Trying out Gentoo.

[Barrucadu]

I'm trying out Gentoo on my desktop computer. I'll still be using Arch on my laptop, and will be for the forseeable future, but according to the distro suggestion thingy my top 3 distros would be Gentoo, Slackware, and Arch. So I'm going to try Gentoo now, and Slackware at some point in the future.

[Ajay Chahar]

I was a gentoo fan for quite a while but its just arch and ubuntu for me now. I just use Slax once in a while.

Good Luck with Gentoo! :p

[cardinals_fan]

Good luck (you'll need it :razz:)

Slack is fun.

[cotcot]

Gentoo is worth a try. However I came back to ubuntu after a dbus crash.

[Barrucadu]

I haven't managed to install it yet, and despite me not telling it to the installer wiped my second harddrive containing 80GB of unbacked-up movies. I think I'll leave Gentoo for now...

[insane_alien]

arch is a good one. its like gentoo but without all the compiling(which always gave me errors and led to much shouting of 'LOL N00B!' directed at me when i asked on the gentoo IRC. never did find out what was wrong.)

the compiling thing is overrated anyway. at most it will shave a few milliseconds off apps starting times. not really worth the time imo.

[cardinals_fan]

One tip: don't use the graphical installer! It was an awful idea. Do it from the command line.

[Nessa]

Is the documentation enough? Can you guys recommend an additional reading materials about the install process?

[trimeta]

The documentation is extremely thoughough, but if you have problems, feel free to ask questions here, or check Gentoo's IRC channel at ircfreenode.net#gentoo. And do make sure you read the entire Installation Handbook before beginning the install; if there's something you're unsure about, better to ask before you begin.

[mohtasham1983]

Here is my experience of installing gentoo 2 months ago. I downloaded the ISO file and burn it on a CD. I booted using the live CD and tried to install it using the GUI version, but I found it very buggy, so I decided to install it using the textual version. During the installation process, I was playing with gnome panel to see a list of programs on the live CD, that's why the installer crashed again. I tried a few more times and finally I was able to install it on my laptop. The speed was amazing, and the CPU usage was extremely low. I needed new programs for my laptop. So I installed firefox, piding and all other programs that I use everyday. It took me a very long time to compile them though.

By the time I didn't have internet at home, so I used to go to school lab and download all packages from there. After a few days of working with gentoo, I decided to compile amarok with all of dependencies. It took me 4 hours to compile and install 40 packages and finally when I tried to run it, it gave me an error. I went back home at 2:00AM very disappointed about it. The day after, when turned on my laptop, I noticed when I ran a GTK based program like firefox, the mouse and keyboard were locked up. I googled a lot to find a solution for that, but non of them really worked for me. Some of them were suggesting the world upgrade of my gentoo. I tried that and it complained about some dependency problems. I didn't give up and decided to give gentoo another chance, so I tried to reinstall it. This time, I decided to do a world upgrade upon installing it. I also didn't install gnome or KDE. I was going to install gnome after world upgrade of the system. I was able to do the world upgrade, however, when I tried to install gnome, it gave me package conflicting error. Again, I googled it a lot and couldn't find a solution. Then I realized that I had my final exam in a week and my only computer is having a big trouble.

I installed ubuntu real quick and installed all necessary programs real quick and started preparing for my final exam. However, the speed was much lower compared to that of Gentoo. CPU usage was also a lot higher than Gentoo.

Do you guys think that I don't like Gentoo? right? No, I really loved it indeed. Once I get a desktop computer, I will definitely install gentoo on it.

I guess you will like gentoo, if you:

1. have a lot of spare time
2. Have a low speed computer
3. Need a program that run smoothly and fast. Let's say you need a computer for your apache server. Just install gentoo, with no GUI. Then compile apache on it. That's it. Your server is up and running without any extra program that uses a lot of resources.
4. Are in love with Linux
5. Want to learn real Linux


I hope this information be helpful for someone.

Cheers,

[Frak]

I guess you will like gentoo, if you:

6. Like the way they lock packages in emerge for really just paternal reasons.

[mips]

I tried gentoo but prefer arch. gentoo was hard, it broke and was hard to fix.

I might try it in future again but this time it will be in a VM so I can contain the damage :)

[regomodo]

I guess you will like gentoo, if you:

6. Like the way they lock packages in emerge for really just paternal reasons.

you could always make good use of /etc/portage/package.keywords

[Frak]

you could always make good use of /etc/portage/package.keywords
It's not needed.

Fin