Alan McKinnon wrote: > > > Sorry, but that's never a good reason for using Gentoo. If a binary > distro compiles every option under the sun then the software will still > work, but the binaries might be a bit big. Compiling on your machine > gives no discernable performance benefit for the average user. > > Gentoo's strength is in being able to enable or disable individual > features in each package. So, if you (say) can't stand Red Hat becuase > it defaults to a Gnome DE, use Gentoo by all mans. If you can't stand > Red Hat becuase you think it's slow, then you have faulty hardware and > Gentoo is going to perform about the same... >
I have to disagree with this. I used to use Mandrake and Gentoo is a *LOT* faster than Mandrake. I turned off a lot of unused services and Mandrake was still pretty slow. This is especially true if you customize all the flags you can. I suspect he will see a speed difference. Plus he will know what is being installed and why. Gentoo IMHO beats Mandrake and others by a long shot. > >> What would be the 'best' medium for me, minimal or live CD? I have a >> high speed connection. >> > > Doesn't matter, it comes out to the same anyway. The minimal CD has only > the absolute minimum sources on it, so you have to download the rest. > The LiveCD gets you up and running in an hour or two, but the packages > on it are bound to have updates (because OSS projects release early and > often), so with your first world update you will download new versions. > > Use the Live CD if you want to get a working machine quickly. If > watching gcc output scroll off the screen turns you on (it does for > most of us around here....) then use the minimal by all means. > This is true. Gentoo updates pretty fast. A lot quicker than most. That can be good but it can be bad too. Just try to sync up as soon as you can. No need installing something just to update it again in a little bit. > >> Two avoid a typical dual boot install. I would like gentoo to boot >> from my second hard drive. During boot up, I can now select which HD >> I want to boot from. Will the install process let me assign a boot >> disk? >> > > It's been a while since I did a virgin install, so things might have > changed recently. Back when I did my last install, the process was > completely different to a binary distro, and one of the steps was to > partition the disk manually, install grub and edit grub.conf exactly > the way you want it. So your answer is yes, you can assign boot disks, > but it isn't a check box you click. But, the latest installers may well > have changed the entire process > > alan > > If he uses the GUI thing, which has never worked for me, it is a lot different. It seems to be easier to configure, if I could just get it to finish for once. It starts, then hangs up and just sits there doing nothing. Dale :-) :-) :-) :-) -- www.myspace.com/dalek1967
