gentoo?

[bighomer]

I recently posted about an issue with netzero. This issue is still unresolved. The only way I can access the internet right now is through xp. If anyone currently has netzero running on ubuntu, please tell me how:)

Well, what I would like to know is, do any of you guys here have any experience with gentoo? Is it good? Easy to use? About a month ago I downloaded Fedora 8 (yes, over dialup, it took me literally a week and a half!) and it wouldn't install. I don't think it's a media issue, but...whatever. Downloaded Ubuntu and it worked fine. Anyway, I ordered Fedora 8 along with a few other distros I was curious about.

The main reason I want Linux is to expand on my very limited programming experience, and, ultimately, to replace winblows. Can anyone tell me what they think about Gentoo? Or recommend a distro? I plan on putting a third (I'm considering Fedora 8 also) among xp and kubuntu. Any input, much appreciated. :)

[Rocket2DMn]

Gentoo is not really for beginners unless you're looking to jump in up to your eyes. It can be a hassle to setup and requires you to compile a lot of things yourself including the kernel, X (the GUI), and GNOME (the most popular desktop manager). That's not to say it's not a good system, it's very powerful, just a lot of work to setup.
I convinced my roommate to try out linux and he went with gentoo - he likes it, but it took him a really long time to get it set up correctly, it's a very steep learning curve.
Ubuntu is great because its ease of use and large support community (us!). It's a great replacement for windows.
I don't hvae an answer for your netzero problem though, you should start a new thread about that specifically.

[emarkd]

Gentoo is generally considered appropriate for more advanced users. It would be a good choice if you want to get your hands a little dirty and learn a lot in the process, but it's not for the faint of heart.

Fedora is a good choice. It's of the Red Hat line as Ubuntu is of the Debian line. Knowing Fedora and Ubuntu gives you a good balance of Linux knowledge that is applicable to many other distros.

Ultimately, the distro you choose is a very personal choice. http://www.distrowatch.com can point you to many popular choices.

[p_quarles]

Moved to Gentoo sub-forum

[anemptygun]

gentoo = 1337 |-|4><

[Whiffle]

I disagree with the two posts above me. Gentoo is GREAT for beginners, IF... and only IF, they're truely up for spending some time to make it work. Using Gentoo was the first time I was really able to sink my teeth into Linux (and its the first time it stuck, I havn't used windows as my main OS since). I stopped using it because I got tired of waiting for things to compile, but other than that its great. Gentoo documentation is top notch, as is portage. I'd be reluctant to try it if dial-up were my only internet connection though, although it might be less internet dependent nowadays, I'm not sure.

[Rocket2DMn]

My roommate here says it's still internet dependent, a connection is pretty much required for the install. It is possible to install without the internet, but would certainly not be easy or fast.

[bighomer]

Thanks for the replies guys.

PS - Sorry for posting in the wrong thread.:)

[yabbadabbadont]

It isn't really feasible to install Gentoo without a net connection. Although I used dial-up with Gentoo for quite a while, I would not recommend it to anyone. (using it with dial-up that is) Stick to the binary distributions as you will have to download much less data than with Gentoo.

[ECPCLINUX]

Hello, I'm by no means an expert, please keep that in mind while reading this post. I felt the fact that I'm not an expert would be helpful as to finding an easy Distro. I have used Ubuntu 6.10 and 7.10, Xandros 3.02 OCE, Freespire 2.0. I found Ubuntu 7.10 by far the easiest, I even got my Netgear WG111 v1 wireless USB adapter to work with the current Ubuntu 7.10. Xandros is not a difficult just not as easy as Ubuntu 7.10. Freespire was very easy but it seems like I can find answers easier at the Ubuntu Forum. Using CNR in Freespire is great for new people. If your itching to try a new Distro and want it to be easy try Freespire however, something tells me you'll be back to Ubuntu. Recently, I downloaded a copy of Zabayon 3.4f and it did not work, it looked like it was loading but it got stuck. I checked and it was a bad copy. Did you check the Fendora ISO file with the corresponding MD5? It might prove to be a bad copy. Consider buying a copy of Zabayon 3.4f , even eBay has people selling copies very cheap. As for Zabayon 3.4f, I have not install it yet nevertheless, I have read great things about it. However, unless you download the Mini version you might be a month downloading the full version using dial up since it's around 4.2GB, Definitely, one that would be worth considering buying (since is such a large file). About Nezero, I don't know the answer to that, sorry. Finally, about Gentoo I have not download it again nor install it. I have read about Gentoo and it seems stable but difficult for new people as mentioned by others here. Hope this helps at least a little.

[handy]

A fresh install of Gentoo takes an experienced user 3 days...

[Whiffle]

A fresh install of Gentoo takes an experienced user 3 days...

...most of which is waiting for it to compile. Its not too bad if you have a second computer :D

[yabbadabbadont]

A fresh install of Gentoo takes an experienced user 3 days...

Not an experienced Gentoo user... ;)

The main thing is to use the stage tarballs from Daniel Robbin's website, funtoo.org, as he keeps them up to date. Of course, if you insist on installing all of KDE... then you might be correct. :lol: (I stick to fluxbox and/or openbox myself)

[handy]

Not an experienced Gentoo user... ;)

The main thing is to use the stage tarballs from Daniel Robbin's website, funtoo.org, as he keeps them up to date. Of course, if you insist on installing all of KDE... then you might be correct. :lol: (I stick to fluxbox and/or openbox myself)

I do remember you owning up to 3 days for a completely set up Gentoo once in the forum... ;-)

[Edit:] & I consider you to be a highly experienced Gentoo'er too :-)

[cotcot]

Gentoo is worth considering if you use the USE-flags correctly.

[yabbadabbadont]

I do remember you owning up to 3 days for a completely set up Gentoo once in the forum... ;-)

[Edit:] & I consider you to be a highly experienced Gentoo'er too :-)

I didn't know about Daniel's up to date stages when I posted that. I finished the install and immediately had both a gcc update and a glibc update. I updated gcc first, which takes a while on this machine. Then I built the new glibc with the new gcc, again, a lengthy process. Finally an "emerge -e system" and "emerge -e world" to get the rest of the system rebuilt properly with the new glibc and toolchain. Only once that was done, could I continue with a "normal" installation beyond the base system. If I had used the updated stage files, I would have been done in one full day. :lol:

[Bachstelze]

A fresh install of Gentoo takes an experienced user 3 days...

That depends on which machine... I can get an up-to-date system with Xorg + kdebase in well under 10 hours starting from the official stage3 tarballs.

[yabbadabbadont]

That depends on which machine... I can get an up-to-date system with Xorg + kdebase in well under 10 hours starting from the official stage3 tarballs.

Does that include the "emerge -e system && emerge -e world" you have to do because of the gcc and glibc updates after install? If so, what are your system specs? (does that sound sort of like a geek pickup line? :D)

[Rocket2DMn]

Does that include the "emerge -e system && emerge -e world" you have to do because of the gcc and glibc updates after install? If so, what are your system specs? (does that sound sort of like a geek pickup line? :D)

No "sort of" about it.

[handy]

:lolflag:

[Bachstelze]

Does that include the "emerge -e system && emerge -e world" you have to do because of the gcc and glibc updates after install? If so, what are your system specs? (does that sound sort of like a geek pickup line? :D)

Huh ? Why do "emerge -e system && emerge -e world" ? That will reemerge some packages (all those in "system") twice. Just "emerge gcc glibc && emerge -e world" is enough. Anyway, the machine is an Athlon 64 FX-62 with 2 GiB of RAM.

[yabbadabbadont]

Huh ? Why do "emerge -e system && emerge -e world" ? That will reemerge some packages (all those in "system") twice. Just "emerge gcc glibc && emerge -e world" is enough. Anyway, the machine is an Athlon 64 FX-62 with 2 GiB of RAM.

emerge -e system && emerge -e world

is in the official documentation (or was, I haven't looked lately) as the correct way to update a system after a glibc update. :)

Edit: It is actually in the gcc upgrade guide, but it is also the proper advice after a glibc update.

[anemptygun]

:lolflag:

lol x 2

[deepclutch]

with stage3 ,will it take days to install? :?
actually,does any one tried from stage1 ? :D :D

[Bachstelze]

with stage3 ,will it take days to install? :?

As was stated in ths thread countless times, it depends on your hardware and level of experience (it goes faster if you've already done it a few times).


actually,does any one tried from stage1 ? :D :D

Yes, just out of curiosity, but it is generally agreed now that there is no practical use to it. It is not even officially documented anymore.

[regomodo]

As was stated in ths thread countless times, it depends on your hardware and level of experience (it goes faster if you've already done it a few times).

Could compiling issues for a slow machine be removed if you properly chrooted to the slow machines drive from a faster machine?

I've copied my slow laptop's hdd to a spare because, although being helpful, an icecream compiling cluster appears to be bottlenecked by latencies namely the network and the hdd. also icecc doesn't cover fortran, gmake, and bzip2.

If this emerge -u world works i may chroot instead of icecc cluster

[Bachstelze]

You could do that, as long as your setup (kernel, compiler optimizations, etc.) is generic enough to run on both systems (i.e. no -O4 -march=nocona ;)).

[deepclutch]

should I wait for gentoo-2008 livecd?and use stage3 tarballs from drobbins? (http://funtoo.org )

OR
I have a livecd image here in hdd seems that from 2004.x .will that be enough
?afterall,in rolling release distros,installer doesnt matter unless it doesnot support ur immediate basic hardware?true?

Gentoo users - I am now building up-to-date Gentoo stage tarballs (http://www.funtoo.org/linux) for x86 (x86 (http://www.funtoo.org/linux/x86) and i686 (http://www.funtoo.org/linux/i686) arches) and amd64 (http://www.funtoo.org/linux/amd64). These stage tarballs are current stable builds of Gentoo built using a current Portage snapshot and are all built from the ground up. That means that if you use one of these stage3 tarballs to install Gentoo, you will save a lot of time since the system should not need to emerge much if anything when you type "emerge -u system". Enjoy them and please send me your feedback :)
http://funtoo.org/

[Bachstelze]

When you do a stage install you can use anything as an installation environment (Gentoo Live CD, Ubuntu Live CD, Knoppix or even your already-installed Linux). It will have no effect on the installed Gentoo.

[deepclutch]

Thanks for the replies :)
a lil bit offtopic :
what about the in-fights between devels on gentoo?I heard it was(or is?) stagnant for some time.esp after drobbins issues!

also does there gonna be a fork of gentoo anytime(funtoo? )
I do want to know the present scenario in gentoo community :D

[regomodo]

I do want to know the present scenario in gentoo community :D

Robbins' blog seems to be fairly informative

[regomodo]

oh, i give up.

Things keep failing to compile. I've done an emerge -e system && emerge -e world, used gentoos and funtoos stage3 packages and things just keep failing.

qt, gucharmap, iputils (gives up on ping.o !?), busybox, etc etc

Funny thing is is that the gentoo handbook (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml) doesn't mention to upgrade gcc and glibc

It's a shame. I'm starting to really like the gentoo philosophy and methodologies, but the constant compilation errors are driving me a bit nuts. I guess it's back to manhandling Arch with Rutilt

This is my make.conf attached if anyone wants to see if i'm using a messed setup

[deepclutch]

MAKEOPTS="-j9":shock: 8 core processor do u use :faints:

reg the errors,you should've tried gentoo forums :rolleyes:
http://forums.gentoo.org/
and:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-675839.html
also,gcc version?

[regomodo]

:shock: 8 core processor do u use :faints:
also,gcc version?

Actually, that was because i was using an icecream cluster, but since the gcc upgrade it no longer works. Actually -j9 would suggest a 4core processor according to the wiki's recommendation

I have no issues with installing its the upgrading and making the system sane that's the issue

gcc version is 4.1.2. The latest in Gentoo but a version behind Ubuntu weirdly enough.

[edit] well, i managed to solve those issues by the usual env-update revdep...etc. Now gnome-desktop fails. Apparently i'm not the only one. A quick google gives me one result, in French. {solved - it needed the python USE flag}

[regomodo]

Huh ? Why do "emerge -e system && emerge -e world" ? That will reemerge some packages (all those in "system") twice. Just "emerge gcc glibc && emerge -e world" is enough. Anyway, the machine is an Athlon 64 FX-62 with 2 GiB of RAM.

I can personally attest to the fact that doesn't work. 3 times on different architectures and releases (gentoo/funtoo). The proper way is defined by gentoo's GCC upgrade guide (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gcc-upgrading.xml#upgrade-general)

Can you tell i didn't give up on Gentoo. I now have nearly fully functional laptop. I pretty gave up on compiling on my laptop and just chrooted into it's harddrive from my much more powerful PC to build pretty much everything. Only couldn't compile qt in a chrooted environment. That took 6 hours on the laptop.

How does 32MB of RAM for an XFCE4 setup sound? That's even with a genkernel build.

[Bachstelze]

I can personally attest to the fact that doesn't work. 3 times on different architectures and releases (gentoo/funtoo). The proper way is defined by gentoo's GCC upgrade guide (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gcc-upgrading.xml#upgrade-general)

I can personnally attest that this always Worked For Me™ all the way back since 3.3, and using official tarballs, too! Besides, you should read docs a bit further (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gcc-upgrading.xml#doc_chap4). Oh, and compilinq Qt in a chroot definitely works, too.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png

[regomodo]

I can personnally attest that this always Worked For Me™ all the way back since 3.3, and using official tarballs, too!


I'm glad you put the ™ in. I did to the emerge -e gcc glibc (on two separate installs) and later package builds failed. It wasn't until i found that link that i stopped getting errors, but qt failed in chroot :P .

[Bachstelze]

I'm glad you put the ™ in. I did to the emerge -e gcc glibc (on two separate installs) and later package builds failed. It wasn't until i found that link that i stopped getting errors, but qt failed in chroot :P .

Did you do a sudo env-update && source /etc/profile after emerging Xorg and before emerging Qt (as instructed here (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/xorg-config.xml#doc_chap2)) ?

[regomodo]

Did you do a sudo env-update && source /etc/profile after emerging Xorg and before emerging Qt (as instructed here (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/xorg-config.xml#doc_chap2)) ?

yep, that's the guide i used. It's usually one of the things i do when something fails. It's no biggy, i got it installed fine on my laptop and figured out an issue (http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-5016848.html#5016848) with qt that is misreported as a bug (http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=184728) in gentoo's bugzilla.

[regomodo]

I'm starting to really like Gentoo. The documentation (although slightly dated sometimes) is so damn extensive. I haven't come across something quite like it in other projects.

So far i've almost got my PC finished, just a dvb issue and then just an atheros card to setup

Laptop situation is somewhat different. I have a big problem involving a zombie process called kacpid and just eats up my cpu. I tried setting up acpi properly and disabling by passing noacpi and nolapic at boot but to no avail. Additionally i'm having difficulties with wpa+rt2500 wireless

[edit] i just got laughed at from 2 ex-gentoo users for actually using gentoo. they had probably used gentoo for about a collective 6 years and couldn't understand why i use it when arch/lack/debian exist as the difference between binary and source distros is negligible. Anyone feel the same?