I would consider Gentoo to be Linux (From Scratch + Package Management)

There's nothing you can do in LFS that you cannoy in Gentoo.
Plus, installing the base of LFS includes hours of typing out word for word endless cycles of..



over and over and over.

when in gentoo, you get all the customisbility, but you can skip the hours / days of build time with a simple



I would treat Linux from scratch as a learning experiance more than an every day use desktop distro.

I built a few Linux from scratch systems. And now i have a much greater understanding of how GNU and Linux work, but im still a gentoo fan

ok... so, let's say I want to install gentoo right now. I've got a windows xp and a slackware 10.1 installation already. Computer configuration is as follows:

1. Linux partition : 7GB EXT3
2. Windows : 128GB in NTFS and 15GB in FAT32.

I want to install gentoo on a trial basis only. I don't want to lose either of my installations because they are heavily customised and working as fine and as fast as I could tune them to. Is there any way to try gentoo out as a regular install? I know going for a virtual machine is one option, but for some reason I dislike using virtual machines. Will it be possible to install gentoo and again change everything back to the way it was without any harm?

Thanks.

cant you just 'steal' a bit of space from one of your partitions and in stall in there. my friends gentoo is only about 3 gig and that includes all software needed for a family pc.

also note about gentoo - my friends installed gentoo as a dual boot on his family pc. it a p3 family spec blah blah blah... now he has a massive increase on the speed of everything and converted all but his younger brother who still plays games. both his parents are avid users all he has to to is upkeep it.

you could.... boot the gentoo instalation CD, and when you get to the par about configureing the disks, instead of formatting a parttion, simple crate a new folder in your slackware pastiton called "slacky" and move everything in the linux partiton into "slacky" then install gentoo as normal.

after you want slack back, boot gentoo install cd, then delete everything in the root linux partiton EXCEPT "slacky" then move the contents of "slacky" back to where it stared.

OR you could use parted to resize your 128GB NTFS partiton to make space for a new Gentoo partiton.



i know !!! its amasing isnt it !
When you know your system well, and set the optimisation to match your CPU, and set the USE flags up to vut out the bloat you dont want, the system just flys.

I was compiling a new kernel, AND compiling a load of KDE components (compiling 4 things at the same time) the CPU was at 100% in use, but the desktop, web browser, and everything remained perfectly responcive, the desktop was acting asif the CPU was just idle. totally took me by surprise.

Ive started shouting at other distro's and Windows fo beeing slow to react when somthings going on in the background, lol.

And dont even get me started on Emerge Portage.

All distro's should use portage !

You mean move everything from / to '/slacky'. But what about the bootloader? Won't that get all messed up? How will I restore the bootloader if I want slack back the way it was. Sorry for being a pest, but I just want to know for sure before I proceed. I've spent days with this customisation.



No, I can't do that. Too much data in those partitions. There are 3 partitions on the whole and each one has a ton of music, games and movies.

Parted can re-size your partitons without deleting the data on them.

for example, if your windows partiton has 20Gb free, you could shink it by 10Gb, and make a new 10Gb linux partiton.

Next time you boot windows, it would be exactly the same, but show a 110Gig disk instead of 120.

As for the boot loader....
The boot loader is installed to the MBR. moving everything to /slacky/ will only move the boot loaders config file /boot/grub/menu.lst

when you install gentoo, this will be replaced by gentoo's grub config file.

when you move back to slackware, you would delete everything gentoo, and move slackware's grub config back into /boot.

In Theory, the boot loader should not be messed up.

and if the boot loader does stop working, you can fix it with the command

Hi Quijibow,

I'll try it out for sure now. I'll do it as soon as I get some free time. Got some exams coming up . Thanks for the detailed info.

When I decided two days ago that I wanted to start messing around with Linux, I immediately went for Gentoo. I downloaded a Stage 3 Live CD ISO, as well as a package ISO (from work, where I have access to broadband). I would have liked to have gone with a Stage 1, however I am on a dial-up and that would not have been practical. This leads me to my next point...

That package CD does not contain a full KDE or GNOME GRP. I found this out after spending eight hours compiling and installing the kernel, the boot loader, Xorg, Xterm, and all that stuff. I was not pleased.

Gentoo was loads of fun though. That may sound strange, but I've been coding since I was 12, and I started my computing life with DOS. Because of these two things, the Gentoo installation procedure wasn't too foreign for me.

Also, I won't say that my time spent installing a doomed Gentoo system was wasted. Quite the opposite really. Now that I'm using Fedora 4 (install time ~10 minutes, including compilation), I actually know my system. I can make changes to fstab, the network configuration, and all that stuff without having to figure out where the GUI app is.

Now, if only I could find a guide to recompiling the Fedora kernel...
And find the disk partitioner..

Eh, I'm new

But yea, Gentoo is very cool. Just about any distro that allows you to compile the kernel during the installation procedure is cool in my book. For instance, I don't have an ISDN connection, and I don't use PCMCIA, SICI, or anything like that. With Gentoo, I can just not compile that stuff into the kernel. With Fedora, I have no choice in the matter.

Go Go Gentoo EMERGE!
QBRADQ

Compileing the kernel is exactly the same in all distro's

cd into the kernel source.

prepair the kernel tree for a re-compile


optional: copy a base config file


optional: id the base config was for a different kernel version, update the config file.


optional: tweak the kernel config


compile the kernel, compile the drivers.


install the kernel


and finally edit /boot/grub/menu.lst
to load the new kernel.

Wow... 8 hours compile time just for the kernel !!!
lucky me with my AMD64 3400+

i can usually get a Full KDE desktop compiled from stage3 in an afternoon.