On Mon, 13 May 2002 07:01:48 -0500 "David A. Bandel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sun, 12 May 2002 23:01:57 -0400 > begin dep <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> spewed forth: > > > hey, gang! > > > > y'know what the world needs? yet another linux distribution! > > > > now, i admit that you might attribute this notion to the fact that > > i'm on some pretty fearsomely effective painkillers at the moment > > due to a physician who probably should have been a meat packer, > > but hear me out. > [snip] > > Well, I have my distro, "Chiriqui Linux", based somewhat loosely on > LFS(Linux From Scratch). I keep it small so I can boot and run off > a CD(even run without a hard disk), but it has X 4.2.0 and a whole > bunch of other things I use a lot. I use it for my wireless access > points, and more. Doesn't have KDE, but I don't use that anyway. > My laptop has been running this for a while now. I split the disk > into two big chunks, update one chunk, run from that, and in a > couple of months I update the other chunk and run from that. I take > care of all the little details too(like the pcmcia includes from the > pcmcia-cs package being copied to the kernel, etc.). > > My system, though, has no install method, no package update method > (other than recompile and reinstall). Everything is scripted, so I > just start the scripts and let it run. If I need to update a > package, I just update the reference to the package and run the > compile/install script. > > So it can be done, but it's a lot of work (or just a lot of time d/l > package sources and letting the install scripts run). >
I use a somewhat similar but less work-intensive approach with gentoo. I alternate between two (or more) partitions on my hard drive. Frequently (and certainly before any major upgrades) I clone the current system to the alternate partition and verify that the alternate will boot (about a 35-40 minute process). Uses 'cp -a' to copy each directory with permanent contents, and modify the fstab. A few hours a week I spend upgrading anything new. If the results are acceptable, I remain on the current system; otherwise I revert to the clone. I've only needed to do this once in the past year and a half (that was when gentoo moved to the current system of init scripts and I fat fingered the upgrade.) My system is totally current, but not bleeding edge, and it's rock solid. Other gentoo users are gratefully chewing up the gcc 3 stuff and happily suffering with the non-stable results. All on basically the same distro. I occasionally install kde3 just to see what's changed, but otherwise I ignore it. Since a primary gentoo developer works kde3, I don't have to do much other than wait for a stable ebuild to be released and then spend 6-7 hours compling it and qt. I currently have gnome libs installed, because I like using galeon, but you can get most of what galeon offers with plain old mozilla. There are quite a number of threads on gentoo (as for any other distro) about the fun of installing to a laptop. I'm glad I don't need that right now. Like everything else with gentoo, installing to a laptop is a one-time painful scenario. After that it's all gold. -- Collins Richey - Denver Area - WWTLRD? gentoo(since 01/01/01) 2.4.19+(ext3) xfce-sylpheed-mozilla _______________________________________________ Linux-users mailing list - http://linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Archives,and Digests are located at the above URL.
