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Well, after touching mandrake for 1 week I was bored. To be honest it was teaching me nothing more then windows was, its too much of a "hold my hand" OS with maybe a few added features. I craved more, I wanted something that could teach me about Linux rather then just "replicate windows".
So I went in search of another distribution, something "hardcore", something I could get stuck into. Alas, I rememberd U.K had mentioned this distro so I though "Meh, may aswell" and downloaded it. Thank god I did aswell, Its absolutely brilliant. Yes you install everything from the command line, but its not that bad. And i've come back with more knowledge then ever, the install isn't exactly hard but it gives you the knowhow on the most common CLI commands, I've spent the last week installing, formatting and re-installing again (due to certain network issues) and i'm just about to emerge my portage tree.
Point of this post? Er, Just to say thanks to U.K for reccomending the useage of gentoo. If anyone wants to learn a new OS and more about their computer then I think a migration to gentoo is in order.
Gentoo = God.
So I went in search of another distribution, something "hardcore", something I could get stuck into. Alas, I rememberd U.K had mentioned this distro so I though "Meh, may aswell" and downloaded it. Thank god I did aswell, Its absolutely brilliant. Yes you install everything from the command line, but its not that bad. And i've come back with more knowledge then ever, the install isn't exactly hard but it gives you the knowhow on the most common CLI commands, I've spent the last week installing, formatting and re-installing again (due to certain network issues) and i'm just about to emerge my portage tree.
Point of this post? Er, Just to say thanks to U.K for reccomending the useage of gentoo. If anyone wants to learn a new OS and more about their computer then I think a migration to gentoo is in order.
Gentoo = God.
Gentoo is a lot faster than the more popular Linux distros (Redhat, Debian etc.) but you'll only notice the difference if you really do things that challenge the machine.
A guy I work with runs Gentoo, although was running Redhat for a while and the time taken to carry out some tasks went from minutes to seconds, going from Redhat to Gentoo, but obviously if you're just using it as a basic desktop on a fairly powerful machine you just won't notice the difference.
A guy I work with runs Gentoo, although was running Redhat for a while and the time taken to carry out some tasks went from minutes to seconds, going from Redhat to Gentoo, but obviously if you're just using it as a basic desktop on a fairly powerful machine you just won't notice the difference.
Mandrake is frankly, rubbish.
Well its good, but pants if you want to learn about Linux properly. Its more of just a "windows replacement" kind of thing.
I had major troubles with my Ati Radeon card and gentoo, mainly because of the Via KT600 chipset which the driver for it is a bit fishy. A quick upgrade to kernel 2.6 did the job and i'm back up and running with X working.
Unfortunatly KDE isn't emerging properly at the moment, I think thats an error on my behalf as I never read the instructions beforehand.
Well its good, but pants if you want to learn about Linux properly. Its more of just a "windows replacement" kind of thing.
I had major troubles with my Ati Radeon card and gentoo, mainly because of the Via KT600 chipset which the driver for it is a bit fishy. A quick upgrade to kernel 2.6 did the job and i'm back up and running with X working.
Unfortunatly KDE isn't emerging properly at the moment, I think thats an error on my behalf as I never read the instructions beforehand.
I don't find compiling code to be a hassle at all: I just type two words and let it do its stuff in the background. The second time I installed Gentoo I actually used binary packages for KDE et al and then emerged newer versions from source while I carried on working. But, despite getting a big speed increase over Mandrake, optimisiation isn't as important to me as the other reasons I gave for using Gentoo.
I missed out 'learning the OS' as well.
I missed out 'learning the OS' as well.
Quite the opposite I found Gentoo slow and buggy. Compiling code is a hassle and just not worth it. Hours waiting for a small speed increase, far too small to notice. Also the ports system is up to date but they simply don't have the testing base that Debian has - most of it is alpha code and broken. This kind of stuff stays out of Debian for a reason (unless you use esperimental).
Furthermore the #debian channel is renown for being one of the most helpful around.
Gentoo has the right idea but they're trying to do something that already been done 10 years ago and was done a lot lot better as well. Debian has stood the test of time and it shows. If you're so desparate to compile code, use apt-src.
Furthermore the #debian channel is renown for being one of the most helpful around.
Gentoo has the right idea but they're trying to do something that already been done 10 years ago and was done a lot lot better as well. Debian has stood the test of time and it shows. If you're so desparate to compile code, use apt-src.
Glad you're enjoying it.
I didn't use Debian for long enough to comment sensibly on it but the reasons I use Gentoo are:
Its helpful, friendly community - unlike many Linux forums 'RTFM' is not the default answer. And it's where I learnt to do such useful things as 'cat /dev/hda1 > /dev/dsp' and then extract an archive.
Portage - which I've found infinitely easier than the so-called user-friendly distros' package management systems.
Speed.
Up-to-datedness.
The fact that the developers are open to new ideas.
And the idea itself, which I just think is extremely cool.
I still have a love-hate relationship with Linux, despite Gentoo. Last week I changed from an nvidia to a Radeon graphics card and - due to my own stupid mistakes - had to recompile the kernel about six times in a row. Not a happy time. But we're back together again now.
I didn't use Debian for long enough to comment sensibly on it but the reasons I use Gentoo are:
Its helpful, friendly community - unlike many Linux forums 'RTFM' is not the default answer. And it's where I learnt to do such useful things as 'cat /dev/hda1 > /dev/dsp' and then extract an archive.
Portage - which I've found infinitely easier than the so-called user-friendly distros' package management systems.
Speed.
Up-to-datedness.
The fact that the developers are open to new ideas.
And the idea itself, which I just think is extremely cool.
I still have a love-hate relationship with Linux, despite Gentoo. Last week I changed from an nvidia to a Radeon graphics card and - due to my own stupid mistakes - had to recompile the kernel about six times in a row. Not a happy time. But we're back together again now.
I tried Gentoo and deleted it. Why? Because Debian is better. Simply.
Well, after touching mandrake for 1 week I was bored. To be honest it was teaching me nothing more then windows was, its too much of a "hold my hand" OS with maybe a few added features. I craved more, I wanted something that could teach me about Linux rather then just "replicate windows".
So I went in search of another distribution, something "hardcore", something I could get stuck into. Alas, I rememberd U.K had mentioned this distro so I though "Meh, may aswell" and downloaded it. Thank god I did aswell, Its absolutely brilliant. Yes you install everything from the command line, but its not that bad. And i've come back with more knowledge then ever, the install isn't exactly hard but it gives you the knowhow on the most common CLI commands, I've spent the last week installing, formatting and re-installing again (due to certain network issues) and i'm just about to emerge my portage tree.
Point of this post? Er, Just to say thanks to U.K for reccomending the useage of gentoo. If anyone wants to learn a new OS and more about their computer then I think a migration to gentoo is in order.
Gentoo = God.
So I went in search of another distribution, something "hardcore", something I could get stuck into. Alas, I rememberd U.K had mentioned this distro so I though "Meh, may aswell" and downloaded it. Thank god I did aswell, Its absolutely brilliant. Yes you install everything from the command line, but its not that bad. And i've come back with more knowledge then ever, the install isn't exactly hard but it gives you the knowhow on the most common CLI commands, I've spent the last week installing, formatting and re-installing again (due to certain network issues) and i'm just about to emerge my portage tree.
Point of this post? Er, Just to say thanks to U.K for reccomending the useage of gentoo. If anyone wants to learn a new OS and more about their computer then I think a migration to gentoo is in order.
Gentoo = God.