2004.0 CD? It just lets you install from stage 1 right? One reason is that I really don't want to go through the hastle of moving up to the 2.6 kernel by hand and would like a very easy way of upgrading.

I believe there is a new portage layout in the 2004 release, but other that that an emerge -u world will be just as up to date.

[allsa8]

why all this ?!

you just left me confused !!
There are no iso images available ??? do i have to install the system through ftp or http ?

[asklepios]

try their Install guide mate. it explains everything.
imo whenever you try and install a new distro you should give at least two readings to the install guide :)

[Vaseline]

I've been skimming over it myself..

How exactly does it work in terms of pauses in the install? I'm totally happy to go about installing Gentoo if I can just pop a knoppix cd in when I need to write an essay/answer an email.

Do you just cntrl+c and halt - and Gentoo knows where you were up to next time you boot the floppy or whatever?

[asklepios]

yup that is how you do it. at least that is how i did when i installed from Slack. then when i came back, i mounted the drives again...chroot and start the procedure again.
it will skip all the installed packages and start from where you left. pretty nifty feature i must say ;)

[Vaseline]

I better back some data up..

;)

[allsa8]

Good Yaaaaa slacker !
so when i want to install any other distro that i have'nt installed before , i have to read the manual ?!

back to gentoo .. Trying to install is different from reading the installation guide , what do you mean by text mode ? It can be menu driven as with slackware ! this is easy .

ok .. as starter adviced us to give it a try , i searched the internet for the iso images but i just found one here :

http://cudlug.cudenver.edu/gentoo/releases/x86/2004.0/livecd/i686/packages-i686-2004.0.iso


befor downloading this image :
is this just to boot from the cd itself and requires no disk install ? like mandrake move ?

thank you

[mmills]

Now I am looking to download gentoo and give it try, I have a XP Shuttle Board. I found this download, is this the download I need to burn to ISO?

ftp://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/releases/x86/2004.0/livecd/athlon-xp/packages-athlon-xp-2004.0.iso

[Hayl]

that is just the packages - for the GRP install if you are doing that.

you need a different ISO to boot the install - choose 1 of these

http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu/releases/x86/2004.0/livecd/universal/

[hardcore]

If you have an athlon-xp, then yes.

*Edit*

Forgot that in 2004, things are different. Use link in post above

[mmills]

does the minimal iso come with ftp and dns software or do you have to install that from tar., rpm

[bandwidth_pig]

Gentoo supplies the basic tools needed to do whatever you want. If there is something that you want to have you can just emerge it. For example (I don't recall if it comes with it or not) but if for some reason you wanted lynx to download something not in portage (highly unlikely) you would just:

emerge lynx

And it will install with all dependencies.

[hammer123]

when you do this rather than an rpm, it downloads an ebuild, this is basically a tar.gz with a script for a database and automatic configuration arugments.

[Trogdor]

Originally posted by Vaseline
I've been skimming over it myself..

How exactly does it work in terms of pauses in the install? I'm totally happy to go about installing Gentoo if I can just pop a knoppix cd in when I need to write an essay/answer an email.

Do you just cntrl+c and halt - and Gentoo knows where you were up to next time you boot the floppy or whatever? You can install Gentoo FROM Knoppix!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You can use ANY Linux distro (like Knoppix, the Gentoo live cd, etc) to install Gentoo!

[hammer123]

I installed it from redhat 9. When I wanted to work I minimized the terminal where I was installing gentoo and opened up whatever app I wanted. In fact it was minimized most of the time so I could continue doing other stuff.

[Vaseline]

Oh, wow..

I read that you could install from a knoppix CD or whatever, but I kinda thought that'd just be to get your machine booted and then when the install starts, you'd pretty much confined to that.

So, if I boot knoppix, I can install Gentoo in the background, and carry on browsing porn, listening to music, etc..?

I can't understand it when installing from a non-live cd distro like rh9 though, cause wouldn't you be overwriting the filesystem you're working from? :)

oh.. you probably did it to a different partition. :)

[DAudioLink@Sch]

I know this is a bit late but, Gentoo is indeed n00b friendly. I tryed Debian first, but it didn't like my eth0 (or my isp didn't like Debian). Gentoo setup the first try, in only 5 days of after school working (most of the time was waiting for stuff to compile) I had a working install with XFree86. The only thing I have to gripe about is my lack of knowlege in regards to Linux, (and that I didn't switch sooner ). I've had a few problems with it, nothing major, or at least nothing out of my leage as a n00b (with some help from the guys in the #justlinux channel on irc.freenode.net).

[blackrax]

Originally posted by mengle
All those crazy characters going across my screen for hours on end were kind of mezmorizing. Much like watching a fire.

you actually sat through the entire install process?

[hard candy]

you actually sat through the entire install process?

What else are you going to do in a padded cell? :D

[Vaseline]

Yay! It booted fine first time! :)

Now to emerge some heavy-*** desktop shzit! :)

Ed - I can't believe a-s-s is censored!

[VolcomPimp]

for the past god knows how many days Ive been tryin to get gentoo
up and running...

First problem being my stupid Dlink G520 Rev. B wifi card not being
picked up by any distro I've tried upon install or after...
(havn't tried fedora or suse yet but I don't wanna stoop to that
level... hate rpm's, love creating custom packs/source installs and
love distro's that aren't slow )

My beef w/ gentoo other than not picking up my wifi card is that
I'm being told first off that I could do a network-less install w/
their universal x86 install cd... wrong

maybe from stage 3 but I'm tryin to do a stage 1 install and every time
I get to bootstrapping the system it wants to go online, and by that time
I can't unmount/mount my cd rom since cdcache doesn't work or my CF card since I chroot'd and there's hardly anything in my bin files, and
when I d/l the stuff from windows and start over and put the files in the distfiles dir, there's another dependency I've gotta go find...

geez, if only my wifi card worked....

[Vaseline]

Arghh.. !

So Gnome is up and looking good, I think I'm in love. I try to emerge openoffice-ximian over night. All looks good, I checked about 6am and it was compiling the 6th package out of 6. When I drag myself out of bed at 9, I can't get a picture on the screen. I try crtl+Alt+backspc, etc. In the end I had to give it a hard reboot.

It looks to be coming back up fine, grub loads and start to boot the kernel. Then it complains that it can't find /dev/hda3 [my root file system]. It's not like the disk packed in, cause the boot partiton is on hda as well. Ah damn..

I'm gonna see if knoppix can mount it. I'm doubtful. I think I might cry.. Hehe.

[Vaseline]

I split this into a different thread. It seemed hardly fair on your Gentoo propaganda. hehehe.. :)

http://justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=124277

[Uranus]

I just got Gentoo running on my laptop since a few days, and have been emerging all kinds of stuff since then, but some apps I couldn't load after emerging... The ones I can think of at the moment: Firebird/Firefox, Gkrellm, FreeCnC, Pingus and Flightgear. First I couldn't start Eterm from the command line, but there I just had to start with a CAPITAL E. I tried this as well on the other programs, but it wouldn't load anyway.
Have I got the wrong commands to load them?
BTW, my Gentoo installation boots somewhat slower than WinXP, which was on the computer before (not anymore of course ;-)), is this a misconfiguration on my side?

Sam

[hardcore]

Depends on how many services you have starting at bootup. Check with:

rc-update show

[squeegy]

I figured being I'd be sitting at my desk all weekend studying for exams, that I might as well install gentoo. I couldn't imagine an install going better. I followed the directions in the documents and I ended up with a really nice/fast system. Granted I didn't install KDE or gnome it worked pretty quickly out of the box. I went with a Stage1 install so it would be fully optimized which I would recommend. Gentoo gets two thumbs up from me.

[mengle]

Originally posted by blackrax
you actually sat through the entire install process?

Hell no. I don't have time for that. I just stuck my head in every once in a while. :rolleyes:

[DAudioLink@Sch]

Originally posted by hammer123

As for the kernel just
#emerge gentoo-dev-sources
then configure the kernel because you can't
$make oldconfig
also you no longer have to
$make dep

I'm not sure if my install is 'special' (No, not special ed!) or what, but I could, and did use
make oldconfig when I upgraded my kernel to gentoo-dev-2.6.3-r1 . However, I was upgrading from the development-sources-2.6.1 kernel so that may have been why(?) I went back and did make menuconfig latter because I wanted/needed to add in and remove some things from my kernel, but that's just cuz I had omitted or included them in the other kernel.

[hammer123]

DaudioLink said:I was upgrading from the development-sources-2.6.1 kernel so that may have been why(?) yes upgrading kernels is the same with the exclusion of make dep which I specifically said you did not have to do. You just can't make oldconfig when you go from 2.4.x to 2.6.x unless _maybe_ you are on gentoo-sources which is almost 2.6 because they are too different.

[mengle]

Okay, I've got a couple of questions about my new kernel and since most of my books and internet research is a mixture of 2.4 and 2.6 stuff I get a little confused. Perhaps I can ask for a little help since I really have tried to RTFM.

So here's the deal. I emerged the new 2.6.3 kernel and went through make menuconfig, seleceted a bunch of stuff, compiled it, added it to /boot and grub. It loads up and gets an error about me incorrectly selecting something required for gentoo (DEVFS; oops!). No problem my old kernel works fine.

But here's where I get nervous. I'll need to edit the kernel config file; presumably if I just do "make menuconfig" again it will open the old file and I can make the changes I need. (If I'm wrong let me know). However, it seems like I need to run make mrproper ahead of time but I am totally scared of that command; it deletes all sorts of stuff I don't like it getting near (i.e., config file). Do I need to run make mrproper? If so, do I need to have /boot mounted?

Last question, once I get it up and running to I need to re-emerge the nVidia kernel since I'm jumping from 2.4 to 2.6?

I think I have everything after that handled. Thanks in advance (especially since kernels scare the hell out of me).

[hammer123]

if you have modules do this:
$cd /usr/src/linux
$cp .config /tmp/
$make mrproper
$cp /tmp/.config .
whether or not you have modules do this
$make menuconfig
and in there go to virtual file systems and enable devfs like the install manual says to do.
then compile the kernel with the new corrections.

[JohnT]

Give Gentoo a Try! OK...I did!!:p

[mengle]

Thanks Hammer123,

I got my new 2.6.3 kernel up and running. I need to make some things modules to get my USB-based mp3 player hooked up but on initial inspection all looks good. :)

[VolcomPimp]

Got my system up and running now...
took me about 2 days... A few weeks to figure out
how to get on w/ my wifi card which i was able to
do by installing madwifi under knoppix.
Took me about half a day to get the drivers workin
1 days and start the install and the next day from about
3:30 to 9:30 at night to get the base system up
and runnin and a few other things...
Probly could've got it done quicker since certain compiles
would finish and sit there for a while b4 I came to
move on in the install.
I was doing a stage 1 in which I downloaded everything
w/ out using any cd's for stages or distfiles (which I had).
You may take a few days after that making mistakes and
hopefully correcting yourself by reading the gentoo
forums but its a real fun experience going from
the point at which you think you've bonked
your system completely but find a way to fix it
cause you don't want to start over from stage 1.

[Wolface]

weird, the last time I installed gentoo It took me only 19 hours to have the kernel, kde, openoffice, k3b, xmms and xine running. Im using an amd 3200 though,

[XiaoKJ]

I got a stage 3 install in under 12 hrs, and full with gnome and kde and Openoffice. However, I used the packages and universal CDs.

I also blindly followed the handbook's instructions and did it! however, my version is very bloated and theres much errors during boot up. Useable though!

Gentoo's great, forcing me to learn things like building the kernel. Not bad, Im slogging through the handbook's instructions to get hold of wadeva ive typed. this way i would be ready for a stage 1.

Great for those having enuff time. I noe im too slow, but i was on the TV while it waited for me....

[gehidore]

i took your advice TROOOOOGGGGDOOOORRRRR!!!!!!!!

from the begining everytime the name "gentoo" came accross me i would dismis it as some colorfull dedhat recreation thinking this was a distro for newbees (oops my mistake) it turns out that, after reading your post, gentoo mabe the source based distro ive been looking for. now if i can just get the universal disk to donwload correctly. hehe

[madcompnerd]

19 hours eh. That's almost a decent time, it's only 10 times longer than an install should take.
Theoretically, when my computer is ten times faster than yours I may switch to a source dist. I run Arch and Slack btw.

Let's hear it for not spending your own time compiling, w00t!

[hammer123]

Yeah, take your "Let's hear it for not spending your own time compiling" self to some other distro. Enjoy linux. Gentoo is for people who like to compile.

[hardcore]

I just built myself a new overclocking rig. Athlon XP-M 2500+, stock 1833MHz, I'm at 2500MHz. Anyways, compared to my Athlon-tbird 1200, compiling is not that big a deal. emerge system took 85 minutes, firebird (which took somewhere around 3 hours or so before) took 30 minutes.

My point is, if you have the horsepower, Gentoo is pretty damn good. And even if you don't have said system, Gentoo wasn't that bad to get up and running on my 1200MHz Athlon, so you might still want to look into it. Took about 12 hours, but then again I don't use kde or gnome.

[madcompnerd]

Maybe I will use Gentoo when I get an Athlon 64 then :).

[bandwidth_pig]

Originally posted by hardcore
I just built myself a new overclocking rig. Athlon XP-M 2500+, stock 1833MHz, I'm at 2500MHz. Anyways, compared to my Athlon-tbird 1200, compiling is not that big a deal. emerge system took 85 minutes, firebird (which took somewhere around 3 hours or so before) took 30 minutes.

My point is, if you have the horsepower, Gentoo is pretty damn good. And even if you don't have said system, Gentoo wasn't that bad to get up and running on my 1200MHz Athlon, so you might still want to look into it. Took about 12 hours, but then again I don't use kde or gnome.

Interesting. I did a stage two install on my 3 ghz P4 in about 8 hours. It's really not all that bad. You just walk away and let it do it's thing and come back. Once you get past the initial install and whatever you use for desktop (KDE...Gnome...whatever) it's pretty much no big deal from there out.

[bandwidth_pig]

Originally posted by madcompnerd
Maybe I will use Gentoo when I get an Athlon 64 then :).

Of course it looks as though you are kidding around, but in all seriousness, I don't think 64 bits would really help all that much in this case. I could be wrong. It would be interesting to see. Perhaps a current Athlon 64 Gentoo user would like to comment as I am a bit curious.

[hardcore]

Originally posted by madcompnerd
Maybe I will use Gentoo when I get an Athlon 64 then :).

What I mean is:

If you have the horsepower, you can do it while you're around. If you don't, do it at night before you go to bed, and before you go to work. By the time you come home, you'll have an up and running system.

[hardcore]

Originally posted by bandwidth_pig
Of course it looks as though you are kidding around, but in all seriousness, I don't think 64 bits would really help all that much in this case. I could be wrong. It would be interesting to see. Perhaps a current Athlon 64 Gentoo user would like to comment as I am a bit curious.

An athlon 64 is faster in 64bit than the 32bit full/compatibility mode. However right now much of the software for the Athlon 64 is still being ported over to 64 bit, some is buggy, other's are for the most part stable. As a platform on gentoo linux it's still in "unstable" land, but overall it improves everyday (I read alot lol).

[edit]
If you're interested read this thread. (http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=113898&highlight=athlon+64)

Most notably this quote:
The install takes about half the time that it did. I started a reinstall at 11:00

[bandwidth_pig]

Interesting. I wonder how that compares to a Sparc (it's the only exposure to 64 bit computing I have had).

[hardcore]

That actually I would like to know. I have had no exposure to any Sun machines, but I'd love to :D . I should ask my uncle about that (works at Sun), hmmm.......

[bandwidth_pig]

From what I have read, the 64 bit CPU is really only handy when crunching larger floating point numbers. Some will of course, argue that is because most applicaitons haven't been writen to take advantage of the instruction set 64 bits offers. But, I have ran the same application on both a 32 bit X86 platform, and then ran that same applicaiton compiled for the Ultra Sparc, and I have not seen a performance increase. BUT, I have a real old Ultra Sparc (Ultra I) and I wonder if the reduced clock speed plays a major factor (167 mhz). The obvious assumption would be that it would indeed play a major factor. I'm curious how much. There is always so much discussion regarding how clock speeds are mostly fictitious. I'd have to say I agree. Going from 400 mhz to 3 ghz wasn't a quantum improvement. It was indeed a improvement. But not as big as I would have thought.

[hardcore]

all depends on what programs you use, user experience varies. But being a gamer, clockspeed is a huuuge deal to me. To the average desktop user, it most likely won't be a big deal.

[madcompnerd]

Originally posted by bandwidth_pig
Of course it looks as though you are kidding around, but in all seriousness, I don't think 64 bits would really help all that much in this case. I could be wrong. It would be interesting to see. Perhaps a current Athlon 64 Gentoo user would like to comment as I am a bit curious.
Oh no, of course 64 bits helps in no way here. However, my next upgrade will be an Athlon 64 (90% sure). The Athlon 64 does have 16 (as opposed to 8) registers though, which should assist compiling. Although from what I've seen hyperthreading helps more (but I have a distaste for Intel's design policy).

[bandwidth_pig]

I think if somebody feels like checking it out (I'm too lazy to go dig up the link) but I recall Tom's Hardware benchmarking the Athlon 64 against the new P4 and if I recall, the P4 actually beat it.

What I would like to see is some games take advantage of those 64 bits. To me software is way behind hardware at this stage.

[VolcomPimp]

to me, whether AMD is beat by a small or large margin
I'll never buy intel. If it weren't for AMD, Intel
would have no competition and wouldn't have
to dish out good products.
I'd rather sacrifice an unnoticable ammount of performace
loss that I'm never going to see in my life and
get an AMD.

[JohnT]

I'm waiting for the "128":rolleyes:

[hardcore]

Originally posted by bandwidth_pig
I think if somebody feels like checking it out (I'm too lazy to go dig up the link) but I recall Tom's Hardware benchmarking the Athlon 64 against the new P4 and if I recall, the P4 actually beat it.

What I would like to see is some games take advantage of those 64 bits. To me software is way behind hardware at this stage.

Which P4 and which benchmarks? From this review (http://www20.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040322/index.html), basically anything that is FPU intensive, the Althon64, and to much more of an extent the AthlonFX, clean up house. As AMD chips usually do in the gaming, compressing and compiling benchmarks.

[DSwain]

i know i'm throwing this whole 64-bit processing topic off, but I am doing my first Stage1 installation, and I was curious as to any users that have done this and what they think of it. Has it really done a major deal better for speed on there systems?

[VolcomPimp]

I have a stage 1 install on my pc (barton 2500+) and it
took me about 2 days to complete (not overnight... about 6 hours
or so a day but I could've done it quicker)
It runs great, you learn a lot in the process.. I've
seen a lot of haters around different forums who just cry
about how all you're doing is running scripts which is only
true for the bootstrap, but really the only hard part is
making mistakes and correcting them and dealing w/ conflicts
every once in a while (if there are any but thats part of the
learning process)....
I've used redhat, mandrake (both I hadn't used too long a while back),
lycoris (for like 5 mins), and slackware... I was a big slack user for
the longest time and didn't think I'd get rid of it until
I installed gentoo....
Unlike any other distro, I feel like I know what exactly is on my
system cause it was pretty much built from scratch and
all your hardware isn't just set up for you.

At the moment I'm doing a stage 1 on my 450mhz laptop
which is taking a while. I'm near the end of the bootstrap which
has taken me quite a few hours to complete.

One of the main reasons I wanted to try Gentoo was because
while I was using slack, I was always trying to create custom
slackpacks so I could be compiling all my stuff from source and
cause the pkgtool was easy to use.
Portage isn't too shaby but it sure beats RPM. Havn't used
debian's apt yet but I hear it's good. I tried lookin up some
it's commands to see how it works but it didn't seem as easy
to use as portage's emerge

[DSwain]

yeah, i've installed gentoo from stage3 like 10 times already, so i'm giving a stage1 a run for its money. We'll see how it goes, but i was curious how does the stage1 run compared to say a stage3 install?

as for Portage, i love Portage. Apt, i've never used for debian, but i've used apt-4-rpm which is alright, nothing to Portage really though. I may take debian for a second run someday but I don't know as of now, Gentoo is great for me.

[gehidore]

just finished a stage 1 install , emerged xfree xmms fluxbox & opera

stage 1 took 4 hours
xfree xmms fluxbox opera took another 2

my average download speed was 26.01kbps
now i just have to get xWm to go away