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Using Gentoo Linux

S

Shocktrooper

n00b
Joined
Dec 8, 2005
Messages
49
OK, so i've got some time on my hands and i'm looking to put another OS on my system. I made a second partition and downloaded Gentoo. I burned it to a disc and upon booting it i see "liveCD mode". It then brings me to a command prompt(with which i have no experience). I looked at the installation guide on Gentoo's site but it really doesnt make sense to me. It never asks me if i actually want to install it either.

Basicly, how to i get Gentoo to install onto my hard drive and get it into a GUI mode? According to Gnome's website Gentoo comes with gnome. How do i get gentoo to look somthing like this(from the pics of linux forum)
http://nermal.org/misc/gentoo-24-05-04-2.png

thanks
 
So did you get the minimal or universal version of the cd? If you got the minimal version, what you need to do is follow the guide where you will be configuring everything (compiler options, setting up your filesystem, other devices, etc) and then you will compile everything from scratch by downloading source code from gentoo mirrors. The installation guide will leave you with a working system that has a command prompt only. Gentoo is all about choice so it comes with both with nothing and everything - if you want gnome you will have to install X and Gnome, but there are very good guides on their website to do that.

Basically to compile the core parts of the system and add programs you work through a system called portage which keeps tracks of all the programs available for Gentoo and automates the compiling and installing for anything it knows about. Once you actually get your options set, it is very easy to work with.

If you got the universal version that has precompiled stuff you don't need to download and compile...but it is not commonly used.
 
There's no "installer" in gentoo - you don't just tell it to install. You have to manually do everything to get the system built up. The best way to do this is with the installation guide on gentoo's site. Just start at the beginning and work your way through it. If you run into problems during the installation, post here or check out the gentoo forums. gentoo-wiki.com is also a great resource. And gentoo doesn't "come" with gnome(or anything else, for that matter). If you want gnome, then you have to install it.

If you want a distribution that has an installer that will give you a running system with little user interaction then gentoo is definitely not for you. Look into ubuntu or suse or something like that.
 
yeah i am going to use unbuntu now. Looks like its a lot easier to use, or start up anyway.

i tried to use debian before and it had options to install it. I just expected that a popular version like gentoo would have one to.
 
That's why some people like Gentoo - it's utterly up to them what ends up on their machine, no installer chooses it for them.

What *does* suck about it though is making said choices with lack of information. My friend was installing Gentoo, and after getting X and KDE all compiled he found he had to go back and recompile both because he didn't have the Xinerama use flag for both his monitors.

Personally I don't mind difficulty in getting something set up as long as there's not something I can't do that I could do before in Windows. Case in point: I spent three hours getting my bluetooth headset all set up, and around 1 AM it was finally working. So then I go to actually talk to someone. Well, turns out there's not really any client for AIM with AIM Talk implemented. All the forums everywhere said to just use Skype. That's not a healthy attitude to have - people want linux to succeed, but at the same time I'm told both I and all the friends I'd want to voice chat with are forced to switch to another program.

I was back to Windows XP Pro the next day.
 
ok NOW, its telling me that my graphics arent working properly. tells me to try again when i've got the correct graphics settings(this is ubuntu). How would i go about installing my graphics through the command prompt?

i have a eVGA GeForce 5500 PCI card
 
For me Gentoo is a love/hate relationship. If Gentoo had something like apt get (for packages that are just stupidly long for compiles, like KDE) in addition to the portage tree, I would be in heaven. I love that for small items, it basically like an automated CVS. But for large items it can be a pain in the ass, especially on a slower computer.

It looks like I'll just be switching over to a baseline debian and install what I need.
 
Dew said:
It looks like I'll just be switching over to a baseline debian and install what I need.
Click to expand...

That is exactly what I have just done, and I am loving it. Gentoo is great, but the time involved in maintaining and compiling, while worth it, isn't for me anymore. It was great to learn with, but Debian is what is on here now, and is what will stay.
 
Dew said:
For me Gentoo is a love/hate relationship. If Gentoo had something like apt get (for packages that are just stupidly long for compiles, like KDE) in addition to the portage tree, I would be in heaven. I love that for small items, it basically like an automated CVS. But for large items it can be a pain in the ass, especially on a slower computer.
Click to expand...

This is basically how ports/packages work in FreeBSD.
There are a few notable exceptions, like java. Sun doesn't allow other parties to redistribute java binaries, and they don't have FreeBSD packages. It's a huge compile, but at least you can make a package of it for internal use, if you've got more than one computer.
 
Dew said:
For me Gentoo is a love/hate relationship. If Gentoo had something like apt get (for packages that are just stupidly long for compiles, like KDE) in addition to the portage tree, I would be in heaven. I love that for small items, it basically like an automated CVS. But for large items it can be a pain in the ass, especially on a slower computer.

It looks like I'll just be switching over to a baseline debian and install what I need.
Click to expand...

Take a look at Vida Linux then. It's based on Gentoo, and has binary packages available through Portage or Yukiyu, but still lets you compile from source when you want to. Another good thing about Vida Linux is that it actually comes with an installer.

Portage can use binary packages with a normal install of Gentoo, but there is no official Gentoo binary mirror AFAIK.
 
Honestly I don't know what the big deal is with the compile times. I'm able to do whatever I want with the system while i'm updating and compiling it from an xconsole. I just do big compiles when I goto bed and it's always done in the morning. But I rarely ever have to be down for more than a few hours unless I want to rebuild the entire system.

I guess it boils down to taste. Gentoo is the best running distro I ever used. Yes it takes work, but for me it's worth it.

If compile times are a big deal to you, then you might want to look into arch linux if you want optimized binaries.
 
install the proprietary NVIDIA drivers. You can find documents and howtos for that all over the place.

Shocktrooper said:
ok NOW, its telling me that my graphics arent working properly. tells me to try again when i've got the correct graphics settings(this is ubuntu). How would i go about installing my graphics through the command prompt?

i have a eVGA GeForce 5500 PCI card
Click to expand...
 
Ion Silverbolt said:
Honestly I don't know what the big deal is with the compile times. I'm able to do whatever I want with the system while i'm updating and compiling it from an xconsole. I just do big compiles when I goto bed and it's always done in the morning. But I rarely ever have to be down for more than a few hours unless I want to rebuild the entire system.

I guess it boils down to taste. Gentoo is the best running distro I ever used. Yes it takes work, but for me it's worth it.

If compile times are a big deal to you, then you might want to look into arch linux if you want optimized binaries.
Click to expand...
Ditto. Once you have your system up, compile times never cause downtime, unless you've totally borked something. Compiles are pretty nice(in the priority sense), so they don't really slow down your system. The only time compile times suck is when there's a program that you need immediately or something. But that doesn't happen to me very often. Add in ccache and a few distcc hosts and you're golden. :)
 
Dew said:
For me Gentoo is a love/hate relationship. If Gentoo had something like apt get (for packages that are just stupidly long for compiles, like KDE) in addition to the portage tree, I would be in heaven. I love that for small items, it basically like an automated CVS. But for large items it can be a pain in the ass, especially on a slower computer.
Click to expand...


IIRC "emerge --usepkg KDE" uses binary compiled packages so you dont have to.

Altho it is great to have a fast computer. Im running an Opteron 170 @ 2.4.
Starting from livecd. I did a base install and compiled Xorg and e17 in just a touch under 50min.
 
Dew said:
For me Gentoo is a love/hate relationship. If Gentoo had something like apt get (for packages that are just stupidly long for compiles, like KDE) in addition to the portage tree, I would be in heaven. I love that for small items, it basically like an automated CVS. But for large items it can be a pain in the ass, especially on a slower computer.

It looks like I'll just be switching over to a baseline debian and install what I need.
Click to expand...

Look into GRP.
 
osalcido said:
Gentoo is for Ricers --omg-optimized
Click to expand...

That has no place in intelligent discussion. If you don't like Gentoo, say as much and provide intelligent reasons why. Otherwise, feel free to keep the "--enable-h8" somewhere else. Troll.
 
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