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by **Void Main** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 12:19 pm

Well, since VMware server went free (as in gratis) I decided to install and test some other distributions that I hadn't yet had a chance to play with. I decided Gentoo is one that I always wanted to try. Well, two days later I am on the last step of the Quick Install Guide. I started the "emerge gnome" this morning before going to work. I see it is still running and I am sure it will take all day. Hopefully it will be finished before I get home. :)

I started with the minimal network install CD image. Everything is done manually which is something I am very comfortable with and used to have to do back in the old days of Linux (before the distro). This is good for someone who wants to learn and understand Linux on a bit of a lower level. It certainly would not be for someone who just wants to do a quick install and just browse the internet. The only/biggest advantage to this distro that I can see up to this point is it is source based which means every package installed will be optimized to your system if you just have to get that last ounce of performance out of it.

by **Master of Reality** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 1:01 pm

i found it really simplifies things for you so you dont really learn all the low level stuff the gentoo fanboys claim. I'd say slackware makes you get into the low level stuff more than Gentoo does.

I also decided that the optimization wasnt worth waiting for everything to compile.

by **Void Main** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 1:45 pm

Yeah that's true. It simplifies obtaining and compiling packages which would put it between something like a Linux from Scratch and a Debian. I also agree on the optimization time is probably not a good tradeoff in most situations.

by **Void Main** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 6:26 pm

Woohoo, 12 hours after "emerge gnome" it's done 213 of 335 packages! Only another 6 hours to go! Installing Gentoo is like watching paint dry. Actually paint doesn't take nearly this long to dry. :)

by **Void Main** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 9:04 pm

Only 84 more packages to go before my desktop is installed. Hopefully it's done by tomorrow sometime. :)

by **Void Main** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 6:08 am

Hey, gnome install finished in 1312m43.918s (22 hours).

by **JoeDude** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 1:44 pm

In the famous words of Dr Phil...

"How's that workin for ya?"

by **Void Main** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 2:57 pm

I actually don't know yet. I saw it finished before I had to go to work but it still needs to be configured before I'll be able to start X. :) Hopefully tonight I'll get a chance to work on it a little more.

by **Void Main** » Wed Jul 19, 2006 8:24 pm

I gotta tell you. The more I play around with Gentoo the more I like it. I'm not saying it's better than anything else but it reminds me a little bit of Ubuntu in that is seems highly refined. It would be nice if they had a good selection of binary software repositories so you could get a system up quickly and then rebuild at some point in the future if you feel so inclined. I believe this is actually possible to some extent now in that there are some binary repositories out there however, I don't know as to whether they are kept up to date or if there are high speed mirrors. I also believe if you get the full install CD you might be able to do this but I need to do a little more investigating to be sure. Anyone who knows care to help me out? Thanks!

by **Master of Reality** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 4:09 pm

i think theres a few binary repos... but far from complete ones. The main objective of the project is to build everything from source.

It would be nice if it was like FreeBSD a bit more and had a decent binary portage tree.

by **Calum** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 11:46 am

that is atrocious.

no matter how optimal it gets, 13 thousand minutes for installing a system is pathetic.

am i missing something?

by **Void Main** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 12:20 pm

Calum wrote:that is atrocious.

no matter how optimal it gets, 13 thousand minutes for installing a system is pathetic.

am i missing something?

Well yes you are missing a little something. It's 13 hundred minutes, not 13 thousand. That's just as bad though considering that's just for the base desktop environment (not the OS and not any apps). I would agree with the atrocious statement. :)

by **Calum** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 6:36 am

yep, typos notwithstanding, it's still atrocious.

i'd go so far as to say preposterous too.

by **Void Main** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 8:14 am

Unconscionable!

by **Master of Reality** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 5:55 pm

by the time you get everything compiled, its onto the next version, so you need to do it again to upgrade eh.

actually... i guess its smarter than that and doesnt have to re-compile the whole thing when upgrading?

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