Newbie needs advice

[Indy]

I'm a new user to the Gentoo scene however, I must admit, from what I seen and read of it, I’m impressed. As much as I’ve liked Linux (Mandrake mainly) my biggest gripe with the OS has always been regarding installation/un-installation of software. Although I’ve fully understood the reason for compiling packages on each machine, I could never understand why it was made so difficult. Apparently (as I’ve not actually tested it) Gentoo is the inverse of this. It does all the hard work for you i.e. dependencies, path setting. I’ve always claimed that once Linux begins to do this it will win far more support (Window$ R.I.P).

As I’m about to attempt a Gentoo installation for the first I had a few questions that hopefully someone could address for me.

1. Currently I have 3 O.Ss sharing my 40 Gig drive. One of those is Mandrake Linux. Is it possible for me to overwrite my current Mandrake with Gentoo? I.e can I choose the partition on which Gentoo should be installed to?

2. Reading through the installation procedure for Gentoo I realised that part of the installation requires access to the Internet. I have a cable modem, how do I set-up a cable modem in Gentoo? BTW, the modem is a USB version.

3. What distro is Gentoo based on? Most linux packages are compilied for different distros i.e Redhat, Mandrake, SuSE. Which do I install?

4. How up to date is Gentoo?

5. Which is the “best” free Office solution for Gentoo? And what is it’s compatability rate against MS Office 97/2000/XP?

6. If presented, what scenario would force me to go back to Windows?

7. If I wish to develop, what environments are available? Can I use Kdevelop?

8. Is there a list of supported hardware?

9. Any other advice a newbie can be given?


Thankyou all for reading, and a bigger Thankyou for all those that responded.
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Indy

[garo]

1)yes
2)i have no idea (i don't use usb)
3)none,install from source or emerge
4)probably the most up to date distro in the world (exept LFS)
5)no idea
6)go back to windows ? ARE YOU CRAZY !?!
7)yes
8)not that i know of
9)stop asking questions about problems that COULD happen and try it, then ask questions about problems that happened

[water]

And take a look at this
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Groeten uit Holland

[Xinos]

Most USB cable modems (mine included) comes with a usb connection and a RJ45 (large telephone) connection. I would use the RJ45 connection if it available. It is very easy to setup and covered in the install guide. If you have to use USB you might check this page out, http://www.rodsbooks.com/broadband/drivers.html, it might have some help on getting you the drivers. The problem will be getting them working in the limited version of linux the gentoo boot cd provides. Good luck and let us know how it goes.
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~ Always ask questions!

K. Allan Wilson

[arkane]

Personally I find the USB hookups on cable modems to be very proprietary and limiting. I agree, if you have a NIC (network card) on your system, run a peice of CAT-5 from your cable modem to your computer. It'll be able to pick up an address via dhcp without a problem, then.

[pjp]

Depending on your location, there are many inexpensive NICs that work well with linux. Some can be found for less than $20.
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Quis separabit? Quo animo?

[arkane]

As far as the best in the Office arena would be OpenOffice, at least when it comes to compatibility with MSOffice variants.

As far as the answers to your questions...
1) Everything is done by hand, there is no installer. So, you have full control over what it nuked and what is not. Pretty much, if it's available, you can install to it.

2) USB is very touchy, and cable modems are touchy when it comes to USB, also. Would be best to try to use CAT5 if possible. I seriously doubt that the USB portion will work on the boot cd.

3) Gentoo was originally based on redhat (VERY loosely) but has evolved into it's own. As in, no traces of redhat hardly on the disk.
When packages are compiled "for different distros", they basically mean that it was packaged specifically for that distributions filesystem layout. (well, most times...) Linux is Linux... Redhat binaries will run on Gentoo, as long as the libraries are present that it links to dynamically. (DLL?) Mandrake runs Redhat runs SuSE runs Slackware runs Debian. At least the fairly up to the date ones that aren't effected by the transition a few years back to glibc. Besides, Gentoo uses source code and compiles for your machine.. so your safe from the binary hell.

4) Pretty up to date. Basically it matters how important the newer version is to people. Alot of times, when a new version of something comes out, simply copying the ebuild to a new name reflecting the new version does the trick! heheh... But all in all it's fairly up to date... some say cutting-edge.

5) OpenOffice in my opinion. It's great for me. Its fairly compatible with MSOffice variants as I said above.

6) Probably if you didn't like Gentoo, or Linux. Or if you bought a printer or camera that was Windows-only. (Like my HP Deskjet 3420, or my CrystalDigital DualSmart-400 USB digital camera)

7) I think the proper answer to that question is: What environments are NOT YET available under Linux? You can spend money and go for Borland approaches, or use KDevelop for C++ and/or QT development. I've used KDevelop for straight C and C++ development before. There are a plethora of IDEs available, but most are specific to a certain language. (for obvious reasons)

http://www.linux.org/hardware/index.html
You can also add in there: NVidia, and any other hardware manufacturer that has the brass balls to make a Linux driver. (My Samsung ML-1430 laser printer actually *came* with a Linux setup program that installed everything into CUPS for me... it was so easy, and nice:)

9) Read, understand, don't act like you know everything when you get a small bit of information from someone, read, break your system and reinstall it, understand what broke before you reinstall it, experiment with things, don't log on as root unless you know what your going to be doing (ie. don't use root as a day to day account), and above all?

Don't do the same mistake some of us did and run "emerge unmerge portage" or GCC

EDIT: I didn't mean by any means that you are acting like you know everything. I was just saying that because alot of new users get a small bit of information or hear something from a friend, then they act like it's gospel.

[arkane]

[phong]

I got a linksys 10/100 card at Wal-mart for $14. Works just great (uses the tulip driver). I've seen the same card at lots of discount-type stores.
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"An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head."
-- Eric Hoffer