Subject: Regarding Gentoo Linux
From: henderson (mhen1@home.com)
Date: Thu Feb 14 2002 - 00:12:58 AKST
Howdy all!
Brief Distribution Review of Gentoo Linux for AKLUG
I have had the pleasant but "entertaining" experience of downloading and
installing a source based distribution - Gentoo. (www.gentoo.org) .
I read some reviews and was impressed by the insights of Daniel Robbins
the architect of Gentoo on the need have a package management system
that truly addressed dependency issues and built all all gnu
tools/operating system and kernel from sources.
My experience was that it took 8 or 9 attempts of some hours each. I am
not geekish enough to have done it more quickly.
But it was worth it. There is so much power and flexibility in Linux
that Mandrake (which I kind of like except for size) and Redhat "protect
us" from learning.
My initial Linux teacher/guru was Afanassy Thompson of CLUG ,who used to
post here while he was yet amongst us. He was always threatening to do
a LFS (LinuxFromScratch) build but who has such time.
Gentoo does such a build but has an advanced package management
system. It is called "portage" and is based upon "emerge" and "ebuild"
....there is more information on this at <
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/portage-user.html >.The Gentoo builds a system
for my own architecture (a slow K6-2 366) and I installed the xdm window
manager and a XFCE desktop (which is lightening fast).... I had to
recompile the kernel a couple of times (well 12) to get everything
right....ReiserFS, OSS sound drivers, devfs built in. This is the very
first time I have
I realized on my first boot that I had never had to build a /home/xxx
directory for myself...It has always been managed by graphical tools
(even in Slackware) but now I had the opportunity to begin to learn how
to do some simple stuff...again newbie stuff I had been "shielded"
from. There is excellent documentation on building/installing the
Desktop from Source
< http://www.gentoo.org/doc/desktop.html > and this was helpful.
Initially one to install:
" you will need to have a 486+ processor, and ideally at least 64
Megabytes of RAM. (Gentoo linux has
been successfully built with 64MB of RAM + 64MB of swap space, but the
build process is awfully slow under those conditions.) To
begin the install process, first grab the latest 16Mb build CD ISO image
(build-ix86-1.0_rc6-r11.iso is the latest at the time this
article was written) from
http://www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/snapshots/build/ix86-linux-gnu/. Then,
create your own CD-ROM using this image
and your preferred CD burning software. " from <
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/build.html >
Using this image I modprobed my NIC and connected (in my case dhcpd ---)
to my server and "emerged" rsync and then from the cd I copied basic
build files...then continued with the install per the clear and good
instructions at
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/build.html.
Part of the significance for me was "using" linux tools. I have never
utilized dhpcd before always doing a connection setting up with a static
IP address - which is fine...but in fact I did not KNOW how to connect
using the simple tools linux provides...having always stumbled over
syntax....Either in Alaska or in South Dakota I have found myself
isolated physically from other Linux users so Internet and groups such
as this have been essential. The Gentoo-User group gave me specific
help within minutes when I had a syntax problem with dhcpd (I was not
flagging the "name" of my computer @home and its local descendant use)
...
If one does not have a fast internet connection such as many of us in
Alaska thats ok...one can get from someone who does the build CD and
burn cd('s) of sources and "emerge" from the cd's....packages that are
not XF86 and KDE and not oversize of course can be downloaded vip ppp
.....one can also build from a server on a LAN which mirrors current
sources.....
Building XF86 takes "t i m e" and KDE about 3 times as much ...but it is
certainly worth it. I opted for XFCE as a Desktop Manager since it is
small and fast.
My computer has never moved so fast.....I have had this K6-2 for some 3
years ---built it and now I have built upon it the Linux Operating
system and Gentoo Linux made this possible.
Check it out. Best thing since Slackware Arthur.
Father Benjamin from Nikolaevsk
Alaskan in exile in South Dakota Territory
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a23 : Thu Feb 14 2002 - 00:13:58 AKST