2015-07-01 9:17 GMT-06:00 <gottl...@nyu.edu>: > My new laptop should arrive this month. It will presumably support > UEFI, which I have never used before. > > I have two questions. > > 1. The gentoo handbook favors using the minimal installation CD. I > downloaded the iso, verified it's integrity, and "burned" it to a USB > stick with dd. > > However the wiki page "UEFI_Dual_boot_with_Windows_7/8" says to use a > system rescue CD. Is that required or can I use the minimal > installation CD? > You could use almost any distro to install gentoo, I have done it before, even my first install was the first livecd i found in my CDs case(LinuxMint), after reading the instructions I didn't found anything that actually made it a MUST to use the recommendations of the handbook.
> 2. The handbook, when discussing Booting the installation CD, says > > Important > When installing Gentoo with the purpose of using the UEFI interface > instead of BIOS, it is recommended to boot with UEFI immediately. If > not, then it might be necessary to create a bootable UEFI USB stick > (or other medium) once before finalizing the Gentoo Linux > installation. > > I don't understand what I am to do? Must I change the USB stick to > somehow specify UEFI? Or will the laptop firmware ask me whether to > boot UEFI? Or something else? > This is so the EFI information is available inside the booted OS. if you don't boot using EFI this information is not available(I'm not 100% sure about this, it's just what I remember at the top of my head) I remember from reading this list you use GNOME thus systemd, then I would highly recommend doing the install with a systemd livecd, it makes it so much practical to get to the chroot and you can test if your userspace boots right without needing to reboot thanks to nspawn. Here's a quick description of the procces, using a systemd live media(I will put the obvious just for completeness): 1. Get the stage3 and the livecd you'll use 2. boot 3. mkdir /mnt/gentoo and get the partition(s) where the installation will be, ready and mounted 4. tar -xvjpf the stage 3 into /mnt/gentoo 5. cd /mnt/gentoo && systemd-nspawn (this is the replacement for chroot, it mounts /dev/, /proc, and /sys for you) 6. get the portage tree 7. eselect a systemd profile, I would use the minimal(default/linux/amd64/13.0/systemd) temporarily so I don't have to build all of GNOME before booting. 8. emerge -avuDN @world (will get systemd installed) and 9. set a passoword for root and exit the shell, and boot the newly installed systemd with # systemd-nspawn -b 10. Configure timezone(timedatectl), locale.gen, locale(localectl), fstab... etc. 11. get a boot loader(Gummiboot the recommendation, and to the dislike of some, soon part of the systemd package, so systemd will come with a bootloader) 12. Get a kernel (CONFIG_EFI_STUB is needed to boot with gummiboot) 13. boot and change profile to a gnome one, and emerge gnome or gnome-minimal. Personally I find that installing Gentoo with systemd is more practical, mainly because of nspwan.
