Gentoo

[Ian W.]

Originally Posted by kid robusto

Ok the machine i want to put it on is a P1 @200/233 with 192 meg of ram, 2ish gig HDD, and soem other crap. my next queston is i saw read about universal Live Cd, but i cant seem to find it on any FTPs, and i see the stage ones for the i686 and the x86's are only like 15 or 20 megish, is that right for size?

You may need a bigger harddrive as well. Since Gentoo compiles everything from scratch, you need a pretty decent sized harddrive to hold temporary compilation files. For instance, OpenOffice.org (which will take a year to compile on that machine) will use over 2 or 3 GB alone during compilation (from my own experience).

Another few things you might want to look into on a computer that slow are DistCC and CCache. DistCC is a Distributed Computing Client, it basically takes other Linux (or Windows running various Linux emulators) machines and uses them to help compile faster. It's not too hard to setup, I believe there's a good document on Gentoo's site, if not just check their forums out, they're one of the best Linux forums I've seen (http://forums.gentoo.org). Look around for Lisa there, she's the developer incharge of DistCC.

As for CCache, it'll take compiles and save them, so if you're compiling the same program over again, it'll go faster. It won't work well with that small of a harddrive, but if you can find a bigger harddrive it can't necessarily hurt to have.

All in all, Gentoo is a very good disto, it's taught me almost all that I know about Linux. If you can, definitely run a Stage 1 installation, because it'll help you to make some connections about how everything works, if you don't already know.

I must say, it's kind of interesting to see how many people use Linux, even more specifically Gentoo, in FIRST. I guess we might be changing the world in more than one way?

[kid robusto]

letting the P1 box sit there for a week or two isnt a problem, becasue this box has been sitting uner my stairs for a few weeks,and has no other use.

i D/led the Univerisal live CD for x86, and now im going to get the stage 1 file, should i burn it as a .tar.bz2 or do i need to do somethign special to it first?

[MikeDubreuil]

Originally Posted by kid robusto

letting the P1 box sit there for a week or two isnt a problem, becasue this box has been sitting uner my stairs for a few weeks,and has no other use.

i D/led the Univerisal live CD for x86, and now im going to get the stage 1 file, should i burn it as a .tar.bz2 or do i need to do somethign special to it first?

Burn it to a data CD, as a .tar.bz2

[Joe Ross]

I tried gentoo a few times, and I have to say that it has the dishonor of being the only linux distribution that I tried where something "broke" without me doing anything.

I set up gentoo from stage 2 on my laptop, and got everything working as I wanted. I used it a few times with no problems (it was installed along side my normal distribution, debian). Then, I didn't touch it for a few months. Then, when I booted into gentoo again, my wireless didn't work. The module no longer wanted to load into the kernel and I had to recompile it.

I'm sure Gentoo is good for a lot of people, just not for me.

[Ian W.]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

I tried gentoo a few times, and I have to say that it has the dishonor of being the only linux distribution that I tried where something "broke" without me doing anything.

I set up gentoo from stage 2 on my laptop, and got everything working as I wanted. I used it a few times with no problems (it was installed along side my normal distribution, debian). Then, I didn't touch it for a few months. Then, when I booted into gentoo again, my wireless didn't work. The module no longer wanted to load into the kernel and I had to recompile it.

I'm sure Gentoo is good for a lot of people, just not for me.

Well, the problem was letting it sit for a few months ;-). Gentoo is one of those bleeding edge distros, everything changes so often, recompiling a new kernel isn't a huge deal. Or at least for me.