On Thursday 26 February 2004 08:24 pm, Mental Patient wrote: > Daevid Vincent wrote: > >Okay, as a brand new hopeful user of Gentoo since yesterday, I feel > >qualified to at least voice a "newb" opinion. I've used Linux for several > >years. I was a pretty die-hard RedHat user until I heard all the positive > >hype about Gentoo. I *knew* going into it that it would be a bit tricky to > >setup. However, what I didn't really plan on, was just how annoying it is > > to setup every freakin' thing on a box in a tedious manner. I was told > > the stage-3 was the way to go, but I'm still compiling X and KDE and > >whatever-the-fsck-else I need just to get a GUI, two days later. This has > >several times made me want to chuck this installation out the window. The > >only reason I haven't is because my 'geek friends' and coworkers are all > >running it and keep quelling my pain by saying how nice it will be when > > I'm done. And they often help me set things up when I'm beating my fists > > on my notebook or extending a hand full of hair (recently pulled from my > > scalp). > > > >For this distro to take off, the installation needs to radically be > > improved and simplified, and the OOBE (out of box experience) needs to be > > improved by an order of magnitude! I could have installed Fedora or any > > other distro and been up and productive by now, or by yesterday for that > > matter. > > > >I *really* like the concept of Gentoo and I *really* would like to see it > >gain the market share it deserves. Portage/Emerge appears to be a very > >powerful and intelligent idea. But 24-hour compile times on a Pentium4 > >2.0Ghz with 640MB RAM is just maddening, frustrating and ridiculous. I > >thought Gentoo was supposed to use the binaries when it can? Surely > > someone else out there has compiled KDE, X, etc. for a Pentium4 class > > machine... Why isn't emerge getting them for me?! > > Last time I did a stage 3 install, it took about an hour to get from the > boot cd to a basic, working system and another 20 minutes to get into > gnome.
nice compile time whats the hardware? > > Quick overview. > Boot off cd, install base system. > Build kernel. > Boot system. > Copy tbz files off cd1 into /usr/portage/packages/All. > Copy tgz files off cd 2. > emerge -k <whatever you want installed> > > At this point you should have the basic stuff installed. > Configure X11. > At this point the gui is up and you can open an xterm, su to root and > start a screen session. > I usually do an emerge sync and an nice -n 15 emerge -up world. It > doesnt really matter how long it takes to run as you have an essentially > usable system at that point. > > I suspect you didnt copy the tbz's to the right location or forgot to > use the -k switch. > > > That all said, I find that the reason to run gentoo is that you wind up > with a custom tailored system that is setup the way you want it to be, > compiled optimized for your hardware, etc. > > If you want quick install, powerful package management and simple, fast > binary installs... try libranet or debian. I'm a long time debian user, > and I find the package management tools to be wonderful. > > There's lots of linux distro's out there. You're not being forced to use > gentoo. Perhaps the featureset you're looking for is better found > elsewhere? Thats not such a horrible thing. You sound frustrated, which > is probably due more to not being used to gentoo than anything else. The > first half dozen times I installed gentoo it took a long time, I screwed > up lots of things and was generally irritated. Gentoo is NOT a > distribution for the impatient. Thats just my opinion. > > As far as emerge 'getting' packages... well. Currently emerge doesnt > download binary packages. It downloads source. There are binary packages > you may choose to use on the install cd. As stated above, copy them to > the appropriate location and tell emerge to use them. The base binary > packages are a good start for me, but they are NOT built exactly the way > I want them. My use flags are a little different from the default ones > so I wind up re-emerging a few packages to get things the way I like > them. And THAT is why I use gentoo at home. Its more than just a rolling > network aware install. Its fully customizable. I consider that a luxury > worth the wait. > > But thats just me. > > -- > Mental > > > -- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list -- Chris P. Carter -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
