I like gentoo; there's a steep learning curve but after you pass that it just clicks. As difficult as it ever became there was always an answer to be found, on a blog, irc, documentaiton...
But I might have to give up on gentoo if I can't find a way to fix this latest difficulty. I live in the hinterland where there is no broadband. I have to make do with a dialup modem over ~10mi of copper wire. Now I find I can no longer dialup the internet using ppp command #pon <isp>. The modem lights come on and the log says the DNS have been all been assigned. status=0x0. But I can't ping out. 'Host unreachable'. As slow as my connection is, I've always been able to sync portage and use bash to write a link file which I can download at the free wifi in town. Now I can't even do that. I suspect this has something to do with the openrc which seems to be steadily "improving".. There are no error msgs other than the ping error above. I'm sure this is gentoo specific because it doesn't affect the Ubuntu side of my pc(yet ;().where I'm typing this. In ubuntu I have to rmmod my wifi and ethn drivers or the same thing happens: modem lights up, log says everything fine, but no internet. Once every other bit of net hardware comes down, the web is reachable. This USED to be the case for gentoo as well, but now, even that doesn't help. The landline gets no respect. Now gmail is making angry noises cause I won't give them my mobile number. But I don't have one. There isn't even coverage out here. Broadband and dialup used to get along but those days seem to be gone. Hope somebody can see a way out. MW
