Gentoo for ya!

[zagiboy]

Well, the idea of installing gentoo kept on echoing in the back of my mind. I decided to try it, and it isn't really that hard to install. I found myself making stupid mistakes along the install (like the wrong partition for grub to boot... etc.) that were easily fixed. I have it running right now, and I'm very pleased with it. Not many packages in the portage system, but every one is useful. Debian has a TON of packages, some of which are not that useful. Having every package nice and up to date was really nice too. I did find myself wondering what to do a few times during the install, like what kernel modules to install if I want sound and X11 to work. I dont like the fact that when ever you install something, it takes pretty near forever, because it has to compile. Under debian, most packages are binarys, so they take less time to install. All in all, I really liked gentoo. It was a nice change from libranet 2.0, which had way too many outdated packages. Currently, I'm trying to get KDE 3.1 installed. It sorta seems like its working. Hope you find this useful!

[Can O' Beans]

:) Gentoo isn't really all that hard to install, hell I did a Stage1 isntall with about a week total Linux experience ;). It is intimidating though to a newbie, and does take longer to install programs, but it is optimized and runs so much more faster on my 2x366@550 Celeron PC.

Most things don't take TOO long, but larger apps, like KDE:eek: ..well.. better start the emerge, then go to bed ;)

Doc, forums, and the #gentoo IRC channel get you pretty much all the answers to any problems.

[TheHeadRoach]

No, gentoo isn't very hard to install at all but "emerge rsync" wouldn't work with my network. I gave up on it. Back to good old slackware.

[nonz]

why do people preach gentoo like it's godly? I can understand straying away from rpms but the length of the install for me on a decent system doesn't seem worth it. What now kword will open .0002 sec faster? I think I'm going to ditch gentoo and try debian. The only thing that attracted me to gentoo was that sexy *** "g" logo and the no rpms :D

[ferreter]

Originally posted by nonz
why do people preach gentoo like it's godly? I can understand straying away from rpms but the length of the install for me on a decent system doesn't seem worth it. What now kword will open .0002 sec faster? I think I'm going to ditch gentoo and try debian. The only thing that attracted me to gentoo was that sexy *** "g" logo and the no rpms :D

I use debian and Gentoo, the difference in speed is far from negligable considering my PIII 800 runs with roughly the same efficiency as my athalon 1400 w/ gentoo. And about twice as fast as the same athalon machine with w2k. The key is adding -fomit-frame-pointer to the CFLAG variable, that for some reason really kicks X in to high gear.

[zagiboy]

3 things (there are many more)

*NO OUTDATED PACKAGES!!! That is why I switched from debian, who wants Java 1.1.2? Anyone?

*No dependencies :) Huge advantage over rpm. Install somthin'. Needs a dependeny? That dependency depend on 500 other programs? No problem :D.

*Sexy G logo :D

I've been a loyal debian user for a year or so. So I switched, and love gentoo!

[kam]

The key is adding -fomit-frame-pointer to the CFLAG variable, that for some reason really kicks X in to high gear. Where did you find info about the CFLAG variable? I want my X to go really fast... :D

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by kam
Where did you find info about the CFLAG variable? I want my X to go really fast... :D

Depends on the processor.

Look here (http://www.google.com/linux?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=CFLAG&btnG=Google+Search) and the online Gentoo documentation on CFLAGS. Search through their usergroups and you will likely find loads of examples.

[slack006]

No doubt about it, folks. Gentoo kicks arse. I started on Red Hat, and soon wanted to chew my arm off before I used another RPM. Then I moved to Slackware. Don't get me wrong, I still LOVE Slackware. But, Gentoo has all the things I love about Slackware and has made it easier. Gentoo is just like EVERY other distro out there save one thing: PORTAGE. If you haven't experienced installing and uninstalling software via portage, then you haven't lived, my friend.

Sure it takes longer because it compiles, but it takes care of all the dependencies, and it actually will uninstall when asked. Both functions are a simple command line. Also, the packages are way up to date. The library is growing fast, too. There's plenty of packages for any type of user. The best part is the community. Friendly, helpful, and not a bunch of RTFM newbie bashers... This is extra helpful and refreshing.

Emerge, my friend. Gentoo smokes!

[hetman]

yup, honestly, installing gentoo is not hard at all. might take a while but in the end its worth it. you dont worry about new versions...
hit 'emerge -u world' and youre up to date.
simple as that. i used to use mandrake, i liked it for starters but the more i learned about linux the more i started disliking it.
rpms were a pain, checkinstall was a useful tool for src compiles and easy removal, but otherwise mandrake didnt have much to offer. red hat is pretty much like mandrake, nothing special there.
debian was cool, apt-get was very handy, but nothing tops gentoo.

try it once, and you'll love it.

[fortisimo]

does anyone know how to install gentoo linux, without putting the iso image ont a cd?

[mart_man00]

if your have a working linux distro (even a live one) you can install there, so you wouldnt need a cd. it might be easier with one. there is a alternative install guide.

[gtalum]

Gentoo rocks. Sure it takes awhile to install, but IMHO it's worth every second, especially if you run an older system. My old K6-2 400 system positively screams with it. After 6 months of tweaking Mandrake, I was ready to go searching for my distro, and I found it with gentoo. :) Portage rocks! Gentoo RULES!

[stevewabc]

Yep there is no better unless you are installing it on alot of computers then it's not so good!!! it would have taken me mo. to load it.. thats the only down fall..I see..

[arioch]

I'm considering Gentoo aswell, but in my case It might be a bit risky since I'm running a dualboot system with XP and Mandrake 9.1 and i don't want to risk messing up my XP partition. Given the nature of the install, it sounds like it's better suited for a singleboot machine

I detest and loathe RPM's also, but i must admit the URPMI feature in Mandrake gives me a debian experience IT WORKS! Perhaps Redhat should adopt it...:D

[cjanscen]

Gentoo is well worth the time, the system you end up with is THE fastest available for your hardware, period. The package management is the best out there, I can't really speak anything bad about gentoo....I know more about linux than my friend who has been using Debian for much longer, becuase gentoo forces you to understand what is going on!

[Anomaly]

But what about 56k users?
Isnt Gentoo installed through FTP/http or stuff? I havnt done my research, but I never thought of Gentoo before I read this thread...

[terribleRobbo]

And if it is... How about us lot with a one-gig download cap?

Buy the CD pack?

[Hayl]

Originally posted by terribleRobbo
And if it is... How about us lot with a one-gig download cap?

Buy the CD pack?

there is no CD pack

the CD has a very minimal base install, and you emerge the rest.

i think they have some GRP packages on some of the CDs but i haven't played with those - they are precompiled binaries for only certain packages; which imho, defeats the purpose of having optimized binaries - especially for X, Gnome, or KDE where it makes the biggest difference.

[mart_man00]

Given the nature of the install, it sounds like it's better suited for a singleboot machine
im on my dual boot machine right now! win xp (pro in my case but home will work) and gentoo can get along. it not that hard. i used lilo but grub can do it, if your new(like me) lilo has better howtos.

[mart_man00]

Isnt Gentoo installed through FTP/http or stuff

sorry i didnt see this before.

it normally is. but there is GRPs, prebuilt binaries on cd. you can download the cd or buy it for a buck or 2. the cd is full, it shouldnt be that long.

a ethernet connect does help alot. after you have it installed you can recompile it for tweaks, the source should be saved. i havnt heard much about gentoo untill a went to a nearby college, they need a propaganda dept.

[shadowrider]

Originally posted by kam
Where did you find info about the CFLAG variable? I want my X to go really fast... :D

you can check the gcc options (http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-3.1/gcc/Optimize-Options.html#Optimize%20Options) or some of the gccflags (http://www.freehackers.org/gentoo/gccflags/)

[arkaine23]

Originally posted by stevewabc
Yep there is no better unless you are installing it on alot of computers then it's not so good!!! it would have taken me mo. to load it.. thats the only down fall..I see..

Actually I installed it on 9 servers and 16 workstations in just a couple of days. I made one workstation tarball and one server tarball and then just ftp'd those puppies across the network. Took about 15 minutes to repartition and wipe Redhat from the machines and then untar a pre-made gentoo system. Maybe another 15 minutes to compensate configs for different network cards, soundcards, video cards, or mice, hostnames, start-up scripts, etc.

If I was still working as an admin, I'd have simplified that little procedure by making a page-long kick-start script. But alas, my ex-employers are not fairing too well in this troubled economy and had to let me go.

[Gaxus]

Gentoo is ok. I just can't get into these source based distros due to the fact that it takes ages to compile stuff! (on my PIII 733, 128mb ram). I definately don't see what an extra few flags will do to the speed either... might make a small difference, yet I don't see it doing wonders.

If I had a better computer I might try it out again, but at the moment I'm on Debian, and think it's great!

[copeja]

I have gentoo installed on a box that boots 7 different Linux distros including Gentoo. I have it building on a Pentium Pro 200 with 192 meg ram it is well worth the time and portage is the best. Gentoo is the best I have used so far

[zagiboy]

I had no issues with Duel Booting my XP running box. All you do is install grub to the boot partition and then dump the first few sectors of that partition to a file, put the file on C:\, and add it to boot.ini. There are many tutorials on how to do this, search for "windows 2000 grub" on google.

[gennro]

i'm setting up a file/http server was running win 2k3 server its just slow and buggy, so moved to redhat 9 it was bein a pain, so now i am installing gentoo =) compiling right now

[arachnyd]

god, I just read the installation instructions for Gentoo. Even at Stage3 its ridiculous. NOT very beginner friendly.

Once I get my new pc built i'll wipe this one and try installing from stage 1, but im not attempting that on a system I care about. Better get to know linux a little better first.

Sucks, I was really excited. I planned to spend today switching. That G logo is so sexy...

[shadowrider]

Originally posted by arachnyd
god, I just read the installation instructions for Gentoo. Even at Stage3 its ridiculous. NOT very beginner friendly.

Once I get my new pc built i'll wipe this one and try installing from stage 1, but im not attempting that on a system I care about. Better get to know linux a little better first.

Sucks, I was really excited. I planned to spend today switching. That G logo is so sexy...

which part were you having problems with?

[mart_man00]

i do like gentoo, ive been running it for awhile, but your right the install is horrible for a n00b.

the install is comeplete crap, it couldnt be much worse. they take the time to make a very good distro and are too l33t to make a dam installer. its bull.

[arachnyd]

Well, the whole strength of Gentoo comes from the fact its compiled on your system. Everything is optimized for you, so it runs faster. The only problem with that is it makes installing a ***** for noobs.

I read through the installation guide again, and I think i'm gonna try it. This machine is just temporary until I build a new one, and there isnt anything terribly important on it. Plus I have an assload of freetime.

[hard candy]

You can install everything you need from a stage3 tarbell cd. And you can order one for $5 (see the Gentoo.org homepage)
Here's a link to using CFlags both safe and bleeding edge:
CFlags (http://www.freehackers.org/gentoo/gccflags/flag_gcc3opt.html)
And here is a script for finding the best flags for your processor:

Cflags script (http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=53602)
You can find out how to make your computer talk to you and read your email or log messages, automatically download updates, etc- just look inTips and Tricks on the Gentoo Forum page.
Gentoo is fun since you can really customise your install and automate your machine. Mine says, "Good Day Master" when I crank it up.

[Ryochan7]

Well, after reading this thread, I decided to give Gentoo a try. Man, people are right when they say that the Gentoo installation is hard for a noob and that you can learn more about Linux with the Gentoo install than with a year of using Linux; I can't remember who said that, but it was on this forum somewhere. I printed the 25 page installation guide and everything was still confusing even though the guide practically went over everything for the installation. It took me forever to figure out that /dev/ide/host2/target0/lun0/disc=hde (with default Gentoo kernel)=hda(with custom kernel after installation). It took about four installation (9 hours) before I finally got Gentoo to boot to the command line. Then, I found out that no display manager was installed in the installation. So, it was time to get KDE. Getting KDE and all dependencies (107 in all) took about 16 hours to install. I then had to try to configure X to actually work. This is where I am still stuck at and I think I'm going to give up. I had an easier time with Slackware than with Gentoo.

I guess it's time for me to go back to Mandrake for a little while longer. I did like the LiveCD; it had a cool interface, there was a lot of software to use, and everything loaded quickly.

[mart_man00]

dont go back! you came to far!

x gives every one trouble, start a post. you can even get a ati working(like mine)!

[andycrofts]

Hi, Folks.
Here's what I propose in the week starting 20 July
"She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed" (More importantly, she who uses the only suitable display most the time..) is away. YAAAAAYYY!!!

Now, I've an old Compaq Deskpro. that I love. 2 SCSI drives, all the molarkey. I tried a Gentoo install with it, but got stuck, and really needed the machine as a worker, so I Dead-Ratted it.
What I propose is a Gentoo Stage-1 install (I've got the display for a week), and I'll write a blow-by-blow account, detailed in its own thread. I have high-speed internet, so we won't be waiting for dialup/downloads.

What I need is help when it goes rats.

At the end of this, we should have one community-authored thread, with the definite totally working HOWTO (as far as the particular machine goes)

I'll follow the latest Gentoo site instructions to the letter, and detail them (post logs, etc) as I go. If I screw up, I'll post that, too.
Sounds like fun!

-What do you reckon?

-Andy

[mart_man00]

the gentoo guide is pretty good, but a log cant hurt any.

since no one will make a install im thinking about trying one myself in QT, problem is i never used QT before(i do know some c). since theres a livecd with kde and gnome on it it should work out well, if i learn QT.

[Ryochan7]

It has been a couple of months since I posted my initial comment on Gentoo. Just a few days ago, I decided to try Gentoo again and see how far I could get this time around. The newer LiveCD and instructions were a little bit more helpful. Also, because of my last failure, I was able to understand more of what was going on during the process. Like my typical lazy-self, I used genkernel to compile a kernel for me instead of actually making one myself; the result wasn't too bad. Anyway, I am glad to say that despite my errors before and portage's recent bugs, ex. DocBook XML problems, that I had to find fixes for, that I actually got X to work and boot into KDE. Getting all my hardware to work wasn't that big of a deal; I just had to find out which modules I needed to use. Even something like setting up my new digicam didn't take anymore than five minutes.

Now, this is when it gets bad. From my experiences with Portage and what I have read on the Gentoo forums, Portage is carrying too many bugs. A lot of programs work great after emerging them via Portage, especially KDE and Mozilla. However, others are not as great, OpenOffice and Xine. Xine is continually crashing on me and OpenOffice doesn't even start; I just get an error message. While I do see what the fuss is all about, I don't think that I will stay on the Gentoo bandwagon for now. Maybe after another couple of months, everything will be better, Gentoo-wise and Myself, and I will try Gentoo again to then use as my main OS.

Well, I don't think that anybody would really worry about it, but I have taken a screenshot by which to remember my Gentoo experience by and posted it on the "screenshots just because" thread. Later.

http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=38967&perpage=15&pagenumber=176

[xdakorx]

Im saying it now ditch debian and gentoo and use Archlinux (archlinux.org) You will never look at another distro agian.

[mart_man00]

Portage makes Gentoo.

You can type 'emerge kdevelop' and it will install xfree, qt, kde, kdevelop and all the other deps with pactches on its own. When they get off there buts it will also let you save all those recompiles. Its alot like Ports(it seems like a ripoff to me, but some one told me something once. cant be too bug, i didnt remember it).

Plus isnt arch just binary i686 packages? So its not a source distro? Just another package format with not alot of software?

I wish GNU would just come up with a popular one and we all could use that (I know there is one, it doesnt seem to popular). Alot of going towards RPM(i heard something about that being a standard, not sure if it was a joke), maybe Redhat will save the day and fix some stuff. They done alot already.

[mart_man00]

By the way, Portage itself doesnt have alot of bugs. Its just missing some feature and a few problems.

Some ebuilds maybe bad, but thats a different problem with different people.

:mad: Why must you make me defend Gentoo! :mad:

[CaptainPinko]

Originally posted by xdakorx
Im saying it now ditch debian and gentoo and use Archlinux (archlinux.org) You will never look at another distro agian.

care to supply any rationale?

ah... is Arh = Slack + parkage management ?

[schism39401]

I have been using Gentoo for almost a year and I have tried other distros and tried to find something that suited me as well as Gentoo does. But no luck, so everything got wiped off the ole hard drive and Gentoo got put on every machine I could get my hands on. I have a 400 mhz P3 Celeron that I keep as close to bleeding edge as I care to. and ever since I upgraded to the 2.6 kernel and 2.4 gnome my machine is blazing fast. I noticed the difference as soon as I rebooted. Btw I am using the 2.6 love-sources if you haven't tried em get em while they http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=81758&highlight=love+sources (props Lovechild :-))...I also have a 633mhz P3 Celeron as my house server. I have not had to reboot it for anything but a kernel change it is as rock solid as any computer I have ever seen....but anyway...the entire gentoo experience has been awesome and as of today Gentoo will be my primary O/S for a long time....To the people in this thread who want to give up or are intimidated by the install process...don't be...just follow the docs word for word and everything will work

[binarynova]

So, being a Redhat 9 n00b, I decided to head over to www.gentoo.org to check it out.

It sounds pretty nice. Ultra-customizability (something that I prefer) is at your fingertips.

But, my only question is, how different is Gentoo from say... LFS? Wouldn't LFS be the 'ultimate' source-based distro?

I've read a little bit about LFS, and plan on eventually (after I get used to Linux in general) switching over to LFS. Would any of you who've tried both please elaborate on which you prefer and why?

[mart_man00]

LFS? Wouldn't LFS be the 'ultimate' source-based distro?
Not really.

Then you cant go "emerge kde" and leave for a day or so :)

Only thing Gentoo has, and there trying to kill that.

[wrc1944]

For those having a problem getting X to work after installing Gentoo, here is a very easy solution. Boot to a knoppix 3.2 live cd, and copy the knoppix generated XF86Config-4 file to the Gentoo /etc/X11 directory, and reboot. Make sure you have kde or another WM installed in Gentoo. Here's how.

At the knoppix boot prompt, type:

knoppix single

Let it boot and detect your hardware, then type startx.

Then click on the partition kde desktop icon that Gentoo / is on to mount. Then to make that partition writable, open a console, and type:

mount -o remount,rw /mnt/hdx

(x being the letter of your Gentoo root partition).Then you can copy the XF86Config-4 file over to Gentoo's /etc/X11, either with the kde superuser file manager (graphical), or in a console command line.

This procedure using Knoppix works every time.Trying to run the XConfig program in Gentoo has never generated a working file for me.

When booting Gentoo, just type startx, and enter, to, yes, STARTX! I put an alias in .bash.rc, like this:

alias x="startx"

Then, I just type x. Remember, you also need a window manager installed.

wrc1944

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Yeah.... that's a quick and dirty way of doing it, but where's the fun? It's almost cheating...

;)

[wrc1944]

Alex,
Good point, and I basically agree. However, after the normal XF86 configure refused to work after several tries on my test box with an ATI 9000 Pro video card, and a scrolling mouse, I was fed up. It's not like I didn't know how to use the xfree configure- I've done it many times without any problems. In this case, it just refused to generate a working XF86Config-4 file for a fresh Gentoo 1.4 install- in fact, several different installs.I still haven't figured out why. I just thought it's a good tip to know about the knoppix method for those unable to get their x to work, due to configuration problems, or inexperience. :)

wrc1944

[Fryguy8]

Gentoo definetely kicks butt.

My first distro was debian, and I liked it, but it just lagged SO far behind in the desktop world. I couldn't stand it. I then go started in the LFS project, and learned a TON. When I got sick of trying to manually keep up with updates, I was in search for a distro that would allow easy updating, while still keeping most of the power of LFS. Gentoo fills the gap perfectly. I have a decently fast computer, so I can get an entire system up in around 5-6 hours or so, so it's not that bad. After original setup, the wait for updates isn't much longer than debian. And if you haven't had a chance to see speed differences side-by-side on the same computer, don't take it for granted. Gentoo is MUCH faster at everything than debian. It's almost as fast as LFS (the only huge advantage to LFS was boot time, it booted in about 5 seconds, but since most people never reboot a linux box this is moot).

Although I am currently using debian on my mail server box because it's policies DO lead to a more secure box.

[mart_man00]

Yeah Fryguy8, thats what i was thinking at first.

I was starting up a a base system(i had something bootable but not even clsoe to usable) and i knew i wouldnt keep it up, theres no good reason too. Were not in the stonange anymore, why should my computers be?

Portage is great, compiler apps with different flags and option is great. But what do you do after your weekend compile session machines's hard drives dies a day or 2 after? Sit on your but doing it all over again and say "boy gentoo sure does teach me so much and its so useful!!!".

Theres no one to save, binary ebuilds arnt completly working. Those no easy way to do it on a big scale(entire desktop, what id love is: desktop, laptop, firewall).

If you mention you only want too site on your butt one weekend there ready to hand you and shoot gentoo isnt for you. Thats crap. The fork doesnt seems to be doing anything, which is also crap.

Debain seems to have some hacks going for this, i should try it. Put after talking to some people online, i dont know if i want anypart of it.

Maybe im over reacting and wanting the perfect distro, but theres so much crap going on its not even funny anymore.

Fell free to mention the next "perfect distro"

Already DQed
[list=1]
RedHat(reluctantly since its a decent company, more than i can say about alot of people)
Mandrake
Slackware (not automated updates, libs are just hacked together. nice clean install though)
Rock (might be useful, but not a distro. they have no intent of making it one, they could pull of a nice one but of coarse teh dedicated users and devs have to kill it in its sleep)
Gentoo (meh, not alot i like anymore, just some of there promises/pr is good)
Debain - Not sure yet, just seems like its on the way to this list
[/list=1]

[ArthurFortune]

Before i installed Gentoo i was using RedHat alot (7.3,8,8,1) and Mandrake 9.1. But I was tired of rpms. So i decided to install gentoo, because i couldn't find a whole lot of good install information for Debian.

And i must say that the install guide on the gentoo website was all i needed to install the OS. I dual booted it with XP Home. Although i did have a little problem creating the config.conf file for grub, I finally got it working.

Before gentoo i never even compiled a kernel in Linux. And i was able to install gentoo from a stage 1 tarball. If you follow the install guide a base install will be no problem. Then form ther you can decide what programs you want. X didn't take that long for me only about an hour and 45 minutes. But i did install fluxbox instead of KDE or Gnome because 10 minutes is alot less time to wait then 3 hours.

And i have my gentoo system up and running, although i still need to download a ton of software. I even have 3d support for my 8500 (hint use the drm drivers, not ati's) Also if you are using usb make sure you include support for the /dev and /dev/usbfs filesystems in your kernel.

The kernel that i used was the latest gentoo kernel 2.4.20-r6 i believe ,but i'm not sure (i'm logged onto my gentoo install right now). This kernel supporsts all my hardware, VIA KT400 chipset, onboard lan, game theaterxp soundcard, radeon 8500, pioneer dvd, sony cdr/w.

It's not hard thing to do, just use all the great documentation that's available on their website. And eveything should go smoothly. Unless you have a unsupported piece of hardware.

[CaptainPinko]

does anyone have suggestion for catching all the portage messages?

i was struggling with my gentoo install (i think this dell must ahve some somewhat exotic hardware as genkernel just vomits on me :mad: :( ) and when i do something like "emerge kde" i see stuff whiz by me like:

"emerge 123 of 231523412:
....
if you want feature XXXXX you should run YYYYY as root to ZZZZZ"

the one example i can remember mentioned kioslave for a floppy or something off of the p4 1.4 grp discs...


but how can i collect these so that i can look through them to see what i could have missed? just do a > ~/emerge.log ? but then it'll be HUGE and UGLYand i'll have to sift through it to find the important stuff. anything usefull? (i'm thinkg maybe someway to use grep ifonly tose lines had a reliabele prefix...?)

[fortisimo]

Hello people.

This is my situation, i've wanted to try linux for a long time now, i found gentoo linux and decided to try it, i downloaded the iso file, my problem is i dont have a cd rewriter, so i cant put it on cd, i was wondering if anyone knows how to install gentoo linux without a cd, please note that i cant use knoppix because i have only got the iso file for that. thanx.

[CaptainPinko]

you could probably download a linux boot disk(s) and then do a gentoo install since you download everything, all you need is wget and the basic tools x86 (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml) or PPC (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-ppc-install.xml) but you better have high speed or this will take a *LONG* while, similar thing might work with Debian. i don't know tho. but where to find find linux boot disks is a little beyond me...

you could just try buying them from the sites or from some sites that offer $5 linux cds


so you can do a openbsd install off of their ftp all the info you need is here (http://openbsd.com/faq/faq4.html#MkFlop)

[Fryguy8]

fortisimo: I can send you whatever 2-CD set you want for $6. email me at fryguy@fryguy.kicks-***.net

[binarynova]

mart_man00: Depends on what you mean by perfect, but, the perfect one for me is LFS (www.linuxfromscratch.org).

I'm a linux n00b and I just finished installing it this past weekend! Even got XFree86 and KDE installed just fine. Just working out some small bugs (that are probably due to my n00bness).

I don't think I could use any other distro ever again. :D

[AngryPuppy]

Originally posted by wrc1944
For those having a problem getting X to work after installing Gentoo, here is a very easy solution. Boot to a knoppix 3.2 live cd, and copy the knoppix generated XF86Config-4 file to the Gentoo /etc/X11 directory, and reboot. Make sure you have kde or another WM installed in Gentoo. Here's how.

At the knoppix boot prompt, type:
(snippage)

I really appreciate this info. I e-mailed it home so that I can use it if I struggle with my configuration that I just started this morning.

I will probably always be somewhat of a noob since I don't dedicate the time to reading man pages and Linux books like I should to REALLY learn.

I've been on Red Hat exclusively on my desktop (no Windows dual boots here) for about a year now. I was OK with RPM's once I started using apt-get, because it handled all my dependencies nicely, but I got bored. Red Hat worked wonderfully for me. I used graphical interfaces for everything, and knew only a bit about the actual underlying config files and running daemons.

I decided to switch to Gentoo to hopefully learn more about what is running behind the scenes and what makes it tick. My first attempt failed... I think I had too little room set aside on the BOOT partition (ext3). I kept getting errors when extracting the Stage tarball. Expanding the boot partition seems to have solved it.

I decided to go with a Stage 3 install for now and I used genkernel. I know...lamer newbie options, but I don't want too much pain all at one time. The instructions were great. I could just have easily done a Stage2. Not sure about Stage1. As it is, I decided to update all packages, and it spent a pretty good amount of time downloading and compiling.

I emerged XFree86 last night, and OpenSSH today (to allow me to kill startx from another machine when my XFree configuration is less than perfect). The window manager seems to come up fine, but I haven't yet set up keyboard and mouse. So far, CTL-ALT-Backspace won't kill the x session. I can still SSH in, so I know the machine is not locked up, and then I can kill the startx process from there to get my machine back to a prompt. I think I need to do a little work to get the keyboard configured properly for starters.

I guess it all depends on peoples' expectations. I switched to Gentoo because Red Hat was working too well, and being my hobby box, I needed something new to do and tinker with.

When Gentoo is working "too well"... well... I probaly won't go to LFS because I don't like the idea of having to be aware of every package update and then updating each individually.

Terry

[Dorza]

Ive tried to install Gentoo about 16 times now:) . Installation is easy as long as u follow the guide, its the configureing ive found hard:

no connection to net after installation rebot (onboard via-rhine) :confused:
if i done a GPR install and configured X for a USB mouse the mouse wouldnt work correctly after starting x (Wirelss MS Explorer mouse). So im thinking its the wireless aspect of the mouse, because the wired version of the mouse works:mad: .
after configureing X if i tried to emerge kde useing the GPR method it wouldnt work. And i did follow all the instuctions for it.

If i could get my net to work id be landed, cos i can always use a basic PS/2 mouse later on.

After trying and trying AND TRYING. i gave up. I was dissapointed bcos i really want to run gentoo. i shall try again at some point

[orgeeizm]

ive read the instructions on installing gentoo from its website probably 4 times now and im still confused. Im not confused at what to do..im confused at the way they created the install instructions for people starting with stage3.

i read that i have to pick a stage and then untar it into /mnt/gentoo

and the instructions end go to a different topic. i have read that stage3 is supposed to be the easiest way to do it for a noob. well ok, i was just reading it and it doesnt say anything what to do after that..

i mean, after i UNTAR it..is that it? what part of the instruction section should i go next? i mean they did say that thats a basic gentoo prebuilt system right there, stage 3 that is...

what do i do after the untar?

[bandwidth_pig]

Other than the sources being the absolute newest, how would Gentoo compare to Slackware? I have always regarded Slackware as a source based distro because everything I did on it, I did from source. Other than portage, I am curious as to how the two compare. I can't understand why Gentoo would be any faster than Slack. But I don't know much about Gentoo.

[Trogdor]

Originally posted by zagiboy
*No dependencies :) Huge advantage over rpm. Install somthin'. Needs a dependeny? That dependency depend on 500 other programs? No problem :D.

Yeah. I once remember, from my RedHat9 days (about a week in total), I had two very important things to install, and they depended on eachother! And they were supplied by RH itself! So I just put them in the same directory, and:

rmp *

Fortunitly, it worked.

[CaptainPinko]

i must admit that i have lost all my faiht in gentoo. i tried it several times and didn't fall in love like everyone claimed. i emerged a package and it gave me errors. i was expecting it to be error-free if i put up with all the hassle of installing it. sorry boyz, not impressed. i'd rather just upgrade my redhat install and now fedora has the dependency issue solved (afaik) well if it only it is optimized for i686 or has the option for it to download the src.rpm and for it to compile to my optimizations? i culdn't ask for anytihng else... sorry to poo pa.

[AngryPuppy]

Originally posted by CaptainPinko
i must admit that i have lost all my faiht in gentoo. i tried it several times and didn't fall in love like everyone claimed. i emerged a package and it gave me errors. i was expecting it to be error-free if i put up with all the hassle of installing it. sorry boyz, not impressed. i'd rather just upgrade my redhat install and now fedora has the dependency issue solved (afaik) well if it only it is optimized for i686 or has the option for it to download the src.rpm and for it to compile to my optimizations? i culdn't ask for anytihng else... sorry to poo pa.

Sorry to hear it didn't go so well.

I just finished getting the last of my details in place last week (CD burning and DVD playback). The only package I had trouble emerging was transcode. I ended up having to create a sym link to get the compile to work. According to the Gentoo forums, it's a known problem, however.

Gentoo did take more work to get everything up and running, but I'm a tinkerer and I enjoyed the experience.

As far as being hassle-free, I agree that Red Hat is a good choice, especially when you use apt-get with it. Apt can eliminate dependency hell. I loved Red Hat. I just wanted to try something new. I do love Gentoo now, though.

Terry

[CaptainPinko]

i'll give the gentoo folks something... i did learn *A LOT* by installing it. i can now appreciate what the installer does for me and can probably write one, one day that does it for me the way i like it. great learning experience... but all the tinkering left me without a usable desktop so i had to stick with XP. :( Now i'm just waiting for Fedora 1.0, November 3rd here we go...

[JThundley]

ooh ooh, what symlink did you create to get transcode to compile? I'm having that same exact problem. It's needed for K3b apparently.

[ColeSlaw]

Originally posted by JThundley
ooh ooh, what symlink did you create to get transcode to compile? I'm having that same exact problem. It's needed for K3b apparently.

I didn't use a symlink, but I compiled it with masked x86 version and it worked after that...

use the following commands and it should work fine

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge transcode
emerge k3b

Hope this helps you!

[AngryPuppy]

Originally posted by JThundley
ooh ooh, what symlink did you create to get transcode to compile? I'm having that same exact problem. It's needed for K3b apparently.

Sorry...been away from the board for a few days... do this:

cd /usr/include
ln -s avifile-0.7 avifile


Best o' luck

Terry

[o0zi]

I've got a set up of Gentoo running at my school; I love it because I can customise it so that it's easy for the users to become accustomed to. I had to install and emerge stuff at lunchtimes, so it's taken me three weeks:(

[fortisimo]

I have the gentoo cd, but i am finding it very hard to install, when i get to the 'emerge sync' command, i get an error. I think it doesn't recognise my usb, adsl modem.

[o0zi]

What USB modem is it?

[DFo3D]

HINT- Don't use the Gentoo CD's at all.

In fact, don't even bother downloading the ISO's.

Use Knoppix to install Gentoo. You can find the stage tarballs and just download the stage you want, and install from knoppix.

See http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/altinstall.xml

It makes for a very easy install.

[Zubir]

with the advent of yum, and it's predecessor apt for redhat, dependancy hell is a thing of the past. yum is especially good, as you never have to touch it, except to change repositories. it updates your distro automatically, with no input from you.

[JThundley]

OH
MY
GOD

distcc (http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=5233&send_done=1)

It's kind of like an instant beowulf cluster!
I got it to work compiling my test11 kernel!

They didn't have an easy howto, so here's mine.
This assumes that you are using a laptop/workstation and have one server to help you with building. A 'C' means run this on the client, an 'S' means do this on the server.

C,S - emerge distcc --verbose
C - export DISTCC_HOSTS="localhost serverIP"
S - /etc/init.d/distcc start
C - cd /usr/src/linux #Or whatever software package you want to build.
C - make -j4 bzImage CC=distcc
(note: the number after -j should be twice the number of CPUs that you have access to for distributed building. bzimage is there just to show you where other make arguments would go. Leave it out just for a regular make. But do remember to put CC=distcc at the end of it.

That's all you have to do. But how do you know it's working? For me, I just looked at a karamba theme for the net in/out and saw that it was flowing. You could run top on the server to see if distcc is up there.

So is this the coolest thing since sliced bread or what?

[JThundley]

also How to get it to work with Portage! (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/distcc.xml)

[malloc]

I think you must have distcc running in all computers. I don't think distcc is a client/server app.
I've been using it for some time now and it trully is one of the most brilliant piece of software i've seen.
It shortened the build time of my 2.6-test10 kernel on my Duron 800Mhz laptop from almost 35 min to a mere 8 minutes.

[JThundley]

yeah, you have to run distcc on both computers, but I just referred to it as client and server, when it's really more just like main and helper. Or something. I just set it up for use in portage. It was kind of confusing, I hope I have it set up correctly.

[soda_popstar]

Mmm ... Gentoo is yummy. ;)

After starting off my Linux journey with Red Hat 8.0, I've jumped around a lot. I've tried several versions of Red Hat, Mandrake, Lycoris, SUSE, Slackware, Vector, Peanut and more, but I ended up with Gentoo. It's a great distribution! I've messed up a lot along the way, but now that I know what I'm doing, it's running smoothly.

Maybe it's just me, but I find that it renders fonts better than in Red Hat and Mandrake. But I could have just done something strange to Red Hat and Mandrake by accident. :P Even though it took a while to compile, I did it from within Mandrake so that I could still do my work while it was running in the background.

If I could get VMWare/Windows XP to recognize my network connection, I think I'd have a perfect desktop -- running an optimized Linux distribution and the option of using the odd Windows application when necessary without restarting. :D

If you're having problems, just be patient. And read! Look at how low my post count is. I've found that almost all of my problems have been encountered before, and thanks to the Gentoo and JustLinux forms, I could solve them without having to ask them again.

[JThundley]

Does anyone have a really great way to share a portage tree? I'm sharing it over samba right now, and it barely works.

[hkwint]

(In answer to an issue on the first page)
I have gentoo and XP working, as a dualboot. Very simple, compared to dual booting OpenBSD and XP (which is harder). Works fine, gentoo has even entrance (? should use another word) to the FAT32 windows-partitions, plays MP3's from my windows partitions, and since I installed NeTraverse win I can run windows (98) as a program ON my gentoo install, and reboot and go to XP. I also use OpenOffice which works fine with Office from micros*#t (sorry, dirty word, but 97 procent of other people use it, so that's a compability-with-rest-of-the-world issue).

Only nasty thing is that the gentoo-site is getting worse and worse.
Last time I couldn't visit the Kernel-HOWTO (was removed for review), and the packages-site won't show very much packages on one page. Shame on them... But for the rest Gentoo suits my needs very well. (Love emerge!)

[JediSthlm]

One question to you who has Gentoo. Is it possible to install Gentoo today and then in Jan/Feb when the Gentoo 2004 is coming out upgrade to that version? As I understand this is not possible with RH.

[mengle]

Because Gentoo doesn't really come in versions per se, I don't think it will be an issue. What I mean by that is that you can update your system on a daily basis if you want. It's likely that you'll just type "emerge -u world" and viola!

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong though.

[JediSthlm]

Thanx for the answer.
I thought so too that I could only do an emerge. The only thing is when there is a "new" version. I saw that the next version will have the 2.6 kernel and that must be a big change. Do anyone else know?

[Trogdor]

Installin' Gentoo right now. On my parents' brand new laptop. Dual boot with XP, if they can't compile kernel modules. :P

[schism39401]

Originally posted by JThundley
Does anyone have a really great way to share a portage tree? I'm sharing it over samba right now, and it barely works.

I share it over nfs. I have read that nfs is not very secure but its on my internal LAN so it works well for me...

HTH

[bandwidth_pig]

Oh what the hell. I'm going to try it! I just broke Sid so why not? I said I wouldn't do it...and that alone gives me reason to try it! I bet it's gonna be nice. A new adventure. How is it for stability anyway?

[bandwidth_pig]

Hmmmm....much compiling. Three hours so far on 3 ghz P4 and still crunching code. Interestingly I thought the kernel from the live CD would have fixed up the hyperthreading for me...but no such luck. Oh well. I still have to compile the kernel...still in the emerge system stage. Just finished! Kernel time :D
Just curious, but why does it take so long to compile from source on Gentoo? No other system I have worked on takes this long to compile sources. Who would have guessed X Windows was a dependency of emu10k1. Good grief.

[JThundley]

If you want Symmetric Multiprocessing support, you have to type in smp when you boot the LiveCD. It takes so long because you are compiling EVERYTHING from source. All of it. And in the case of bootstrapping, it compiles gcc, and compiles gcc again with the new version that was just compiled. If you want to speed up compilations, look into distcc (http://distcc.samba.org). I love it.

[bandwidth_pig]

HA! I'm in Gentoo running KDE now. And it is a nice little speedy beast. I do have a bit to learn. It's pretty nice. I did a stage two install and it wasn't nearly as bad as I had heard.

[bandwidth_pig]

Ok. I'm done. Everything is up and running with a nice shiny new 2.6 kernel. I'm thinking I am a Gentoo convert now. Not positive..but I'm liking this a lot. I do notice a nice speed increase on several applications. It's not a huge massive increase. But it is nice all the same. It's rather Slackwarian in nature.

[JThundley]

How's the 2.6 kernel working out for you? Mine hasn't been working very well, It locked up my X server twice, once resulting in data corruption, and my USB mouse isn't detected. I've since reverted back to my trusty test11 kernel.

[bandwidth_pig]

It's worked great. Don't know about the USB though. I don't use USB for much. Oddly, I have since crashed my gentoo system since my last post :(
Something with reiserfs went bezerk. Wouldn't mount / and would complain about a bad super block. When I would run the tools on it to fix it, no problems were found
:confused:

So, I am installing again. But on the bright side, I had a little experience under my belt (didn't waste time with the 2.4.22 kernel this time for example). So after compiling all night again, I should have KDE in the morning. I must say...had I not ditched Sid I never would have dropped my test11 kernel either. Thing ran great.

[bandwidth_pig]

What do you make of this? Most curious:

http://articles.linmagau.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=227

Of course, this is with a default Gentoo install...but still...I am quite suprised. I know having just left Sid it doesn't seem like it was faster to me. I actually came across this while googling for a reason as to why gcc is compiling with a pentium3 march on X. If I look at my /etc/make.conf I have Pentium 4 listed for the CFLAGS (just went with the default from the stage2 tarball).

CFLAGS="-03 -march=pentium4 -funroll-loops -fprefetch-loop-arrays -pipe"

[nextbillgates]

Originally posted by bandwidth_pig
What do you make of this? Most curious:

http://articles.linmagau.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=227

Of course, this is with a default Gentoo install...but still...I am quite suprised. I know having just left Sid it doesn't seem like it was faster to me. I actually came across this while googling for a reason as to why gcc is compiling with a pentium3 march on X. If I look at my /etc/make.conf I have Pentium 4 listed for the CFLAGS (just went with the default from the stage2 tarball).

CFLAGS="-03 -march=pentium4 -funroll-loops -fprefetch-loop-arrays -pipe"

If you want a bit of a speed increase, throw -fomit-frame-pointer -ffast-math -mfpmath=sse into your CFLAGs.

[soda_popstar]

bandwidth_pig, I was mortified when my Gentoo install crashed on ReiserFS, so I switched to ext3. It's been fine and dandy for me ever since then, so perhaps it's a ReiserFS stability issue? It is still an experimental file system as far as I know. Maybe it's safer to stick with ext3?

[bandwidth_pig]

It most likely is. I understand your mortification as I had been there myself. It takes too long to install to take lightly. But regardless, I decided I would not give up. I have been pleased with the performance of ReiserFS. I think both ReiserFS and ext3 came out pretty close to the same time, so in terms of stability, I suspect they are fairly similar. But if we were interested in being conservative, we would have gone with another distro.