Jarrod Major said: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > I suppose I should take a gander at Gentoo to be fair. Trevor are you > coming > to the meeting tonight? If so, can I get a copy from you? Save me from > downloading another ISO. >
Unfortunately, I had something come up tonight around that time that is a much higher priority. I'm quite disappointed about it since I was looking forward to this months presentation when it was mentioned a few days ago :( As for the Gentoo CDs, I don't have the latest ISO image on me. Gentoo is much like Debian in that emerge will keep your system updated the same way apt-get does. You don't need to worry about downloading the latest version and upgrading, emerge can take care of upgrading the software you have installed and you're done. Now you could use an older ISO image, but depending on which stage tarball you choose to use, it may increase the number of packages you have to recompile off the start and upgrade. The ISO for Gentoo isn't that big though. If you want to start from scratch and compile everything then you need the stage 1 tarball. A bootable Gentoo livecd with the stage 1 tarball can be found: ftp://sunsite.ualberta.ca/pub/unix/Linux/gentoo/releases/1.4_rc4/x86/x86/livecd/gentoo-basic-x86-1.4_rc4.iso The stage 1 tarball livecd is only around 68 Meg. You can also download: ftp://sunsite.ualberta.ca/pub/unix/Linux/gentoo/releases/1.4_rc4/x86/x86/livecd/gentoo-3stages-x86-1.4_rc4.iso which is a livecd that contains all 3 stage tarballs and you can use whichever one you want. That ISO is only around 220 Meg. Here is a basic rundown on the stages: Stage 1: You start from scratch, pretty much the only step here is bootstrapping the system. The bootstrap process "builds binutils, gcc, gettext, and glibc, rebuilding binutils, gcc, and gettext after glibc". This takes a bit :) Stage2: You start off with a bootstrapped system, now you need to install the rest of the system software that makes up a basic Linux system. Stage3: You start off with a bootstrapped system, and system software is already installed. However, you will need to update some of the software since the versions on the ISO are probably out of date already. You can read through the install doc at: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml before you start if you want to get an idea on the steps involved. I should also note that if you start off with a stage 2 or stage 3 tarball, your system won't be as fully optimized from the start for your CPU. Since 1.4 is still in rc stage, they haven't released stage 1, 2, and 3 tarballs for each CPU yet (ie, Pentium, Pentium2, K6/2, Pentium3, etc). Once 1.4 reaches final they will do this, but for the time being stage 2 & 3 will be pre-optimized for generic x86. If you want to compile for your PII then you will need to start with a stage 1 tarball. Cheers, -- Trevor Lauder Web: http://www.thelauders.net E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Resume: http://www.thelauders.net/resume/ Gentoo Powered "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." -- Albert Einstein
