On Tue, 08 Feb 2005 10:46:31 +1300 (NZDT) Steve Holdoway <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On Tue, February 8, 2005 10:03 am, Nick Rout said: > > is one error an appalling level of documentation? > > > > I think the documentation does a good job of explaining what needs to be > > done, and why, and how to. > > > > > No, I think all the install documentation is apalling. like your spelling - no offence just pointing out no one is perfect. >The fact that I > don't like the style is a matter of personal taste, >and I discount it. > But, I reiterate my earlier point that it just shouldn't be necessary to > make all of these manual steps, the manual steps are the same steps that other distros do but hide from you: partition format install base from tarball chroot to base install system. do boot loader in addition you need to make some choices that other distros don't let you make - the logger, the cron daemon, and your kernel options. There are efforts to make a nicer installer, and vida is a fairly good example (port of redhat/fedora's anaconda). However a very popular view in the gentoo world is that the install is educational, "i learned more about linux from a gentoo instal than in six [months/years/lifetimes] of using [mandrake/redhat/suse/debian/whatever]" is a recurrent theme. Of course that is the converted speaking... frankly i have done maybe 10-20 gentoo installs and now i can do it quick, i know a hell of a lot more than when i started. however i would now be happy to use a nice gui like the vida one. with your knowledge steve you probably don't need the "education" - i found it valuable, others find it valuable. > or to learn half the potted history of > linux just to get a machine up and running. > history is valuable in any endeavour (will we see you tonight?) Don't forget that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it! > As you pointed out, there is an abridged version somewhere, but I went to > the Gentoo site, and looked for resources on how to build a gentoo system. > The documentation that I'm criticising is where I ended up. > > I've learned over the years to read *all* of the documentation before I > start something new. I'm now working through it, and I'm on 'page' 8 of > 12, and have needed extra resource from this list to get this far. Now, > I'm not really a novice at this kind of thing... (: > as robert said, and i expanded on, maybe thats the problem. if i just said to you: "make some partitions and file systems on the hard drive, mount them in a known place, untar the stage 3 tarball into it, chroot into it and install the packages you need for a basic linux box via emerge, fix up fstab, compile and install a kernel and then set up grub or lilo, reboot" you'd know what I mean, and be able to get 90% of ther way there. keep it up, its worth the effort IMHO. > Cheers, > > Steve > -- Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
