Havn't tried Gentoo/Linux? Now is the time!

[strumbum]

Hey all!

I just wanted to let everyone here know that the Gentoo 2004.0 LiveCDs are out. If you already have linux there really isn't any point in getting them because you already have everything you need. On the other hand, if you haven't tried Gentoo or Linux in general I would suggest it.

To all those users who have not tried Linux out or have fallen away, Gentoo is PERFECT for you.

Yes, it is harder to set up than Slack, RH, and SuSE. Yes, it takes more time (not only on setup but on compiling and handling machine specific problems), but it is worth it.

I tried out RH, SuSE, and Slack before moving over to Gentoo. They are all wonderful distros (to all his own), but they didn't really fascinate me as a computer scientist (well, cs is my alter ego. I am a EE as of next year).

With Gentoo you really get to see the intricacies of Linux right off! Rather than go through an automated install, you must compile and configure everything from scratch (well, assuming you are doing a stage1 install). I have come to appreciate Linux more than before Gentoo. The installation isn't too hard if you follow the installation manual closely. There is a wonderful Gentoo Installation Manual (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook.xml?part=1) that will help you through the long and potentially painful process. In my experience, Gentoo has been the best there is in documentation and their forums are wonderful. The community is glad to help anyone (yes, even newbies, gotta love those guys) with anything.

Seriously, working with Linux at its base from the very beginning really helps you appreciate the power of Linux (and gives you a little more power from compiling with optimizations for your specific computer).

Gentoo just released the 2004.0 LiveCD which you use to install. The developers of Gentoo have implemented kernel 2.6.3, GCC 3.3.2, etc for your enjoyment. If you haven't tried Linux, now is the perfect time!

Also remember, Linux experience looks good on a resume!

* note, I have no affiliation with Gentoo (other than being a user). I just want people to try Linux and learn to enjoy it. *

[Gertrude]

Is there some kind of a link between Gentoo and religious fanatics?

[eloj]

Probably, they both seem very apt at fanatically regurgitating myth.

[litkaj]

Originally posted by eloj
Probably, they both seem very apt at fanatically regurgitating myth.

What exactly, in the original post, is a myth?

[Gertrude]

Originally posted by litkaj
What exactly, in the original post, is a myth?


To all those users who have not tried Linux out or have fallen away, Gentoo is PERFECT for you.

Tell that to this guy...


http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=734799

[Spetsnaz Op]

i have had a hard enough time getting SuSE running on this.......its amazing how odd linux can be......

not to mention for some reason my nvnet ethernet is detected FINE by Knoppix, but after many driver installs and attemped source/binary/.tar complile sessions it wont work on SuSE :( but thats more of a nvidia problem than anything else i suppose.....however i was pleasantly suprised to fine that my onboard sound sounds better under linux when playing MP3's, its a shame i wont be using it until nvidia fixes their drivers.....

[TheMasterRat]

Originally posted by Gertrude
Tell that to this guy...


http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=734799

That guy didn't exactly give it a fair shot either. Anyone who has actually used gentoo (or RTFM!), should know about emerge.

He was griping about spending time in a CLI ( well, cry me a river ).

I can understand his frustration to a degree, but rather than try to help himself, he chose to vent here. That's my view.

[Arkaine23]

You can always do an alternate install method using Knoppix, in order to have a GUI the whole time, and to have a pre-generated XF86Config.

[strumbum]

#1 - not religious fanatic, fanatic about what works. If it works for you, great! I am just making a suggestion.

#2 - Wow, see litkaj

#3 - If finalgt would have followed Gentoo's installation properly, he could have learned how to setup the gui.

#4 - Gentoo IS one product you MUST read the installation manual thoroughly again and again. I cannot stress this enough.

When I first set up Gentoo, I had an even harder time than that guy. When the system booted, there wasn't even a readable character! But you know what I did? I rebooted into the LiveCD, started from scratch and made sure I payed attention to the MANUAL.

I had MANY problems even after that. But you know what I did? I searched around and asked questions to the Gentoo community that was happy to answer my call (not that they are better than any other, but I just felt they were very nice).

Yes, that was done on a hard disk that also contained my WinXP partition, but it was never harmed in the process.

#5 - Yes, Gentoo is a b****, but so is life. Live and learn, the most experience come from lessons learned and problems fixed.

#6 - kernel 2.6.*, learn to love (some cases hate) it =)

#7 - IF you decide to try gentoo, live in forums.gentoo.org =). They have an entire section devoted to installation problems (yes, we ALL have them).

#8 - Spetsnaz Op, the Gentoo installation manual has a specific section dedicated to getting things like nForce set up. I have the nForce2 (See above and below) and it works perfectly on my Gentoo machine.

Wow, I didn't think I was going to write all that but then I did.

[[H]EMI_426]

I tried Linux of various flavors for a few years...Eh, I'm sticking with FreeBSD. Nothing innovative enough with Gentoo to make me think about switching away.

[ameoba]

Official Gentoo-Linux-Zealot translator-o-matic
By M, version 1.0

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=98807&cid=8430076

[strumbum]

"Gentoo makes me so much more productive."
"Although I can't use the box at the moment because it's compiling something, as it will be for the next five days, it gives me more time to check out the latest USE flags and potentially unstable optimisation settings."

You don't have to do ANY compiling in Gentoo (Stage3 install + binary packages). No one is forcing you to compile anything.

"Gentoo is more in the spirit of open source!"
"Apart from Hello World in Pascal at school, I've never written a single program in my life or contributed to an open source project, yet staring at endless streams of GCC output whizzing by somehow helps me contribute to international freedom."

OK, I don't have anything to disagree with here since I don't believe Gentoo has any more spirit than any other distro.

"I use Gentoo because it's more like the BSDs."
"Last month I tried to install FreeBSD on a well-supported machine, but the text-based installer scared me off. I've never used a BSD, but the guys on Slashdot say that it's l33t though, so surely I must be for using Gentoo."

Again, nothing to disagree with here.

"Heh, my system is soooo much faster after installing Gentoo."
"I've spent hours recompiling Fetchmail, X-Chat, gEdit and thousands of other programs which spend 99% of their time waiting for user input. Even though only the kernel and glibc make a significant difference with optimisations, and RPMs and .debs can be rebuilt with a handful of commands (AND Red Hat supplies i686 kernel and glibc packages), my box MUST be faster. It's nothing to do with the fact that I've disabled all startup services and I'm running BlackBox instead of GNOME or KDE."

lol, I have to agree with the programs that spend 99% of their time waiting for user input. I do believe there is SOME gain in building from scratch with optimizations. OK, even if there is only a 5% gain, it's free! For me it's not really the speed gain, but the principle that I built the system from scratch (even if portage helped out =) ).

"...my Gentoo Linux workstation..."
"...my overclocked AMD eMachines box from PC World, and apart from the third-grade made-to-break components and dodgy fan..."

I like my fully custom PC thank you =)

"You Red Hat guys must get sick of dependency hell..."
"I'm too stupid to understand that circular dependencies can be resolved by specifying BOTH .rpms together on the command line, and that problems hardly ever occur if one uses proper Red Hat packages instead of mixing SuSE, Mandrake and Joe's Linux packages together (which the system wasn't designed for)."

Hmmm, I don't have much experience with RPM so I can't say much here.

"All the other distros are soooo out of date."
"Constantly upgrading to the latest bleeding-edge untested software makes me more productive. Never mind the extensive testing and patching that Debian and Red Hat perform on their packages; I've just emerged the latest GNOME beta snapshot and compiled with -O9 -fomit-instructions, and it only crashes once every few hours."

lol, yet another funny. Isn't it nice that any Linux user (yes, even Gentoo users =) ) can compile just about any kernel they wish, old-n-reliable or new-n-buggy. It is not a Gentoo issue, but rather user preference. Even a RH user can do the same thing and use the latest bleeding-edge untested software...

"Let's face it, Gentoo is the future."
"OK, so no serious business is going to even consider Gentoo in the near future, and even with proper support and QA in place, it'll still eat up far too much of a company's valuable time. But this guy I met on #animepr0n is now using it, so it must be growing!"

Linux is the future, Gentoo is just a nice ride along the way.

[jpmkm]

I really wouldn't recommend gentoo to someone who has never used linux. It will most likely just piss him off. Sure, gentoo users say it is perfect for beginners, but we are usually not beginners so we don't know exactly what it is like. It is good to get to know linux first so you at least know and understand the basic commands. Not every computer is the same, so you can't exactly follow the installation guide word for word. If you don't understand what /dev/hda1 is and you really want to install linux to /dev/hdb3 then you could really fuck your stuff up. I think the best thing for someone who has never used linux is to use mandrake or fedora or something so you can just start out with a fully functional system. Then you tinker and learn stuff. Then move on to gentoo. I love gentoo as much as anyone, but some of the users are getting close to being full-fledged zealots.

[86reddawg]

Sure, gentoo users say it is perfect for beginners

who in the fook says that?

i used mandrake for 2 years before i stepped up to gentoo (kinda like the next step in a relationship) and i had problems installing gentoo, took me 5 times/a week before i got something workable. Did it piss me off? no, cuz i'm not retarded and put it on my only system at the time. I could get huffy and pull the plug on it for the day, and switch over to my laptop.

and the one thing i do love is the ports system - i'll *never* go back to an rpm based distro - as easy as he makes it sound up there, it is not that easy to make the rpm system dependancies work. (at least in my 2 yrs, i never got it to work worth crap) Emerge however works flawlessly for me so far.

the main issue here is i would never reccomend this to a newb, no matter what. That's like giving a newbie to computers a bunch of transistors and telling them to build their own computer - sure you learn everything about the PC, but it's not likely you'll complete the task...

[jpmkm]

Originally posted by 86reddawg
who in the fook says that?
Well the original poster of this thread is a good example. I didn't say all gentoo users recommend it to newbies. It's just that usually the only people who recommend gentoo to newbies are gentoo users themselves. I am a gentoo user and I certainly do not recommend it to newbies.

[NewBlackDak]

We never know someone's computer skills, so saying Gentoo is for eveyone is silly. I installed it the first time without incident on a SparcStation 5. Never mind that I'd never used Linux on a sparc. I promptly came home and installed it on my box. I had been running LFS previously, so Gentoo was nothing and portage is a welcome change. I now have it running my email server at work on a PowerMac 7500. I have to look at it so little that I keep forgetting the IP address.

If you've only ever run Windows, and you can't even fix your windows problems when they happen you probably have no business running Gentoo.

[strumbum]

Yes, I do concede that absolute newbies should try a different distro. If that distro works for them, continue using it or try something new.

I had at least a little linux experience before I tried Gentoo, so I cannot preach to newbies.

[deuce868]

Debian

*ducks* :D

[Zlash]

Yea I'll take debian and kick gentoo up and down the street anyday.

[strumbum]

Look, I haven't said Gentoo is better than distroX because I recognize that different people like different things. Yes, I am suggesting users try it but I am not saying it is better than Debian, RH, etc.

[cloaked]

i too use gentoo and like it, but i would not consider myself a zealot.
i also would not recommend it to people that are expecting a flawless and painless install. i also do not think it is the perfect thing for everyone, and will be quick to agree with many of the points the "gentoo zealot translator" made. (btw that is not originally by that guy at /., it was written by someone else, or at least orginially posted on another site).
but i am glad i switched over, after using linux (mandrake) on and off for about 3 months, i switched over to gentoo and got it installed on the second try, the first was an attempted grp install :D

i dont think everyone should just assume gentoo is the best solution for everything, especially with all the impatient newbies flooding every help line without having even a glance at documentation
:rolleyes:

[Flagg]

I still consider myself a beginner in linux, but I have used iboth RH and gentoo. I will agree that with Gentoo you will learn the insides and out of linux with regaurds to compiling the software yourself. Emerge is cool, but I find apt-get to do the same thing as emerge and takes half as long. Granted apt-get is not dealing with the latest and greatest source code but, who cares. It works and resolves dependancy's for you.

[eloj]

>Granted apt-get is not dealing with the latest and greatest source code

Sure it is.

[finalgt]

Originally posted by strumbum

#3 - If finalgt would have followed Gentoo's installation properly, he could have learned how to setup the gui.


At this point, I'd like you to point out exactly where, on the 51 page installation manual to which you are referring, it is explained how to install kernel modules after you've compiled the kernel. You'd probably tell me to use the following command, right?

find /lib/modules/<kernel version>/ -type f -iname '*.o' -or -iname '*.ko'

Well, let's say that doesn't find the modules that I was told to install by some anonymous poster on some tiny messageboard somewhere in the bowels of the internet after searching on Google for how to get my USB mouse working. Let's keep in mind the following things here:

1) I have no prior experience with Linux. I was told to use Linux because it would be great to learn things with, so if I don't know the commands to do things and those commands aren't detailed in the only point of reference I have available to me - the Gentoo Handbook - then surely the only two options I have left are to either randomly guess commands to input into the command line, or post on a messageboard (much like this one) asking for help, correct? So if I choose to do the latter, why is it 'not following the installation properly'?
2) I don't know that Linux would easily recognize my mouse if I just hook it up using the PS2 converter and setting the location of my mouse as /dev/psaux. After all, if Gentoo is so fantastic, then surely I don't need to convert my USB mouse to PS2 just to get the GUI working properly, right?

That guy didn't exactly give it a fair shot either. Anyone who has actually used gentoo (or RTFM!), should know about emerge.

He was griping about spending time in a CLI ( well, cry me a river ).

I can understand his frustration to a degree, but rather than try to help himself, he chose to vent here. That's my view.


I knew about emerge. However, nowhere in the Installation Handbook (again, my only point of reference) does it mention that you can use emerge for -all- packages, not just system packages. Again pointing out that I have no Linux experience whatsoever, I didn't know that there were commands like that in all of the Linux variants (apt-get in Debian, yum in Fedora, etc.)

I wasn't "griping about spending time in a CLI." Hey, guess what? I don't even need a mouse to use Windows efficiently, and I can easily accomplish everything that I would normally accomplish in Explorer in a command line interface. Why? Because I've been using Windows for years. Now, when I'm dropped in a command line environment with absolutely no knowledge of the requisite commands or anything of the sort, I'd imagine that almost anybody would be inclined to "crying a river."

And finally, a correction. Rather than try to help myself (which would consist of typing random commands into the interface in the hopes that one would produce the desired effect, since the Installation Handbook doesn't explain how to overcome errors of any sort) I searched on Google for four hours until I finally decided to post here. I pointed out in my post that I was being unfair to Linux - I was well aware of the fact - and then proceeded to vent my frustration about the fact that I couldn't get the thing working. If you have no idea what I went through, why would you assume that I just took the route of the helpless noob?

Hah. How's THAT for a longass post?

[Lowbatt]

On this page it tells you how to install modules . Step 7e
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook.xml?part=1&chap=7#doc_chap5

The desktop configuration guide tell you how to configure a usb mouse in X
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/desktop.xml

Also you can get to the desktop configuration guide from the install guide on chapter 12 titled "Where to go from here?" http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook.xml?part=1&chap=12
From that same page you can go to the section called "Working with Gentoo" and on that page it has a description of Portage and Software. Going to that section tells you alot about emerge and such.

It does not seem to have a section about what to do if you recieve errors. It does refer you to the gentoo forums and irc in chapter 12 for more information.

Now I'm not saying gentoo is the best linux distro out there or that its so easy to install and that only idiots have problems. Hell I've had a million problems with it. Alot of times I get help from the gentoo forums or from google. If I get to the point where I can not figgure it out. I end up starting over. I just like gentoo because installing and setting up gentoo I learned more about linux than any other disto I had used till I found gentoo and the forums and community behind gentoo and normaly pretty helpful. I'd say they are the main reason I use gentoo.

[Zlash]

Granted apt-get is not dealing with the latest and greatest source code but, who cares.

You can get really old packages or you can get the latest nightly builds.

[deuce868]

Originally posted by Zlash
You can get really old packages or you can get the latest nightly builds.

This is why I love debian. I find it a VERY reliable stable server distro. Would I run Woody on my desktop, probably not. Then again you can always move up the line to testing & finally unstable. All depends on what you want to do.

[NewBlackDak]

Originally posted by finalgt

2) I don't know that Linux would easily recognize my mouse if I just hook it up using the PS2 converter and setting the location of my mouse as /dev/psaux. After all, if Gentoo is so fantastic, then surely I don't need to convert my USB mouse to PS2 just to get the GUI working properly, right?

no you cerainly don't. Just /dev/usbmouse

[cloaked]

when i first installed gentoo it was with little linux expirence, but after thinking logicaly, reading lots and lots of docs, and asking a few questions on irc, i have it up and working now.
btw, every distro besides the mandrake/fedora bunch needs manual set up of mice and installation of packages, so if you dont want to deal with that, use one of those simpler distros.