What do I do with the gentoo stage 3 tarball?

[rajcan]

Ok, so I want to try out gentoo, and I downloaded the strage 3 tarball so I can go along with their manual, but what do I do with it? I'm not a linux noob so once it's in the computer I know what to do, but what am I supposed to do inorder to get it onto a live cd?

[~sHyLoCk~]

Did you read the Handbook?

[Techsnap]

You never followed the manual did you.

[rajcan]

I read the manual, but it doesn't tell you what to do with a *.tar.bz2.tar file. It tells you how to burn a .iso, but not the tarball.

[Xbehave]

gentoo is best installed to a chroot (possibly from a liveCD), the stage3 tar is what you unpack to the root filesystem, it's not a liveCD.

[rajcan]

Ok, I suppose the better question is, do I burn the file to a cd or just copy it over to the cd? Because as far as I know a computer cannot boot off of a .tar file.

[Xbehave]

Ok, I suppose the better question is, do I burn the file to a cd or just copy it over to the cd? Because as far as I know a computer cannot boot off of a .tar file.
1) be in a working os (could be ubuntu/debian or a liveCD)
2) create root filsystem(s) and mount it/them (/->/mnt/gentoo,/usr->/mnt/gentoo/usr,etc)
3) unpack the tar into /mnt/gentoo/
4) chroot into /mnt/gentoo/
5) setup core os and kernel
6) boot directly to new install
7) do rest of install
8) ...
9) realise how great binary package managers are
10)come back to ubuntu

this is all in the guide.

[Regenweald]

Ok, I suppose the better question is, do I burn the file to a cd or just copy it over to the cd? Because as far as I know a computer cannot boot off of a .tar file.

dude, shelve your Gentoo aspirations for a few weeks and read the Gentoo handbook. thrice. It is ridiculously detailed and documents *every* step.