NCAAbbs

I'm thinking of doing a Gentoo install (or two) because SUSE and Fedora are frustratingly slow at times on my desktop and laptop (respectively). From what I've read, and what was said at the last meeting, Gentoo is supposed to be a lot faster.

I have no experience with Gentoo and I'm wondering if there is a good guide on how to run through an install. I've been spoiled by installers on the current distros, and even before that with earlier versions of Redhat.

I downloaded the Live CD and tried to install using that, but I was unsuccessful the two times I tried.

Anyway, if someone could point me in the right direction, that'd be great. I always seem to try to do things like this when I should be studying for finals, so I figure this is a good way to procrastinate this year.

Thanks.

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/index.xml
the handbook has ALOT of stuff.


any questions can be posted here. and if i cant answer em (im still kinda a gentoo n00b) gts probably can.
http://forums.gentoo.org/ is also a good place to look.

by old hardware do you mean x86? they now have a graphical installer (i couldnt get it to work on my old dell) but its spose to be nice.

after you chroot in and emerge --sync (in the guide, first link)
you'll want to
'emerge ufed'
then run 'ufed' this lets you choose your use flags and is alot easier than manually typing them in.
also,
emerge eix
update-eix

(good for looking up programs, like 'eix firefox' will give, mozilla-firefox and mozilla-firefox-bin and version info. its nice when you dont know the full name of a program)

All of my hardware is x86 32-bit. All of the hardware on both machines is Linux compatible as far as I know. I haven't run into any problems with either on any of the recent versions of common distros, so I don't think I'll run into problems with hardware.

Do you recommend doing it manually rather than the LiveCD?

I've tried the LiveCD twice with the GUI and twice with the command line on my desktop and both times it died in the middle of the install. I don't know if it was a user error or if the install was having trouble with hardware. I also read on the Gentoo forums that a lot of people are having trouble getting the LiveCD to work.

Is there a site out there with a step by step guide that tells what to do on each screen? I had been looking at the handbook you reference, but it refers to so many different types of installs it's hard to know which is what.

Sorry for the n00b questions. I really do know what I'm doing with Linux, but this is my first attempt at Gentoo.

well on my dfi mobo i had to use kannotix to install. and i found it much more fun b/c i could do other stuff while it compiled. and its done the exact same was as live pretty much. livecd just helps you get a console where you can then download stuff.

do you have any idea where it died? like is it the same spot each time? or what? and what kind of dying? freezing? computer turning off? error?

try downloading http://www.knoppix.org/ and installing with that. just open konsole and proceed preping the disks.
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/ha...t=1&chap=4

OK -- use the LiveCD, but DON'T use the GUI installer. Simply open up a terminal and go about the install that way using the manual instructions.

The LiveCD GUI Installer is still highly experimental... this is the first release of Gentoo to use it.

What is the best set of instructions to use?

I'm going to be installing on a Dell Inspiron 600M (P-M 1.6 with an ATI 32MB graphics card). Will I really notice enough difference between Gentoo and OpenSUSE to make it worth the hassle of the install?

Probably not; To really get the most speed out of Gentoo ... to make that huge noticeable difference... you have to know quite a bit about your hardware, building a kernel and what you can throw out, and GCC CFLAGS and USE Flags.

Stick with SuSe unless you'd consider yourself at least a power user or borderline expert.

I am pretty familiar with my hardware, and know a lot about Linux (probably would consider myself an expert), but I don't know much about programming.

Lemme give you a quick quiz to see:

paste this:

# cat /proc/cpuinfo

Then tell me what you'd make your CFLAGS.

Here you are:

processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 13
model name : Intel® Pentium® M processor 1.60GHz
stepping : 6
cpu MHz : 1600.000
cache size : 2048 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm pbe est tm2
bogomips : 1200.30

I believe I would use the following:

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium-m -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"

That cache size is HUGE... 2048 KB

Go for it, and add these to your USE flags:
sse sse2 mmx


Crucial tools:
- ufed
--- run as root, lets you select USE flags in a guided manner with explanations
- eix
--- very fast searching of portage ... eix (search term) .... after every sync.... update-eix

Will post my USE flags as a guideline in a moment

I just started installing about an hour ago.

I'm to the point right now where I'm running "emerge --sync" for the first time.

So far so good, no crazy errors.

Just installed grub, rebooting into Gentoo for the first time....

Kernel panic. The way the installation guide has you compile the kernel using genkernel and the config from the LiveCD are faulty in some way.

I'm recompiling using the instructions provided for genkernel (separate from the installation guide).

Okay, the recompiled kernel works.. and I'm on the Internet using my Ethernet card.

genkernel??????

Ewwwwww!!

Compile by hand if you're using Gentoo. Genkernel is pretty much useless.

Yeah, I figured that out pretty quickly.

I'm posting this from Firefox in KDE on Gentoo!

Is there a package that will give me better fonts? The fonts that KDE uses by default leave a lot to be desired.

Thanks.

emerge eix
update-eix (you must do this after every sync too)
eix fonts (it will now spit out a ton of font packages)

A few USE flags too: freetype truetype truetype-fonts bitmap-fonts

Apparently they've added some new deliciousness to the crunchy goodness that is eix (for eix-0.55, anyway).

[code:1]eix-sync[/code:1]

is a shortcut for

[code:1]emerge --sync
update-eix[/code:1]