New to Gentoo - Sounds Complicated

mhr · n00b Joined: 01 Jan 2003 Posts: 7

Hi all,

I am a long time Linux user and have been through many dsitros. Currently using Mandrake 9.0.

I am both curious about Gentoo and hesitant to try for fear of failure.

I have spent many long hours debugging the installation of distros long ago and fear that is what may occur with Gentoo seeing all the problem posts on the forum.

So, how hard is the installation really? What will I give up by going to Gentoo that I currently use under Mandrake 9.0? If I get into trouble, what is the best way to backout or stated differently, if I commit is there no graceful return?

Pardon, my newbie style questions. Linux is quite complicated to the non-guru. Any thoughts are greatly appreacited.

MHR

|the sys admin| · n00b Joined: 19 Nov 2002 Posts: 42 Location: Michigan

I have been playing with linux for a few months now. I started with Mandrake 8.2 then 9.0. Windows XP is the primary OS and linux is the secondary. That is, when linux is installed (doesn't like to stay on my machine

).

I heard about gentoo and people said that it was the best way to learn all about linux, so I gave it a try. For the past 5 weeks, I have been reinstalling almost every weekend trying to get it right.

It's a lengthy process, but it's a lot of fun (for me) and I have learned a lot. I only use XP mostly and 5 weeks ago if someone told me to chroot somewhere, I would have laughed silly because I didn't know what it was.

And now I do

---Gentoo isn't hard, it just makes you read and pay attention

_________________
Resistance Is Futile, Computers Rule!

uncle_meat · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Nov 2002 Posts: 93

I'm pretty experienced with Linux. For me, the Gentoo installation went off without a hitch - the compilation is lengthy, but painless. Then there were some issues with scanner configuration, but the forum was a big help.

I'd wait until the 1.4_rc2 ISO image was out if I were you. It should be released within a matter of hours.

As for preparing an "escape hatch" in case you don't like Gentoo... put /home on its own partition. The Gentoo installation won't make you format the /home partition, and if you decide Gentoo isn't for you, just reinstall the old distro (again preserving the partition).

hook · Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2003 8:27 am Post subject:

i have some linux experience myself (4 yrs) ...mostly using slackware, so i kinda got the idea of gentoo early ...gentoo is actually a lot easier to maintain than slackware and i migrated to gentoo, because of its simplicity and portage

...i really like portage, it's got everything i ever dreamed of: it's from source, so it's highly optimisable, and you only have to type "emerge -u what_i_want" to get updated what you want

long story short (or even longer

):
- portage is similar to mandrake's rpms in the way that both check/install dependencies
- portage is similar to debian's apt-get in its usage string (emerge <package>)
- portage builds from source

- gentoo has very powerful help group (this forum)

...so i really would go for gentoo if i were you

...and i would suggest that you install it from stage 1 ...it'll take a few days (really!) but your system will be very optimised and you'll learn a lot

and don't get scared, during the install proces, you can ran whatever was already installed (e.g. i used IRC during my install to chat and obtain help about the installation on #gentoo - thanx su!!!)

...this post kinda reminds me of my first post on this forum

...man, it took quite a time (a month or so) to get me convinced to migrate

...but i haven't regreted it one moment here
_________________
tea+free software+law=hook

(deep inside i'm still a tux's little helper)

NiklasH · Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2003 7:33 pm Post subject:

I used Mandrake before i moved to Gentoo a few months ago, and I've learnt more about Linux in these months than I did in the three years I used Mandrake! Mandrake is great if you don't want to get down and look at the actual config files, but rely on the tools, but you don't learn to use the real power of Linux (its great configurability, among others).

Also, with Gentoo, you only install the packages you really want, not whole categories of programs that do practically the same thing.
Not to mention you won't have to dwell in RPM hell anymore... :wink:

And this board is about the best teacher you can get. As long as you have done a search to see that your question hasn't already been answered, people will almost always help you solve any problem you might have.

As long as you have your /home on a separate partition, I don't think you have anything to loose by trying it. I hope you will find it as fun as I, and a lot of people with me, do.

The only thing that bugs me is that java won't work in Mozilla yet, but that's hardly Gentoo's fault... Apparently there's some incompatibility with Mozilla and sun-java with GCC3.2 that seems to lie mostly in Mozilla. (See the threads on this forum)

But if you want java, you could always use Konqueror until that's fixed.

EDIT: Or use Phoenix! Great browser.

jufoa · Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2003 9:05 pm Post subject:

my installation was also painless, but long. i started with mandrake then debian and now gentoo. gentoo is defenetely the best distribution i have ever used. debian was also very good but gentoo is more up to date.

steveb · Advocate Joined: 18 Sep 2002 Posts: 4564

complicated? gentoo? no way!

if you can read and dont have problems following a instruction from the gentoo homepage, then installing gentoo is easyer then 1-2-3.

it takes time, but it is not complicated at all.

cheers

SteveB

antik · Apprentice Joined: 01 Oct 2002 Posts: 212

ebrostig · Posted: Fri Jan 03, 2003 12:38 am Post subject:

georgie · n00b Joined: 03 Jan 2003 Posts: 42 Location: London, UK

Like a good recipe. Yes, it can be hard, yes it can be frustrating, but the results are worth it.

Other distros (that I have tried) *do* make it easy, and *do* allow you to chuck an ISO in, potter about, click about, have a cup of tea, and then get going. This is a GOOD thing

Ask yourself what you want from a new distro. I personally found RPM based distros very easy to fsck up as soon as you stepped outside the RPM-ed world. Some people don't want to step outside that world - anyone who asks me about GNU/ Linux I give an ISO of MDK, RH, etc.

But if you want to get deep and dirty, and squeeze more from your box, (and really, do you have anything that mission critical that isn't in your /home or /var/spool/mail dirs - and will thus survive all except an Fdisk screw up?) then go for it.

I'd suggest using the rather nice partition manager that comes with MDK ( a reason why I keep a disk of 8.2 around), try and keep the kernel compile *away* from modules for the first instance (so compile networking and file system stuff in statically) and hey, put some coffee on

If you F2-Alt and lynx http://www.gentoo.org and toggle between that and the 'installer' (ahem) then really, it's hard to go wrong.

Good luck

george

antik · Apprentice Joined: 01 Oct 2002 Posts: 212

hook · Posted: Fri Jan 03, 2003 12:22 pm Post subject:

hook · Last edited by hook on Fri Jan 03, 2003 12:31 pm; edited 1 time in total

please remove this post ...it used to be a dup

...
_________________
tea+free software+law=hook

(deep inside i'm still a tux's little helper)

hook

Erik Andersson · n00b Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 27 Location: Sweden

metalhedd · Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2003 6:25 am Post subject: