which iso?

[gzaector]

ok, im new to gentoo, which iso should i burn
i have an AMD XP 1600 with 256mb pc2100 ddr and an epox 8kha+ motherboard, i dont know if the factors matter or not. i have been running slackware and beehive and gentoo looks way better...

-gza

[rajendra82]

The iso I'd recommend you get is 1.4rc1. The reason anyone would be moving to gentoo is to get the latest and the greatest software, compiled to their system specs. Starting with 1.4rc1 will get you the latest version of the base system. And the gcc 3.x that you will be using will allow you to fine tune the comiled binaries to run best on your processor. I'd also suggest you start with stage 1 and build evrything. Your system is fast enough that a few hours of compilation will get you to stage 3.

[gzaector]

i was guessing i should go with 1.4rc1 and start from stage one, but in the 1.4rc2/x86 directory on the ftp server, there are two iso's

livecd-basic-1.4_rc1-r2.iso
and
livecd-ut2003-i586-1.4.1.iso

which one of these do i want to download and burn?

[rajendra82]

You need to get livecd-basic-1.4_rc1-r2.iso. The other iso is an unreal tournament liveCD. You can install from it too. But it is a longer download, and you don't need to do it unless you want to.

If banwidth is not an issue, and you are not a linux newbie, you should get Knoppix from http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html. When you boot into Knoppix, you can fdisk and install Gentoo, but you will have access to a working desktop with kde, mozilla, openoffice, etc., while you are at it. I did not do this myself, so I am not sure of the exact steps involved. I have read reports of folks who have done this. I imagine it simply involves skipping the hardware detection steps, creating partitions using the fdisk from Knoppix, mounting the partitions wherever you want, downloading and unpacking the stage1 tarball, chrooting to it in a console, and then following the Gentoo installation guide.

Good luck, and welcome.