Gentoo - advantages of use ???

[Matteo Azzali]

Good that you noticed it.
I wonder why it hasn't been closed yet, seems that no mod is paying attention.

I think that's not bad pointing to newbie the best distro for him. we all know that gentoo isn't
for everyone, and a bit of mind is required (using portage, doin bugreports, etc.etc.).

So the choiche is easy: smart peoples with decent computers (at least an old athlon or pentium
single core 1,5 ghz) can take advantage of gentoo and get all the "power" of choiches it gives.

All the rest are better to go on binary distributed- easy as MS distros, as gentoo really
isn't "Linux for dummies".(for example I would never suggest Slackware to anyone as I
don't think it has any advantage, but tastes are personal matter.... IMHO whatever you choose,
be sure that it has a strong package-distribution method).

[Dralnu]

If your new, try Ubuntu. It seems fairly user friendly. If you want to see what goes on in your system, and you don't mind taking a chance on messing something up royally (if you do things right you won't, but thetre are always tyops), then try Gentoo. I've got XP on my system. Its a pain to use after about 6/9 months of Gentoo (plus its slow as molasses in January).

If you want something that Just Works, Windows would probably be a better bet, or a good package distro (Ubuntu, Red Hat may be a decent choice).

[Achille]

Since your aim is to create a customized liveCD, this page should be very useful for you:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveC ... ion/6%2e06

[SirYes]

You're installing gentoo on a sparc, right?
You'll probably find an x86 install to be a little less painfull to set up

Yep. On a sparc. Complete nightmare....

Gentoo on sparc used to be very problematic around two years ago. It should be better now (newer kernel, better X, etc.) but I haven't checked that recently.

However, I was able to set up a nice dual boot with Solaris 10 and Debian in a lab with 10 sparc machines. Have you considered Debian? (the older one, 3.1 Sarge, or the upcoming one, 4.0 Etch, currently RC1)?