Installing Gentooo, help !

[mips]

I'm considering installing Gentoo on my laptop via a minimal install cd + net.

Anyone here care to act as a mentor when I get stuck ?

[coffeecat]

Originally Posted by mips when I get stuck ?

When??!! Have faith in yourself.

I'm not offering to act as a mentor but, believe me, it's not as difficult as it might appear, particularly as you already have considerable Linux experience. Make sure you have the Gentoo handbook handy - preferably displaying on another machine or printed out - and you should be fine.

Don't forget Gentoo forums.

You'll almost certainly need to compile your own kernel to get it to run properly on a laptop, but genkernel should keep you going until then.

A few random tips: Once you have a working system - even one without a GUI - emerge gentoolkit and read up about revdep-rebuild. You'll be needing it before long.

You'll need to be updating config files in /etc on a fairly regular basis after most updates. I prefer dispatch-conf to the standard etc-update, but you might wish to research this.

You might want to bookmark the Gentoo Wiki. It's unofficial which is why it's not linked on the main Gentoo site. Also, be warned that it's somewhat curate's egg-ish. Much of it is good, but some is outdated or even misleading.

Best of luck.

[zaratustra]

Don't ask for help before you even need it No problem, we will help ya. Maybe not in few minutes, but in few hours we will.

[mips]

Busy getting the stage3 tarball, so far so good.

I know what ssh is & does but have never used it until now and I must say its the dogs ********. I simply just copy and paste from my desktop to a terminal which I have a sshd session running in, great stuff.

[termite]

I went over to Gentoo a few months ago, intending to dual-boot with Ubuntu. Since day 3 (when I finally got KDE to not look stupid), I haven't booted back into Ubuntu at all.

Nothing against Ubuntu, it's awesome, but Gentoo really is more fun, and I've learned loads. To think that a few months ago I didn't know what chroot'ing even was!

Have fun! You will get stuck, and then you'll recompile some stuff, and they you'll edit some config files, and then you'll have a fast as hell system with exactly what you want.

One tip: don't use the Desktop profile. It has way way too many USE flags set and will install too much. Figure out what USE flags you need and install that way. You'll save yourself a lot of recompilation.

I don't hang out on here much, but feel free to PM me on the Gentoo forums. I'm termite there as well.

[Bachstelze]

Originally Posted by termite One tip: don't use the Desktop profile. It has way way too many USE flags set and will install too much. Figure out what USE flags you need and install that way. You'll save yourself a lot of recompilation.

Why ? Just disable the USE flags you don't need in your make.conf...

[Lord Illidan]

Originally Posted by mips Busy getting the stage3 tarball, so far so good. I know what ssh is & does but have never used it until now and I must say its the dogs ********. I simply just copy and paste from my desktop to a terminal which I have a sshd session running in, great stuff.

Same here, used it at work, was installing Gentoo from Windows

Also, what I did on my home pc, was compile many of the needed things under a chroot on Ubuntu...

[termite]

Because the desktop profile is bloated. I spent hours the other day disabling USE flags and ended up slimming down by around 100 useless packages (mostly gnome).

I think adding flags is better than disabling them. There's less breakage that way and you learn more.

[Bachstelze]

Well, why did you install the Gnome packages at all, if you didn't want them ?

[termite]

Because I was a silly n00b who came from Ubuntu and didn't know what was going on! So I just picked the Desktop profile, not realizing how insanely huge it was.

Now I'm am wiser to the ways of the Pygoscelis papua