For the new year, I am setting up my youngest son with his own machine. He is 9, requires some basic wordpioc and drawing, but mainly requires the ability to play flash games.
Of course you know it is going to be a Linux system as I am a proud Linux Bigot and I absolutely hate how easy it is for my son to screw up a machine with n-teen different screen savers (from the Cartoon Network) for Win98 that spy back on him. Anyhow, I picked up the "new" machine(Dell/350/64) from the CACRC (via EBAY) for about $20 and a monitor ($25) and started to set up Gentoo "by the book" last evening around 18:00. I chose "Stage 3" install, which more or less means I will select and compile my kernal (as opposed to Stage 1 - where I'll be building it all from scratch). Yes, I know I don't get many geek points for a stage 3 but I am eager to see how better a Gentoo kernal runs against what I have become used to, namely Mandrake and Debian. The experience *is* wonderfully enlightening, easy enough to follow (even after New Years Celebrations...hick!....), and painfully slow (with the machine) and probably will be redone with stage 1. (It is fairly easy, just forgive yourself for small faux-pas!) Don't fear the instructions from Gentoo are easy to follow, make sense, and well worthwhile. They simply take time....I am still compiling! Happy New Year!!!
