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"gamesfreak!!! (Gentoo stuff)"

You've installed Gentoo; how is it now? I want to install it onto my existing PC, does it have a installer that gets things automatically running? If not, how did you install everything up to the point where a GUi was present?

Yeah yeah, RTFM, but I don't have the time and really need a fast apprach to installing it. Thanks.

Ah yes, Gentoo + Laptops are a bit of a difficulty to setup.

Good man

Oh even the install for Mandrake didn't go smoothly. WOuldn't install some packages and it kept returning to the same point in a loop. Had to reboot and skip a few steps to the saving a bootloader part, which was risky as I was solely relying on the Mandrake boot CD as the only device that would boot.

Heh, well the install didn't start with Gentoo, it froze when loading something into memory at before...

But, I've found a distro that does work with the laptop, in theform of Mandrake... I like it so far, all I really needed was any Linux that would let me access the uni server from home and let me run their programs. And for that, it works fine.

It crashed today though, when I left my connection to the uni seerver idle for a while. Heh to that.

I might try Gentoo on my other PC using a dedicated hard drive if I have time, which won't be for a while. Thanks for your advice though, I'm saving it for the future.

So ,er, How did ya get on mate?

Installing gentoo on the quick for the first time won't be easy, Its probs best to leave some time and use the pre-compiled packages method, or if you are feeling a bit frisky, go for a stage 1 install (compile + download EVERYTHING).

The only problem with this install is I guarantee you'll feck up on it, I did on quite a few occasions leaving me with no other option then to start again and go over where I went wrong. There is no automated install, its all commandline based, and everything requires to be compiled from source. Its interesting though, I managed to learn one heck of a lot of stuff just from the install process, enabling me to continue and move onto the installation of important stuff such as KDE/X.

I think the best method is to allocate yourself some time to get down and work at it, write notes on how your doing your install, and I know you said don't say "RTFM" but the manuel is rather excellent in my opinion, print it off and have a flick through. If all fails, have a talk to the excellent gentoo forums (Very helpful, very friendly, excellent) they'll push you on your path.

In the meantime, my install is perfect! I made my installation of gentoo what is today, The developers (I praise them highly) made the base, I built over it. Personalising it with my own touch, adding crazy fonts and themes, running commands at startup. It's my own Gentoo, I made it. I think thats why Gentoo is so special, You make it what you want it to be. Just want a simple internet browsing system? Simple. Want a music storing system? XMMS and GRIP is the answer my friend.

I'm happy with my setup, I made it what it is today, and with a bit of effort its well worth the time. So post install? What now? Well i've got a brilliantly stable O/S, loads of cool tools and I know exactly what I want. I only dual boot into windows for games, which is a shame in my opinion, I would of loved to have linux fully DirectX compatible, but we can't have everything!

*Opens Kdevelop* - Excellent for C.

Anyway, feel free to ask any questions, i'm sure unknown kernel or myself with be more then happy to answer your questions.

Miserableman wrote:
> it refused to boot. I'd cocked something up,

That happened to me too - turned out to be a lack/surplus of spaces in my GRUB configuration files. Very annoying.

There is no really quick method of installing gentoo. You can install it fairly quickly using precompiled packages on the CDs (the only thing you have to compile IIRC is the kernel, but it can automatically generate the configuration for you) but this is still command line based and pretty damn manual. The install docs are really excellent but getting to the GUI stage isn't straightforward or quick, especially if you have anything non-standard. I managed to crash Li-unbreakable-nux several times when starting X just by telling it my mouse was in the wrong place. That was a fun afternoon.

Icarus wrote:
> Yeah yeah, RTFM, but I don't have the time and really need a fast
> apprach to installing it. Thanks.

I don't believe there is one. I spent approximately 6 hours installing Gentoo, and it refused to boot. I'd cocked something up, but I was in no mood to redo everything from square one.

Back to Debian I went, but Debian doesn't work either.

You've installed Gentoo; how is it now? I want to install it onto my existing PC, does it have a installer that gets things automatically running? If not, how did you install everything up to the point where a GUi was present?

Yeah yeah, RTFM, but I don't have the time and really need a fast apprach to installing it. Thanks.