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On the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter they say:

The XFree team has changed their license policy two weeks ago, to something that isn't compatible to the GPL any longer. The Gentoo developers have already drawn their own conclusions from this, and will refrain from adding XFree86 versions under the new license scheme to the portage tree for the time being.

a) You can chroot into the Gentoo environment and compile whatever while multitasking. I'm actually compiling gcc right now in a VMWare window from XP. You're saying that Mandrake can't do something that XP can? ;-)

b) Check out the second CD in the big LiveCD set. My God, it's full of binaries! KDE, Gnome, the lot. It's available for x86, PPC and Sparc. Read more about it here.

Apache:
stable 2.0.48-r1
unstable 2.0.48-r4
link
You realize you can unstable packages on a stable system, right? You also realize unstable updates like 5x as often, right? I recommend running a stable system with a few unstable packages if you need them.

Points 2 and 3 can easily be avoided by merely reading the manual.

Search for "Configuration File Protection" on that page.

As with anything else if you don't bother to RTM you are going to have problems.

Sparc and UltraSparc are both supported. You do, of course, need different CDs / netboot images.

Gentoo/Sparc project page

Portage 2.1 to adopt RPM format for LSB compliance

It's a shame they had to put a disclaimer on it.

For those with more machines who wish to run gentoo, you can use distcc (distributed c compiler) to speed things up. You can use it from the early stages ;)
Gentoo has great documentation on distcc! :)

Have fun!

To upgrade to the 2.6 kernel you need follow the upgrade procedure. Be sure to read about it before you do it or you won't have too much luck.

Here are some topics on the forum you can take a look at (there are many more, just search!):

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=70838 http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=110117&hi ghlight=hdparm http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=117445&hi ghlight=2+6+burner http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=725814

To upgrade to the 2.6 kernel you need follow the upgrade procedure. Be sure to read about it before you do it or you won't have too much luck.

Here are some topics on the forum you can take a look at (there are many more, just search!):

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=70838 http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=110117&hi ghlight=hdparm http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=117445&hi ghlight=2+6+burner http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=725814

To upgrade to the 2.6 kernel you need follow the upgrade procedure. Be sure to read about it before you do it or you won't have too much luck.

Here are some topics on the forum you can take a look at (there are many more, just search!):

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=70838 http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=110117&hi ghlight=hdparm http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=117445&hi ghlight=2+6+burner http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=725814

To upgrade to the 2.6 kernel you need follow the upgrade procedure. Be sure to read about it before you do it or you won't have too much luck.

Here are some topics on the forum you can take a look at (there are many more, just search!):

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=70838 http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=110117&hi ghlight=hdparm http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=117445&hi ghlight=2+6+burner http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=725814

Heh... note the email address Annalee Newitz is using here... she evidentally creates a new mail alias for every column: sugarpill@techsploitation.com

Ah, slash ids pushing a billion and whining about what a sewer it's become...

I've never had a problem getting it all to work first time. Forgot something? emerge packagename and you're done.

The ability to emerge packages as you need them is great - but it is only good once you've got the system working. Remember, that even if you go for a stage 3 install, you still have to manually create your /etc/fstab file, configure grub / lilo, edit XF86Config etc. - which as far as I recall is not required in same way for standard distros. The Gentoo Installation handbook is great - but unless you have pretty standard hardware or don't want / need things like high quality graphics, advanced sound, access to things like CDRW, USBdrives etc. you have to be pretty clued up simply to get it to work. Don't agree? Just go and look at the (brilliantly helpful) gentoo install support forums - it is stuffed full of people struggling (and not always resolving) configuration and set up issues.

Gentoo has a great many things in its favour, but I can't see how anyone would recommend Gentoo as a distribution for a person new to unix - until Gentoo gets closer to offering an equivalent to the automated install of the major distros.

I've never had a problem getting it all to work first time. Forgot something? emerge packagename and you're done.

The ability to emerge packages as you need them is great - but it is only good once you've got the system working. Remember, that even if you go for a stage 3 install, you still have to manually create your /etc/fstab file, configure grub / lilo, edit XF86Config etc. - which as far as I recall is not required in same way for standard distros. The Gentoo Installation handbook is great - but unless you have pretty standard hardware or don't want / need things like high quality graphics, advanced sound, access to things like CDRW, USBdrives etc. you have to be pretty clued up simply to get it to work. Don't agree? Just go and look at the (brilliantly helpful) gentoo install support forums - it is stuffed full of people struggling (and not always resolving) configuration and set up issues.

Gentoo has a great many things in its favour, but I can't see how anyone would recommend Gentoo as a distribution for a person new to unix - until Gentoo gets closer to offering an equivalent to the automated install of the major distros.

How about as modular as gentoo's USE flags? Not that you can't do the same with any of the BSD ports collections.

"much" faster? Only the kernel and glibc make more than a negligible difference; Fedora, Mandrake and other distros offer CPU-specific versions of those.

Wrong. Please troll again. Gentoo is much much faster in some cases.

Diversity is certainly a strength of Linux.

sounds like he's referring to exactly what gentoo is.

Or am I missing something?

I don't know about the distro he's using, but my build of Gentoo only has the packages I want (plus their requirements).

The bottom up model is being used by distros other than Gentoo, too. He's not breaking any new ground or creating any unique ideas IMHO.

Take a look this thread ...it deals with making dvd's from AVI's...and custom menus....

They all seem to be commandline, though, which for me is fine. I do see some of them seem to have GUI tools you can use with them, but, from what I'm reading, people are just writing some custom scripts where they can control all aspects and do as they wish with the files...

The tools I'm looking into are:

• dvdrtools
• libdvdcss
• dvdauthor
• dvdrip
• dvdbackup
• mkisofs

Hope this helps. So far, looks like you can really do a lot with the linux tools, but, it isn't point and click. I remember seeing another thread that was pretty handy..used XML to create your own menuing system...will have to look for that one..

They all seem to be commandline, though, which for me is fine. I do see some of them seem to have GUI tools you can use with them, but, from what I'm reading, people are just writing some custom scripts where they can control all aspects and do as they wish with the files...

The tools I'm looking into are:

• dvdrtools
• libdvdcss
• dvdauthor
• dvdrip
• dvdbackup
• mkisofs

Hope this helps. So far, looks like you can really do a lot with the linux tools, but, it isn't point and click. I remember seeing another thread that was pretty handy..used XML to create your own menuing system...will have to look for that one..

Yup...was very new to setting up an email server. I found this thread very helpful for setting up a simple home email system. Also way down in the thread is help and links for using spamassasin and other heuristic spam filters...

> Also, they can only compile for the lowest common processor. (e.g. A pentium II)

That may be true for traditional proprietary software, but NOT for F/OS Software. Witness Gentoo; I compile everything for my computer's specific processor. And surely you don't believe that the Hotspot Java VM does its optimizations 'for free'! Every runtime optimization check introduces a performance hit.

Try the Gentoo forums. Even if you don't use Gentoo, I almost always find an answer when I search on it. I'm sure you'll be able to ignore the gentoo specific stuff and pull out the non distribution specific answers. Just don't post any questions of course.

I know this is slashdot and I'm not suppose to give a Gentoo advice, but this times Gentoo makes the 2.6 transition a breeze. Took a couple of hours first try.

howto upgrade to 2.6

Of course make sure hardware and features is supported first.

http://www.gentoo.org

Afraid to install SELinux but interested in what it does? The Hardened Gentoo project maintains a SELinux Demo Machine that allows you to ssh in as root. More information here: http://selinux.dev.gentoo.org/

Here's a few more interesting SELinux links: - yesterday's release
- the FAQ
- sourceforge page
- Gentoo Hardened
- Fedora Project' SELinux

http://www.trl.ibm.com/projects/security/ssp/

Gentoo-specific info here.

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/hardened/propolice.x ml

The easiest way to get new versions of Gnome software is via garnome!

Garnome 0.30.1 was just released and it features the latest version of Gnome (2.5.5), The new, non ugly file dialog (but not all programs use it yet) and of course, Gnome Applications, including Gnumeric 1.2.6.

It is designed for IA-32 Gnu/Linux, but it should work on most OS's. Download it now.
And if you liked the power of garnome, you may be interested in the power of Gentoo Linux, which is like garnome for your entire distribution!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Don't you wish you could get one of these? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Don't you wish you could get one of these? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

You can use it with gentoo right now(tm).
However I get the feeling that the new scheduler still needs some finetuning for desktop apps.
It seems to be great already for servers.
But glxgears dropped by almost 50% for me - and tvtime drops frames all the time.
Surprisingly the kernel is even SLOWER, when I disable powermanagement and framebuffer support.

I also looked forward for the Sis 746 AGP support - but it is still very unstable.
Unfortunatly, Dave Jones, the main agpgart developer does not seem to be too interested in improving the support soon - and I am just beginning to understand how the kernel works internally and am not able to fix things myself right now.

It just got released! Get yours today!

Still somewhat in it's infancy .. Catalyst.

It is usable now, just requires a little effort to get everything working smoothly.

I totally agree. And the Gentoo LiveCDs all contain the excellent mentest86 program (type memtest on the boot command line) And also, the ISO is a lot smaller than the knoppix one (if you choose the bare-scraped one you'll just need 60 megs of downloading)

Why would gentoo not be usable on that piece of old but fine hardware?

Not sure how familiar you are with Gentoo (if you are not, I recommend you head over to Gentoo.org and read a bit on it.

In short: it's a source-based distro. Meaning, you compile pretty much all the software you use from the source code.

Compiling a monolithic solid block of code such as KDE's or Open Office's can take many days on a "slow" computer.

You "fine" computer won't have trouble running the apps, it's just that all the time you'll spend compiling them (and re-compiling them when you upgrade to new versions) will make the machine less available for productive work (yes, I know, you can compile and work at the same time, but it's not always possible, especially if you want to work on the software you are compiling).

It seems to be Gentoo to me, it's always suggested when someone asks for a new distro(I won't say where though as I'm afraid of being laughed upon ;)), and everyone seem to be using it. I'm happy with Slackware and FreeBSD. I really should check our Gentoo, it might just work on my crappy 5 year old Wintel machine...

And BSD is not dying!!

Solaris is great for the big Sun (Ultra)Sparc servers, but for the "smaller" machines with less than 32 CPU, Linux works so much better and faster. Not to mention the bigger choice of more current Software.

But then again, I might be a bit biased in my opinion :)

I tried the gentoo live-cd's for a G4 and only got a command line install version, despite the claims from gentoo that a full GUI live CD existed... where is it?!? has anyone actually found this phantom and made it go?

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Don't you wish you could get one of these? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Don't you wish you could get one of these? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Don't you wish you could get one of these? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Don't you wish you could get one of these? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Don't you wish you could get one of these? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

Personally, for me, it's control.

I'm running Gentoo Linux and there is nothing, not a single package, not a single service installed on my system that I didn't instruct my system to install or was required to boot the machine to a stripped command line.

Each distro is a bit different, but that choice does wonders for the computing experience. For me, my setup fits my computing style like a glove.

Cheers

As far as menus and icons go, there are standards and solutions out there, they just have yet to be finalized and implemented on a wide-scale basis.

Desktop Entry Specification
"Both the KDE and GNOME desktop environments have adopted a similar format for "desktop entries," or configuration files describing how a particular program is to be launched, how it appears in menus, etc. It is to the larger community's benefit that a unified standard be agreed upon by all parties such that interoperation between the two environments, and indeed any additional environments that implement the specification, becomes simpler."

Desktop Menu Specification
"This DRAFT document defines how to construct a user-visible hierarchy of applications, typically displayed as a menu. It allows third-party software to add menu items that work for all desktops, and allows system administrators to edit menus in a way that affects all desktops."

"Who needs DOORS, Windows or Gates?". We looked for, but never found, any more software packages with names relating to points of entry through barriers.

How about BSD Ports or Gentoo Portage?

Oh, and UML servers make perfect backup/failover boxes it you are running an uber dedicated server somewhere else. e.g. see how easy it can be to do automated rsync backups.

Just use keychain. Enter your passphrase once per boot. Then you don't have to worry about someone stealing your key. You do still have to worry about the box with keychain on it getting rooted, and leading them to the backup box, of course.