Question about Gentoo

Message

Silabus · Post by **Silabus** » Fri Feb 06, 2009 6:28 pm

I've recently made the decision to switch to Linux, and I"m trying to figure out what distribution to use. I've only ever used Linux at work the past month or so and I"m liking it a lot. I have used both Ubuntu and Fedora, they seem to handle fairly similar. I was curious about Gentoo because I've read about its customization. But I've also been reading you need to know a bit about Linux to use it. I don't know that much about Linux, but I've been in a Unix environment for the past 4 years at school. To let you know I am in school for a Computer Science/Software Development degree and that's one of the reasons for the switch. I don't want to overwhelm myself with something I"m not ready for. With my given background, would Gentoo be a good decision? Is installation as easy as Ubuntu and Fedora? Thank you in advance!

-S

EDIT: Forgot to mention I will be using this for gaming a little bit, nothing extreme. I play WoW and steam games, though from what I read I can just use Wine to help with that. I also seem to have put this in the Documentation forum when I wanted to put it in the Gentoo Chat forum.

szczerb · Post by **szczerb** » Fri Feb 06, 2009 6:32 pm

If you are willing to learn by reading docs, then go for it. Gentoo was my first linux distro and generally my first system not made by M$ ;]

d2_racing · Post by **d2_racing** » Fri Feb 06, 2009 6:54 pm

You will learn a lot with Gentoo, and you will learn a lot how Linux works.

kite14 · Post by **kite14** » Fri Feb 06, 2009 9:41 pm

My personal reasons for choosing Gentoo:

1. Extremely customizable, fast, stable;
2. Great documentation;
3. This forum
4. Good learning experience.

Some drawbacks:

1. Installing and configuring your box might be time consuming, especially in non-recent hardware;
2. You need to know very well your hardware.

Silabus wrote:With my given background, would Gentoo be a good decision?

Yes, go for it!

Silabus wrote:Is installation as easy as Ubuntu and Fedora?

Using the liveDVD the installation is as easy as any other distro (Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE), but many users consider the liveDVD installation buggy.
My advice is to use the "minimal" CD (or the System Rescue CD) and follow the Gentoo handbook

timeBandit · Post by **timeBandit** » Fri Feb 06, 2009 9:52 pm

Silabus wrote:I also seem to have put this in the Documentation forum when I wanted to put it in the Gentoo Chat forum.

Your intended location was correct and the mistake is easily fixed.
Moved from Documentation, Tips & Tricks to Gentoo Chat.

RedSquirrel · Post by **RedSquirrel** » Fri Feb 06, 2009 10:32 pm

Silabus,

Given your background, I would recommend giving Gentoo a try. As mentioned above, just be sure to read the docs carefully. The installation is not as easy as some other distributions, but you will learn something about Gentoo while you're installing it.

When you get to the step in the Gentoo Handbook that deals with installing a stage tarball, you might want to try one of the weekly stage tarballs which are located under the /experimental directory on the mirrors. They are more up to date. There are weekly Minimal CD images under that directory as well. See the following news item:

First sets of weekly stage3s and minimal CDs released

Silabus · Post by **Silabus** » Fri Feb 06, 2009 11:48 pm

Thanks for the input, everyone. I'm going to install Gentoo, then. Not immediately, though, I've got some reading up to do

kineticbeing · Post by **kineticbeing** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 12:04 am

I suggest to try to use the http://www.funtoo.org stage3 tarballs, the stable version on the right side of the page.

They contain the stable system, basically the same as the weekly ones that are just coming out, but they're less buggy (because they're less new) and they are ususally more recent than the weekly ones (they're build every couple days, as opposed to every week) and they're optimized for your specific processer (such as Pentuim 4, which is what I use) out of the box, rather than just for x86. That saves you the time of doing emerge -e to get the base system optimized to your processor.

d2_racing · Post by **d2_racing** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 1:28 am

Also, use the SystemRescueCD to install your Gentoo box.

Good luck !

Tadeas · Post by **Tadeas** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 7:40 am

However I'd suggest you to install Gentoo on a spare partition first and keep some other system working too, at least for some time.

BTW I installed Gentoo from my Debian system I have here using chroot and I found it much more comfortable than installing it right from a CD. I has one great advantage: you can keep the Gentoo handbook open in one window in X and do all the work via terminal. However it requires some little knowledge about the installation process...

RedSquirrel · Post by **RedSquirrel** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 4:58 pm

Tadeas wrote:BTW I installed Gentoo from my Debian system I have here using chroot and I found it much more comfortable than installing it right from a CD. I has one great advantage: you can keep the Gentoo handbook open in one window in X and do all the work via terminal.

You can do that with the sysresccd as well (it has X and Firefox). In fact, the sysresccd runs well enough that you can almost forget you are using a LiveCD.

With the Minimal CD, you can switch to another virtual console and view the latest version of the handbook from the web using links.

Silabus · Post by **Silabus** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 5:44 pm

Tadeas wrote:However I'd suggest you to install Gentoo on a spare partition first and keep some other system working too, at least for some time.

BTW I installed Gentoo from my Debian system I have here using chroot and I found it much more comfortable than installing it right from a CD. I has one great advantage: you can keep the Gentoo handbook open in one window in X and do all the work via terminal. However it requires some little knowledge about the installation process...

This was actually going to be installed on a fresh, brand new hard drive.

duckz · Post by **duckz** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 6:23 pm

try browsing Gentoo wiki first then if your do have the patience to read it, Go for it, otherwise stay with ubuntu/fedora.

Clad in Sky · Post by **Clad in Sky** » Sun Feb 08, 2009 9:07 am

Also, if you're having trouble building a working kernel, there's Pappy's Kernel Seeds that might help you.

Silabus · Post by **Silabus** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 4:28 pm

Well, I"ve been reading the wiki. I'm about halfway through it and it doesn't seem that bad at all. Could be fun. Just a few questions that I'm not exactly sure of at this point.

I have an Asus M2N-SLI nForce 560 Socket AM2 mobo and an NVIDIA GeForce 8600 and all my experience of installing hardware is with Windows. Do I have to install those drivers for Gentoo? Can I just use the installation CD that came with the hardware or are they Windows specific?

Also I have an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ AM2 CPU and I downloaded the amd64 minimal install ISO but I don't want a 64 bit OS. Do I have to set an option at setup or will it outright ask me? So far I've only gotten to http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/h ... t=1&chap=5 in reading the wiki so if I'm being premature in asking, I apologize, I'm just trying to make sure I don't screw anything up.

I was also reading about installing a specific game for wine, and I need the truetype fonts found in msttcorefonts. Is that possible to get with Gentoo?

szczerb · Post by **szczerb** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 4:46 pm

Most drivers are in the kernel and graphics drivers are in portage. The windows drivers are no use here.

Why don't you want a 64 bit OS? If you really have a reason not to go 64bit then I'm not sure if the amd64 minimal will be ok. You might prefer using the system rescue cd instead. It's Gentoo based so you can use it just like the minimal, but it has X with gparted and firefox.

EDIT: When you install wine, download winetricks and install the fonts from there - I think ;]

Silabus · Post by **Silabus** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 4:51 pm

Mostly for Wine and the few games that I'd wish to play on wine. Been reading that wine is incompatible with 64 bit Linux distributions.

szczerb · Post by **szczerb** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 4:55 pm

But, unless you choose the no-multilib profile, 32 bit applications work just fine on 64bit Gentoo ;] Even the damned 32bit proprietary flash player from adobe worked fine until they finally released the 64bit version. Sometimes I run stuff on wine and I don't have any bonus problems because of being 64 bit - just the standard ones

Silabus · Post by **Silabus** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 5:01 pm

I see, thank you for your help. This is turning out to be a better and better idea as I learn about Gentoo. Too bad I can't actually install it for another month when I get back from my trip. Just trying to learn as much as possible so I'm as prepared as possible for when the time comes.

Silabus · Post by **Silabus** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 10:52 pm

So on http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/h ... t=1&chap=6 under Choosing the Right Profile, do I want the pure 64 bit environment with no 32 bit applications or libraries?

d2_racing · Post by **d2_racing** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 10:55 pm

Use the AMD64 profile, because if you go no-multilib you can have a lot of fun actually.

Silabus · Post by **Silabus** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 11:03 pm

d2_racing wrote:Use the AMD64 profile, because if you go no-multilib you can have a lot of fun actually.

So you're saying do or do not go with the no-multilib? Sorry, the sentence seemed like it contradicted itself.

d2_racing · Post by **d2_racing** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 11:05 pm

Use the AMD64 default profile....

Silabus · Post by **Silabus** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 11:09 pm

Okay, thanks. Sorry for asking so specifcally

I REALLY don't want to mess up the install.

d2_racing · Post by **d2_racing** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 11:10 pm

No problem, it's the best way to don't mess up your first installation