Gentoo (was Re: [PLUG] Another pre-linux newbie question...)

Kyle Hayes kyle_hayes at speakeasy.net
Sat Nov 23 05:45:19 UTC 2002


I've managed to get Gentoo mostly installed, but it took a while. I have 
yet to configure things like sound and X. I've got an aging P-II 400 and 
it was really wheezing compiling such things as OpenOffice.  I really 
think you shouldn't bother with a source-based distro unless you've got a 
PC that's 2GHz or better.  I used the "stage 3"  tarballs and still had a 
couple of compilation steps that were on the order of 12 hours each.  This 
led to some "domestic friction" with my spouse :-)

I installed 1.4rc1.  I don't think I'd recommend 1.4 until they're actually 
done with it. I ran into many annoying problems that prevented me from 
moving forward such a Gimp being pulled in en masse for gimp-print and 
then finding out that the Gimp ebuild was broken.  Then, the KDE 3.04 
ebuild was broken against X 4.2.0...  The ebuild gurus seem to have worked 
most of this out, but it was not a pleasant introduction to Gentoo.

If you are really new to Unix, I really wouldn't recommend any of the "some 
assembly required" distros.  Learn the basics with one that makes getting 
something running easy.  After three years of beating my head on Red Hat, 
I'm not going to recommend it to anyone.  Mandrake has been pleasing to 
some collegues (and I have a soft spot for French things).  I personally 
like SuSE, but I don't think it's as easy for the newbie as Mandrake.

All that said, I'd love to see a little discussion group on Gentoo.  I am 
very interested in source-based distros and tried Sorcerer before its 
creator went loony and the whole thing split into three projects.  
Sorcerer had the fine point of needing over 40 hours of compile time on my 
machine.  Ouch.  However, within about three days, I was able to write 
"spells" for it and feel like I knew what was going on.  Gentoo isn't 
giving me that feeling of total understanding.

Best,
Kyle

O.T.: Est-ce qu'il y a des francophones ici?  Je cherche des amis pour 
parler en francais.  Comme vous pouvez le constater, mon francais n'est 
pas grande chose...






More information about the PLUG mailing list