How many gentoo users do we have out here?

Recently started delving into it, and i am extatic. It has the command line cabalities of apt-get (debians source grabber) using emerege. Love how it automatically downloads and installs the sources from a source tree. Makes things alot easier.

This post has been edited by microscopic^earthling: Aug 18 2005, 02:23 AM

Easier? Easier than what? I'm afraid to use gentoo. If there is one thing I still don't have the balls to use ... it's gentoo.... inspite of using linux for over a year now. With the download speed I've got, it'll take 2 whole days just to download and install KDE!!! And, if anything happens (God forbid!) to the installation and you have to reinstall, you've wasted 2 days of your life!!! . Sorry, I'm gonna stick with ready to install and go type distros like slackware. . If I want to do a reinstall, all I;ve got to do is pop the CD in and in a 45 min or so, I'm good to go.

abhiram, you sound like some one is stiking a gun at you...chill out..dont use gentoo. Its not the end of the world . Use some other distribution. Gentoo is not meant for normal Linux use. It will make you learn more about your computer and operating system than what average user should know. Try other distros like OpenSuSe and Ubuntu.Also what you could do is install gentoo from inside another linux . that way your precious 2 days of life wont be wasted . Go through settings and when its time to connect to internet just fetch all sources ..ie emerge -f system or emerge -f mozilla-firefox (ofcourse after setting the USE flags so you download only the stuff you need). Then you can install it later.

Anoter way is to download Gentoo Packages CD. IMO gentoo is the best OS right now for an uber geek like me. For normal user ..any major linux distro (aslso see www.distrowatch.com should suffice)

helric, i am a gentoo user for last 2 years. and Linxu suer for almost 41/2 years. I have come to know linux more ..just because of gentoo. Recently I helped one of my friends installing gentoo on his system. He was skeptical first and was very jittery the entire time the system was being compiled (i used -O2 flags and not -O3 , otherwise it would have taken alot more time and he would have chicked out.)

Just today he was boasting about his new fast system on lunch table (ofcouarse mentioning my help and thanking me .

Sorry man, ... just the thought of having to let your computer just sit there for 2 whole days and not touch it at all.... no songs, games or net.



How do you do that? I might try it out if it doesn't take so long to install.

I don't use Gentoo because it takes too long to compile on my machine.

System specs (simplified)
Intel Pentium 4 2533 MHZ
512 MB DDR SDRAM
120 GB HDD 7200 RPM 8MB Cache
80GB HDD 7200 RPM 8MB Cache

xboxrulz

Not that that sounds like a slow machine or anything...

But no, I am not, and will never be a gentoo user.
If I wanted to use linux, I would use it, but I don't like linux.

I'm an OpenBSD user. One of the few and the proud..or does anyone use OpenBSD out here?

im a gentoo user !!!!!

Gentoo is pretty much the opposite to OpenBSD in manyways.
Okay Okay there both Unix like, and both make excellent servers,

But Gentoo is Bleeding edge, very up to date, patched, and secure.
Can be an excelent server or desktop machine.

OpenBSD usually runs quite old versions of software,
only uses code that has been checked checked, and re-checked at the code levels for mistakes, bugs and holes. And is 100% aimed for use as a server.

I dont need that level of securety, and i use my machine as a desktop more than a server, so if anything i would go for FreeBSD or DesktopBSD.

Well what you could do is simply boot in your linux .. and dowload the stage you want to download. If you want a fully customized system then you download Stage 1 ..but it takes alot more time. Download Stage 2 or Stage 3 to get things up and running in lesser time . You can always recompile every thing once your working desktop (for me it would be Working X and Mozilla + mplayer) installed.

Then after you download the stage use the guide to compile it. Once you chroot into tyhe stage you will be inside the gentoo system ..its all in the Gentoo HandBook. It would take some time . May be a day or 2 to compile alot of stuff. If you have a slow internet connection i would recomend not to do so. Other wise you can always sacrifice a day or two for this experimentation. Believe me when i say it ...if you get this installed...you will never use any thing else ..for a very long time ()€may be when u get really old and think that computer is very fast for you ..ull switch back to Windows ..)

PM me if you have any more questions

Well, since you rate it so high, I'd like to check it out... but right now, my univ's net connection is at an all time low. So it might be a while before I try to install gentoo. Anyway, thanks for the info. For the time being, I'll have to continue with slackware.

if u want 100% customizability, go for Linux From Scratch

xboxrulz