[Tfug] OS`s

[Quag7]

On Thu, 2004-07-15 at 18:39, Matthew T. Eskes wrote:
> Im not going to lie. The first time installing Gentoo is like pulling
> teeth. But there are tons of docs at their website that are EXCELENT and

You know, Mandrake was my first Linux distribution, and after 3 months
of it I was tired of things breaking (This is not a slag on present day
Mandrake - this was a long time ago, several versions ago).  So, as a
joke I went to install Gentoo, not having learned much from Mandrake,
and to my surprise I got it up and running on a Stage 1 install by just
carefully following the instructions.

Sometimes new users do run into issues, but I didn't.  And I regret not
just trying Gentoo first.  I learned where a lot of things were on the
system that way, and I really think Gentoo is a superb first
distribution, because once you've done that, every other distribution is
pretty easy to find your way around in (FreeBSD too).  I use Debian on
my router because it's an older system and I don't want to spend forever
compiling things on it.  I could definitely see Debian as my first
choice alternative to Gentoo.

Probably that's the best thing about Gentoo for new users -- learning
where things are, learning to configure things from scratch, taking you
through compiling a kernel.  It's not that it's rocket science by any
means, but it's a good "introduction to Linux" distribution, and I
really haven't wanted to use anything else on my desktop.

A lot of people slag Gentoo users for thinking they're, I don't know,
l33t hax0rs or something, but I don't know anyone who runs it for that
reason.  It's just very comfortable once you get it set up.  Maybe all
distros are like that if you use them long enough.  Some people seem to
think all other Gentoo users think that Gentoo is faster and leaner, but
I've not noticed anything special about its speed over Mandrake.

I like Gentoo because it is well documented, and "bare," along with some
nifty tools to save you time and headaches.  You can definitely see some
influence of FreeBSD in Gentoo.  When I ran FreeBSD for a week or so, it
ran a lot faster than Linux did, for whatever reason.  I actually really
like FreeBSD and would like to make another computer here available to
run it.  Mostly, FreeBSD did everything I wanted to do; I used mostly
the same applications there as I did in Linux.

As for burning CDs, I use something called K3B, which is a KDE app, but
I run it under Gnome.  This is a very user friendly GUI application. 
I've successfully burned data DVDs, CDs, and movie DVDs with it, with no
problem, under Gnome in Gentoo.

If you go the Gentoo route, a piece of advice: Make sure you understand
why you are doing each step in the install docs.  If you don't
understand why they're asking you to type something, ask.  You can
probably ask here, check the gentoo forums (which are superb, I think)
at forums.gentoo.org, or log onto the #gentoo channel on
irc.freenode.net.  Make sure you understand what you're doing and why
you're doing it.  That's really the key.  It will serve you well in the
end if you want to go back and change something.  As Matthew said, the
install docs really are superb.  As much as Gentoo's reputation is
difficult, it's really just a matter of following a list of pretty
simple instructions.

As for the 48 hour compile time, I wanted to stress here since some
people get a little worried about this, that most of this is
*noninteractive* time.  By which I mean, you start compiling and then go
to bed and let it grind overnight.  You don't have to sit in front of
the computer for a 48 hour marathon :)

Mommy's alright, Daddy's alright, they just seem a little
weiiiiiiiird...

-- 
coldfront at frostwarning.com
http://www.frostwarning.com/users/quagseven