Ok, I'm going to install Gentoo, but ive got some questions

[sisob]

Ok, before i begin let me tell you that despite what it says below my avitar I am not a newbie. really im not - even got my own OS project ( http://evolvedoo.sf.net ) - so i'm just looking for some simple clear answers and not a step by step guide

Ok, I'm going to install gentoo onto my 1GHz Athlon thunderbird with 512mb ram and 2x 5400 ata100 40gb hard drives.

I've only got dial-up internet but it's unlimited offpeak(6pm-8am). So what i plan to do is to set up a dhcp internet gateway on my laptop and use that to connect my desktop to the net and leave it on overnight. Will that much of my plan work?

Ok assuming it does I want to install from stage one.

Progressing from stage1 to stage 2
It says that this will take an hour to compile on a 900 so it should be
similar on my machine. But how many mb's need to be downloaded to preform the bootstrap proccess? I want to know if i need to leave it overnight or just go get some dinner.

Progressing from stage2 to stage3
Again for "emerge system" how many MB's will need to be downloaded and does anyone have an idea of how long it will take to compile on my system?

Is it possible to download at the same time as compiling?

Then I've got to compile my kernel - i've done that b4 - shouldnt be a problem. But do the gentoo kernel sources have the low latency and premption patches applied or will i have to patch them myself.

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Ok, so say it's a day later and I've sucessfully got a base gentoo system running(unlikely, but i can be optimistic).

Then I want to emerge gnome which should give me X, GDM, GNOME etc...

I'm guessing that this will be another overnight job. Again anyone have a guestimate as to how long this will take to compile and how many mbs will be required.

What order does emerge do things in, does it download everything ,then compile them all , or does it download, compile, download, compile, download, compile .... or does it do it in parallel. is there a way to choose?

If so i could download at night then compile when I got to work.

Thanks in advance
_________________
Mark Finlay - Gnome Hacker of Sorts
Come join me on the Gnome User's Forum

[katakombi]

how many mb download?
alot,believe me. Using a slow internet connection it'll take long time.
However, you could download and compile at once:
emerge <packetname> -f downloads only, you could do that during compilation on some other console...

[fghellar]

You can go like this:

[Don Alfredo]

get the X686 ISO, burn-it, and boot with it.
You can , after the stage1, and compiling your kernel, safely untar the stage3 , skipping the rsync with your "rather current" machine, this will save you LOTS of time... getting a basic system this way is a matter of "a couple of hours" on your machine.
Meanwhile you better RTFM the install instructions, portage user guide, Desktop configuration guide, and RTFM AGAIN , especially the little notice on the necessity for "support for experimental something..." in the kernel make menuconfig ! without this one you're looking at a lot of broken-up emerges....been there, restarted from scratch afterwards.

I saw a thread somewhere here about install/emerge timings on different
platforms, do a search for "timing,..." in the forums.
also nice to note : the Portage options !!! I emerged mc - "just emerge mc" and got the X, and Gnome along ! I only wanted the "non-X" mc.... and stick to KDE, so remember to
ALWAYS do a "emerge --pretend" first, this will keep surprises out, and set -gnome or -KDE somewhere in portage config-files (can't remember where)
trouble downloading ? look at RSYNC_PROXY in /etc/make.conf AND in wget.conf...
you can emerge different stuff - look at overlapping dependencies first- in several virtual consoles at the same time ( i emerged lynx during emerging KDE, to be able to read some stuff on the gentoo site whilst compiling,
if you emerge kde, you will get the whole pazooza, including games...
do emerge X , emerge kde/base, emerge kde/doc ,... in different steps if you don't want it "all".
on my Armada E500 with 256RAM emerge KDE took whole night, sitting behind a continuously open cable DSL -downloading being faster than compiling.
Great news: after a broken download or emerge, just do it again, it picks up where you left, or fixes messed up dependencies .
Good luck, also with the e-builds of EvolvedOpenOffice

grtz,
Don Alfredo, specialist in wives, daughters and other viruses,...