Gentoo equivalent of Yast2 or other hardware config programs

wilburpan · l33t Joined: 21 Jan 2003 Posts: 977

Having been able to setup Gentoo at home I am seriously deciding to install it on my work laptop, where I currently use SuSE.

Given how long it took Gentoo to install on my home machine, I can expect that it will take about 48 hours of install time to pull this off. I can do this over a weekend, but my 48 hour install time estimate is assuming that all of the hardware configuration goes off without a hitch. I don't think that anyone believes that this is a possibility.

Since this is the sole computer that I use at work, I can't justify taking extra time to install Gentoo. So, I think that I will need some sort of hardware configuration package.

One of the main reasons that I am using SuSE on my work laptop is because of the ease of configuring hardware through YaST2. Does Gentoo have an equivalent to YaST2 or the various *drake programs for hardware configuration?

plate · Posted: Tue Feb 25, 2003 12:23 am Post subject:

The LiveCD does have something like that (not very sophisticated, though), but I've never bothered with any of this because I could usually figure out the components easily enough.

Just a thought: Since you will compile a kernel anyway, why don't you just keep a record of your SuSE installation's lspci -vv, lsmod and the hardware aspects from XF86Config-4, and configure the Gentoo kernel accordingly? Chances are that things will just fall into place...

modal · Apprentice Joined: 02 Oct 2002 Posts: 277

you could alsa make a new partition, or evms it...
then install gentoo, with all your configurations...if anything goes wrong, you still have your suse install
In fact, you can just use your suse until you have everything you want in your gentoo install. I did that with my Debian install, until everything was cool (I haven't removed that partition yet, though...i'm lazy)

Goodluck

puddpunk · l33t Joined: 20 Jul 2002 Posts: 681 Location: New Zealand

Have a look at Distcc, I'm unsure weather it can be used to bootstrap ( i remember a hack for it somewhere on the forums) but it can be used to emerge system. Anyway, it will greatly cut down install time by using your desktops resources to help it compile. Leaving you more time to wrangle with your hardware

wilburpan · l33t Joined: 21 Jan 2003 Posts: 977

Thanks for the suggestions -- I'll give them a try.

Now I just have to find a relatively free weekend to do this

masseya · Posted: Tue Feb 25, 2003 5:15 pm Post subject:

Another good way to cut down on the install time would be to compile binary packages with portage and then copy them over to a partition on your laptop that you are going to keep. I'm assuming of course that you are going to keep at least part of the information on your SuSE install like your personal files. If you have enough space then you could make all the packages that you expect to use with