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scottn72
n00b
Joined: 15 May 2007
Posts: 4
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 Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 10:04 am Post subject: Ok Setup, What Next? |
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New to Linux, played with a few LiveCD's and used PCLinuxOS for a bit.
I've managed a base Gentoo install, now I'd like some advice on the next steps.
Are there any basic recommended tools or programs I should install first. I want to learn about Linux and thought Gentoo would allow me to learn it better from the ground up.
Emerging software, does this always come from the net, or has the install CD still have uses?
Any advice or recommendations would be useful. Further down the line I'd like to look at a GUI desktop, I was thinking Fluxbox, as I've only 128mb to play with. What would be the best browser considering memory limits, Opera perhaps?
Thanks in advance. |
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Ehnvis
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Joined: 13 Jun 2006
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Location: /dev/random
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scottn72
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Joined: 15 May 2007
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 10:41 am Post subject: |
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| Thanks. What about any useful tools/utilities ? |
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Ehnvis
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Joined: 13 Jun 2006
Posts: 305
Location: /dev/random
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 11:03 am Post subject: |
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Depends on what you want to do with your new Gentoo box.
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Running Gentoo-2.6.21-r4 (again as 2.6.22 kernels hogs CPU), all but SD reader works fine. |
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scottn72
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Joined: 15 May 2007
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 11:18 am Post subject: |
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Mostly experimentation - learning, some C programming, web surfing.
I think what I was really enquiring about, was general tools everyone should have/install? If not, then cool, I'll install when/if I come across something I need. |
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slackline
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Joined: 01 Apr 2005
Posts: 1471
Location: /uk/sheffield
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 12:37 pm Post subject: |
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| scottn72 wrote: | Mostly experimentation - learning, some C programming, web surfing.
I think what I was really enquiring about, was general tools everyone should have/install? If not, then cool, I'll install when/if I come across something I need. |
 General tools is a bit, well "general".
You'll probably want a web-browser, so something along the lines of lynx (basic text browser) through to firefox. Email clients abound as well (my preference is sylpheed-claws). You'll likely want to be able to watch videos and flash stuff whilst browsing so mplayer/xine and netscape-flash would sort these out respectively.
It would be worth installing a decent text editor, nano is likely already there and is very functional, but you might want to look at emacs or vim, as these have great version control and syntax highlighting for most programming languages.
Useful management tools for working with portage include eix, and gentoolkit to name a couple.
You might want to try out some software that isn't in the main portage tree, in which case you should install layman and check out some of the overlays that exist.
Fluxbox is nice (as is Openbox, or for more plush, yet still lightweight there is Xfce), and shouldn't place too much of a burden on your system, but 128Mb is not a lot of RAM, so I'd consider getting more if possible.
| scottn72 wrote: |
Emerging software, does this always come from the net, or has the install CD still have uses?
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Unless you've set up a local mirror (unlikely) then everything will be downloaded from the net.
Make sure you keep your system uptodate by syncing portage regularly (but not too often as you'll get banned from the servers, about once a day is enough),
A quick and simple up-date would go along the lines of...
| Code: |
emerge --sync
emerge -uDN world
emerge --depclean
revdep-rebuild
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blippy
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 42
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 1:40 pm Post subject: |
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| slack---line wrote: |
You might want to try out some software that isn't in the main portage tree, in which case you should install layman and check out some of the overlays that exist.
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Is there a place to see what common/popular overlays are? |
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pilla
Bodhisattva
Joined: 07 Aug 2002
Posts: 7729
Location: Underworld
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 2:14 pm Post subject: |
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Moved from Installing Gentoo to Gentoo Chat.
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slackline
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Joined: 01 Apr 2005
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Location: /uk/sheffield
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 2:15 pm Post subject: |
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| blippy wrote: |
Is there a place to see what common/popular overlays are? |
Well you could have used google to search the internet the top hit of which would lead you to the right place (and would have been quicker than asking here  ).
As to whats "common/popular" again that comes down to what you want to do, no one can tell you what programs to use, especially if they don't know what it is you want to do. I could say install the sunrise and sci-biology overlays and emerge blossoc and generecon (as they are based on ebuild that I initially wrote), but I doubt that you would have much use for coalescent based genetic analysis software  . |
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i92guboj
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Joined: 30 Nov 2004
Posts: 10315
Location: Córdoba (Spain)
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 3:29 pm Post subject: |
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| slack---line wrote: |
You'll probably want a web-browser, so something along the lines of lynx (basic text browser) through to firefox. Email clients abound as well (my preference is sylpheed-claws). You'll likely want to be able to watch videos and flash stuff whilst browsing so mplayer/xine and netscape-flash would sort these out respectively.
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That memory limitation is going to kill your box if you use firefox and claws-mail. Flash is not going to help either.
I would read a bit and set up fetchmail to get your mail. Then use something like mutt to read it, or just use opera as web browser, and manage your mail with it. I hate opera, but if you are going to use a graphical browser with 128 mb of ram, you have not much options. All the gecko based browser use (surprise) gecko to render web pages. And gecko will permanently suck up half of your ram or even more with the time.
Another option is to go the framebuffer way (no X) and use links -g in one vt.
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You might want to try out some software that isn't in the main portage tree, in which case you should install layman and check out some of the overlays that exist.
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I would first learn to manage portage and the things in the portage tree. No need to go elsewhere to find something if you don't even know if you already have it in your tree.
| Quote: |
Fluxbox is nice (as is Openbox, or for more plush, yet still lightweight there is Xfce), and shouldn't place too much of a burden on your system, but 128Mb is not a lot of RAM, so I'd consider getting more if possible.
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XFCE uses gtk2, and in that regard, is not that different from gnome-light, for example. I would use a slick wm, like {flux,open,black}box is you want something easy. If you need total control and are not scared about some text config files, then go the FVWM way.
| Quote: | | Make sure you keep your system uptodate by syncing portage regularly (but not too often as you'll get banned from the servers, about once a day is enough), |
More than enough, I'd say. On such a limited system I don't think he will like the metadata part of the emerge too much to do it once a day. I'd better do it once a week, while you are sleeping. |
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madchaz
l33t
Joined: 01 Jul 2003
Posts: 993
Location: Quebec, Canada
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 6:08 pm Post subject: |
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What I did on my strained resource server (it as 512Mgs of ram, but I use a lot of it) is script the emerge --sync and do a pretend update, then pipe the result in a file. I cron this once a week, so it does the sync and pretend update once a week, at 2am. This way, I don't tie up the sync servers and I get manageble updates.
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pandaxiongmao
Guru
Joined: 29 Sep 2003
Posts: 478
Location: USA
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 6:55 pm Post subject: |
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Try
| Code: | | USE="truetype" emerge mrxvt vim ttf-bitstream-vera dejavu terminus-font |
then add these two lines
| Code: | FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/ttf-bitstream-vera/"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/dejavu/" |
into /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Finally, type
In order to use the freshly emerged fonts, add these lines into .Xdefaults
| Code: | mrxvt*xftFont: DejaVu Sans Mono
mrxvt*xftmFont: DejaVu Sans Mono |
You can replace DejaVu Sans Mono with Terminus or any other fonts.
Voila, you got pretty neat looking basic Gentoo playground. (Try to run mrxvt.)
Don't forget to check xorg guide and font rendering guide.
To learn how to use vim, go here. Vim can do many powerful stuff including writing C code and editing your operating system config files. Of course, if you're quite adventurous, try other text editors like emacs.
Also check cursor guide. |
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scottn72
n00b
Joined: 15 May 2007
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 12:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Thanks for the replies people, had to put it to the side for a bit, but should have time to get back into it this week. |
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