Good afternoon

crisdean · n00b Joined: 24 Jul 2009 Posts: 52

Hello and good afternoon,

I would like to introduce myself to this community. I'm a vivid Windows user and like my XP installation and the operating system. However, I always wanted to use Linux as I thought that it would be good to know how to use it for work and a coolnes factor (being able to decide what's being installed and have a tailored system). Unfortunately Suse 6.1 was too comlicated for me and the soundcard never really worked. Even after spening 9hrs on the problem.

So years back I used Ubuntu 7.04 and it performed pretty well. However for some reason I don't like Ubuntu and so I tried Debian. Much better (don't know why tho) and installed that on my machines. Unfortunately my wireless wasn't working and the power management wasn't as good as under Windows so it flew off the drive. I definitely wanted to use my laptop and desktop machine for my daily work so I couldn't spend much time configuring the system.

Now things have changed a bit. I simply installed Gentoo in a virtual machine and pretty amazingly it works despite me being a noob when it comes to command line action. However since I started with the installation 2 days ago I simply have the feeling that everything just comes together.

It's very well explained and in contrary to other distributions there is not this feeling off 3,000 different opinions how to do this or that. This confused me when I started. Just compile a kernel and build a module. I didn't understand a word.

So I thought why not be up for a challenge? So this is my Gentoo way from now on and I hope it will be brilliant. To see the progress of the installation is so much more thrilling than staring at a progress bar

Let's hope that te real installation on my T60 will be good

I'm up for it!

ilovebeer · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 16 Aug 2008 Posts: 87

welcome bloke, i hope you'll grow to love linux & gentoo. one thing you can be assured of is... if you need help... here is where you'll get it. good people here.
a vivid windows user? are you bright pink? anyway, welcome.
ilb

jongeek · Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 12:58 pm Post subject:

Gentoo is a great choice for running Linux, and I'm happy you're intrepid enough to brave these waters.

ilb is right, these forums are a treasure trove of info on running and tweaking Gentoo. Just ask, the friendly folks here will be glad to help out.

cach0rr0 · Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 2:10 pm Post subject:

welcome to the jungle

A few things that may help you in your gentoo journey - mainly, understanding what it is, what you'll need to expect, etc:

-the absolute most flexible 'distro' out there. I put that in quotes because, as one other person put it, with gentoo you're realistically building your own distro, from scratch, installing only the packages you need/want. On that same token, you'll find all sorts of goodies in portage that you might not find with other distros.

-the documentation is second to none. I've used and do use other distros for certain things, and as I browse the other forums quite often I'll find people who complain about their distro not documenting something, so they follow the gentoo doc; and of course i help them as i would help someone who was using gentoo, usually with very similar instructions on what they've missed

-gentoo is not a turnkey distro. expect to put in some work, expect to do a bit of reading, and expect to do a bit of fine-tuning.

The end result is a very light, very lean, very fine-tuned linux installation, that requires very little updating or ongoing maintenance, and never requires a complete reinstall barring hardware failure or hardware reallocation.

I have been hooked since '04. Since then I have gotten a good dozen people hooked, from the linux newbie who only ever tinkered with Red Hat 7.3 way back in the day, to the hardcore OpenBSD user.

I can only say that...you will no doubt become frustrated at some point with gentoo requiring you put in more work and reading than other distros, BUT, trust me/us that the end result will be well worth it. Stick with us for a bit, be patient, and you will become an addict too

crisdean · n00b Joined: 24 Jul 2009 Posts: 52

Hi and thanks guys.

It's unbelievable how good the documentation is. I was looking for a power management profile. Not even Ubuntu's documentation is nearly as good as the one from Gentoo! And it's easy to understand and most importantly it simply works what's written down by those guys!

Although I don't understand much yet what I'm typing I'm sure I'll learn quickly and for a long time a Linux distribution keeps me happy. Can't believe it myself to be honest!

One question I've to ask I'm afraid.

Does anyone have a useful link for the integration of a WLAN card? My T60s card isn't recognised and only bluetooth seems to work. It's an INtel AGN card. Will run lspüci later on to see if I can get more information.

I'm only asking for a documentation not a specific solution. At least I want to learn myself

Your help is appreciated.

VinzC · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 11:44 am Post subject:

crisdean · n00b Joined: 24 Jul 2009 Posts: 52

Hi there. Thanks for your encouraging post.

Well I don't know what my mistake is but lspci isn't installed on my system and

kernelOfTruth · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 1:25 pm Post subject:

A warm welcome crisdean,

simply because lspci isn't provided by lspci

currently there's no functionality like in ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install lspci

"you're looking for the app lspci ? try installing it via emerge pciutils"

I dunno why pciutils and usbutils aren't installed on your box but install those and you're able to execute

lspci and lsusb

_________________
https://github.com/kernelOfTruth/ZFS-for-SystemRescueCD/tree/ZFS-for-SysRescCD-4.9.0
https://github.com/kernelOfTruth/pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa

Hardcore Gentoo Linux user since 2004

VinzC · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 1:30 pm Post subject:

kernelOfTruth · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 1:37 pm Post subject:

VinzC · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 2:29 pm Post subject:

d2_racing · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 2:39 pm Post subject:

Hi, welcome to Gentoo, if you want a good advice, read all the great documentation here and post a lot of questions :

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/list.xml?desc=1

You will see that Gentoo has a really good documentations

crisdean · n00b Joined: 24 Jul 2009 Posts: 52

Hi guys,

thanks for the int that lspci is part of pciutils

And startkde is a good tip. Printed the KDE guide and went for xorg-X11 (despite the guide saying that the server should be enough).

So what I did was (after the basic gentoo was working)

1.

VinzC · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 2:57 pm Post subject:

crisdean · n00b Joined: 24 Jul 2009 Posts: 52

VinzC · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 3:46 pm Post subject:

If you have gentoolkit installed, run equery l kde and you'll get the (huge) list of installed KDE packages. See if kdebase-startkde belongs to the list. (You've installed KDE 3.5.10, did you?) FYI, by emerging kde-meta, you're de facto using KDE split ebuilds.
_________________
Gentoo addict: tomorrow I quit, I promise!... Just one more emerge...
1739!

crisdean · n00b Joined: 24 Jul 2009 Posts: 52

kernelOfTruth · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 7:02 pm Post subject:

d2_racing · Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2009 12:04 am Post subject:

Nowadays I use kde-base/kdebase-meta even with Kde 4.x, because I'm sure that everything is included to have a minimal Kde that is working.

Kdebase-meta include kde-base/kdebase-startkde

crisdean · n00b Joined: 24 Jul 2009 Posts: 52

Ok thanks guys. I will install gentoolkit and send a list to this board here.

Will keep you posted then. Just need to swapthe drive and off I go. Btw. I just saw that I can add some more flags to my make.conf. Only used 3 parameters

d2_racing · Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 11:37 am Post subject:

In fact, if you use the desktop profile, you don't need to modify a lot your Use flags.

crisdean · n00b Joined: 24 Jul 2009 Posts: 52

Panko · n00b Joined: 04 Aug 2009 Posts: 9

Vivid? Or avid? My first distro of Linux was Ubuntu 8.10 with Gnome, and I didn't enjoy it. I felt as if it were a well-structured OS that had collided with the outcome of a love affair between Macintosh's and Microsoft's GUIs.Is it just me, or have a lot of other people started with Ubuntu as their first try with Linux?

Good luck installing it on your T60. I hope it goes well for you.

d2_racing · Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2009 11:57 am Post subject:

crisdean · n00b Joined: 24 Jul 2009 Posts: 52