[KLUG Members] Question on Gentoo

[Adam Bultman]

> 
> Is it sufficient if I download CD 1 and CD2 of Livecd of Gentoo? I believe
> that the tar balls for different stages are included in the CDs.


I've always downloaded the basic one, which is what? 80 MB? It has 
everything you need to do a stage 1 install.

> 
> Also interested in hearing abt other users experiences.
> 
See below.

> I am looking at 1.4. The athlon XP and pentium 4 versions dont seem to have
> stage 1 listed in the stages directory.


The 'stage 1' install is a 'compile completely from source' stage. Stage2 
and Stage3 are tarballs of precompiled binaries, which is why you see 
different 'architechtures' in there.  In stage one, you untar, do you jazz 
with directories and stuff, then you edit your make.conf to suit your 
particular machine (pentium3, athlon, sparc, etc). It's fun! But takes a 
long time on slow machines.

I've used gentoo for a while now (and I have it installed on... 6 or 7 
machines) and I absolutely love it. You can install programs as easy as 
one, two, wait a while, three with it. The 'emerge' system of installing 
programs is easy; it fetches dependencies, tarballs, compiles and 
installs. No RPM hell, no difficulty in finding RPMs for programs that 
seem to have disappeared from a particular distro's radar, no nothin'.  
You'll occasionally hit some snags with emerge, but those are either 
problems dealing with the program itself (i.e. my cups problem from a 
while back) or easily solved by unemerging a program. 

PLUS!  Emerge keeps track of all your installed programs (take THAT, 
redhat) and you can follow all your installed programs, their possible 
updates, etc..

Hoo! Ok, I'm done.

Use Gentoo.

Adam