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Gentoo from CDs


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If your talking dual booting sure, if your talking share homespace, don't know, but I would think you would run into problems with gnome/kde.

 

Not all of the GRP (binary) packages work correctly from CD so there will be some downloading.

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I did the GRP 2cd install this weekend. Took 2 tries but it turn out great. ACPI worked great. They main problem I had was my natsemi network driver. It would work until my first install reboot (to emerge KDE). lsmod would show it loaded no errors a boot. Could not find the problem quickly so I decided to recompile the kernel (genkernel --config) and had the natsemi loaded in the kernel. From there no problems. I must say I was pleased at ACPI working. Besides MDK it has been the only distro Ive used that came stock with ACPI working (Slack , Yoper, Red Hat, JAMD).

 

I did "cheat" on alot of stuff. .. I copied my XF86Config file from my MDK9.1 parition -worked great. Did the same with alot of /etc files. Alot of things that MDK did for me I was able to apply to Gentoo and save some time. Im now running "emerge -u system" to get it current. My MDK is a little bloated but the Gentoo distro just rocks with shear speed.

 

One Problem I have ran into with Gentoo:

When emerge large files my system will go into a "kernel panic". No cntrl-alt-back - nothing. The keyboard lights just blink like a bad booting kernel panic. To avoid this with large emerges, I have to - rc-update del xfs default - then reboot and emerge with no graphic interface. Ill try to recompile a kernel later and try again. Ive got my MDK distro they way I want and everything works. This gentoo install will give me a chance to really try some stuff out.

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I tried the gentoo cd install, and I made the mistake of formating the partitions during the install instead of preparing them ahead of time. I got a partition read error, and a hosed system, including my /home! All that was left of 9.1 was / ; both /home and /usr were destroyed, although I did have two clean partitions for gentoo!! It was almost an xp experience!! (Actually, it was an xp experience.) At any rate, I put 9.2rc1 in the "experimental" part of my drive, and restored 9.1.

 

I might do gentoo again after 9.2 is released.

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ooh... Note to SoulSe: Makes backups of /home and /media !

 

On the whole X thingy, baring in mind that I am a relative n00b to Linux, will it be difficult to setup X myself? I know I can copy the conf. file from somewhere else (like Mandy) but the whole point in me installing Gentoo is to learn more, so I would like to do it myself, what am I in for?

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xf86config

 

Isn't that hard, you just plug in the info it ask for. Just know your hardware and you should be fine. That being said, I'm not much of a noob so all the years of configureing X has made it eaiser for me to say it's not hard. But, I don't really think you will have a problem, just know your hardware,

 

Video card <driver>

Monitor <vert. & hor freq , screen resolution & color depth>

mouse </dev/psaux /dev/input/mice or what ever it might be>

Just keep a copy of your mandy one and look it over if you can.

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ooh... Note to SoulSe: Makes backups of /home and /media !

 

On the whole X thingy, baring in mind that I am a relative n00b to Linux, will it be difficult to setup X myself? I know I can copy the conf. file from somewhere else (like Mandy) but the whole point in me installing Gentoo is to learn more, so I would like to do it myself, what am I in for?

 

when i installed gentoo from a stage1 tarball last year i had already done the mandrake, libranet, pure debian thing and learned very little on top of what those three distros had taught me. how much you learn with gentoo depends on whether or not you have used commandline much or not or any console applications for that matter. in actuallity the setup and configuration of gentoo is really not that hard because there is mountains of documentation to get you through most of your tough spots.

 

in the end gentoo was a major disappointment for me in many ways, learning was one of those. pure debian taught me more than gentoo.

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Really, it all comes down to what you make your self do. You could even learn linux on "Lindows" if you really wanted to.

 

/ducks all the punches from violent board members

 

No, never used Lindows, but I'm comparing easy to use Linux to the fact that you can make it work for you and you can learn on any linux distro.

 

I personely like Gentoo for the control I have over it, package selection, runs on different platforms (I use it on x86 & Sparc Hardware)and easy to keep it updated. IT's not the only one out there, but it's the one I'm currently using the most.

 

:D

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Really, it all comes down to what you make your self do.  You could even learn linux on "Lindows" if you really wanted to.

 

pretty well sums it up. the reason many may not learn as much in RH or MDK (and other "user friendly" distros) is that they are not force to. the commandline or other core processes are "hidden".

 

persoanlly i am not really fond of this approach. while i do like less meanial work such as telling the system what devices i have there are great advantages to knowing more of the core of any OS. Namely your dependency on other and paying for those services is diminished. while software/os creators may not like this hit to the wallet it should free up resources for making a better product. in theory.

 

in general that is the benefit of open source. we all learn to be useful and not a burden on the computer industry.

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Really, it all comes down to what you make your self do.  You could even learn linux on "Lindows" if you really wanted to.

 

pretty well sums it up. the reason many may not learn as much in RH or MDK (and other "user friendly" distros) is that they are not force to. the commandline or other core processes are "hidden".

 

persoanlly i am not really fond of this approach. while i do like less meanial work such as telling the system what devices i have there are great advantages to knowing more of the core of any OS. Namely your dependency on other and paying for those services is diminished. while software/os creators may not like this hit to the wallet it should free up resources for making a better product. in theory.

 

in general that is the benefit of open source. we all learn to be useful and not a burden on the computer industry.

 

I agree 8)

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I am noob and without cyberjackles help i would have never gotten through my gentoo install it took me quite a while

 

that being said I LOVE Gentoo and the X configuration was not too difficult for me....on the other hand my zip drive still doesn't work but no biggie i'll figure that out later

 

I say install X from scratch it's more fun

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Well, after considering Arch as an alternative to Gentoo, I've decided that Gentoo will teach me more and ordered my cds... they should be here in a couple of days and then off I go.

 

Mandy will always be around though, just gonna muck around with Gentoo until 9.2 Final. Enjoying a llittle bit of distro-hopping, I guess it's part of the whole Linux-thingy... you have variety and choice, so use it/them!

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