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All the docs are only for the 1.4rc.

The rc is quite bleeding edge and flaky.

Compiling does take awhile longer compared to FreeBSD ports because of python.

Gentoo is great for goofing around but is too bleeding edge for my taste.

> You know, even though Gentoo is supposed to be a "geek" distribution, it does make a lot of things easier.

Yeah, some things might be easier at the expense of other things being a total, horrible, mind-numbing pain-in-the-ass.

Perhaps I'm alone, but I wanted to try it. I usually give all the new distros a try. I'm no Linux genuis though (why should I have to be?)...

I downloaded the 1.4rc3 (I think?) ISO and tried to boot from the CD. The damn thing wouldn't get past the inital boot process and froze. I decided to go with 1.2 ISO, and everything went pretty smoothly. I consolidated the installation instructions to 4 pages of notes in Word and followed them step by step. I went through the instructions and eventually rebooted my system, only to find it couldn't find a bootable volume on drive C:. I'm pretty sure I marked it bootable, but I wasn't about to go through the pain-staking process all over again (which took forever to compile, even on my 2.5GHz Intel/RAID 0/512MB), so I just said to hell with it.

Why?!

The Portage system is a merge of a Python core with Bash script based Ebuilds. Instead of dealing with Makefiles and the make command, Portage leverages the power of Python and the ease of use of shell scripting with some object oriented characteristics to make a uniquely powerful system we dare think puts Portage ahead of all current ports systems.

init script is broken. when you want to relaunch a service that died, it says the service is already launched.

gcc is a fscking python script, everytime you compile a file you call python... and i wondered why xfree compilation took so long.

$ file /usr/bin/gcc
/usr/bin/gcc: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.4.0, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped

no cli to check options in ebuild scripts. read the script, edit /etc/make.conf, build

I've been using Gentoo for a few months and absolutely love it. Once you run the gauntlet of installation a few times and get used to where things are setup in the system, then it's smooth sailing from then out.

But I think the best feature of Gentoo has nothing to do with the distribution. It's the legions of enormously helpful folks who hang out on the Gentoo Message Board. These folks sacrifice their time to answer all kinds of questions about the distribution. Moreover, they are all polite! It's the most unique thing I've ever seen on the Internet...

I hope that Gentoo becomes more popular, but I also hope that this doesn't disrupt the stellar community behind it as well. Time will tell.

Anyone got more information about the company?

Gentoo uses a system called Portage (based on BSD's ports) for downloading and installing software. A program called 'emerge' deals with the Portage tree. You run 'emerge package', and emerge will download the source tarballs (including all dependencies), unpack them, then run ./configure, make, and make install for you. The program is compiled using your CFLAGS (options used for optimizing compiled code) and USE flags (Gentoo-specific feature that allows you to specify options for including or excluding features from packages). The local compilation allows for customization not possible in binary-based distros; I can have GCC optimize a compiled program for my P3, as opposed to other distros which usually have their programs only compiled for generic i586.

Emerge has a ton of other features, as well. 'emerge sync' uses rsync to download the latest Portage tree to your system. 'emerge -u world' checks every program you have installed and upgrades any of them with newer versions.

We also have a well-deserved reputation for user support - from the install guide to the Gentoo forums, our IRC channel (#gentoo on irc.freenode.net) and newsgroup (alt.os.linux.gentoo). If you have any other questions, please come by one of these places and someone will be happy to help you.

BTW, according to the FAQ, Gentoo comes from the name of a species of small, fast penguin - a very appropriate name.

(And no, I have no affiliation with Gentoo other than as a very satisfied user)

Gentoo uses a system called Portage (based on BSD's ports) for downloading and installing software. A program called 'emerge' deals with the Portage tree. You run 'emerge package', and emerge will download the source tarballs (including all dependencies), unpack them, then run ./configure, make, and make install for you. The program is compiled using your CFLAGS (options used for optimizing compiled code) and USE flags (Gentoo-specific feature that allows you to specify options for including or excluding features from packages). The local compilation allows for customization not possible in binary-based distros; I can have GCC optimize a compiled program for my P3, as opposed to other distros which usually have their programs only compiled for generic i586.

Emerge has a ton of other features, as well. 'emerge sync' uses rsync to download the latest Portage tree to your system. 'emerge -u world' checks every program you have installed and upgrades any of them with newer versions.

We also have a well-deserved reputation for user support - from the install guide to the Gentoo forums, our IRC channel (#gentoo on irc.freenode.net) and newsgroup (alt.os.linux.gentoo). If you have any other questions, please come by one of these places and someone will be happy to help you.

BTW, according to the FAQ, Gentoo comes from the name of a species of small, fast penguin - a very appropriate name.

(And no, I have no affiliation with Gentoo other than as a very satisfied user)

Gentoo uses a system called Portage (based on BSD's ports) for downloading and installing software. A program called 'emerge' deals with the Portage tree. You run 'emerge package', and emerge will download the source tarballs (including all dependencies), unpack them, then run ./configure, make, and make install for you. The program is compiled using your CFLAGS (options used for optimizing compiled code) and USE flags (Gentoo-specific feature that allows you to specify options for including or excluding features from packages). The local compilation allows for customization not possible in binary-based distros; I can have GCC optimize a compiled program for my P3, as opposed to other distros which usually have their programs only compiled for generic i586.

Emerge has a ton of other features, as well. 'emerge sync' uses rsync to download the latest Portage tree to your system. 'emerge -u world' checks every program you have installed and upgrades any of them with newer versions.

We also have a well-deserved reputation for user support - from the install guide to the Gentoo forums, our IRC channel (#gentoo on irc.freenode.net) and newsgroup (alt.os.linux.gentoo). If you have any other questions, please come by one of these places and someone will be happy to help you.

BTW, according to the FAQ, Gentoo comes from the name of a species of small, fast penguin - a very appropriate name.

(And no, I have no affiliation with Gentoo other than as a very satisfied user)

Gentoo uses a system called Portage (based on BSD's ports) for downloading and installing software. A program called 'emerge' deals with the Portage tree. You run 'emerge package', and emerge will download the source tarballs (including all dependencies), unpack them, then run ./configure, make, and make install for you. The program is compiled using your CFLAGS (options used for optimizing compiled code) and USE flags (Gentoo-specific feature that allows you to specify options for including or excluding features from packages). The local compilation allows for customization not possible in binary-based distros; I can have GCC optimize a compiled program for my P3, as opposed to other distros which usually have their programs only compiled for generic i586.

Emerge has a ton of other features, as well. 'emerge sync' uses rsync to download the latest Portage tree to your system. 'emerge -u world' checks every program you have installed and upgrades any of them with newer versions.

We also have a well-deserved reputation for user support - from the install guide to the Gentoo forums, our IRC channel (#gentoo on irc.freenode.net) and newsgroup (alt.os.linux.gentoo). If you have any other questions, please come by one of these places and someone will be happy to help you.

BTW, according to the FAQ, Gentoo comes from the name of a species of small, fast penguin - a very appropriate name.

(And no, I have no affiliation with Gentoo other than as a very satisfied user)

• 2x Athlon MP 2k+ (on Tyan Tiger MB)
• GeForce 2 with tv out (and 2 other vid cards)
• ATI TV Wonder
• ZapWay IR Receiver
• Sony el-cheapo multi function universal remote control
• Herman Miller Aeron
• Datahand chair mounted split keyboard
• SBLive 5.1
• MSB-Tech Link II DAC
• Good home stereo powering a set of Magnepan MGIIa's (quasi-planar speaker)
• and soon: a SXGA LCD Projector (NEC MT1030+)

• gentoo GNU/Linux
• ALSA audio drivers
• lirc
• mplayer
• xmms
• mldonkey, video store, cable for media acquisition

I hope to eventually suspend a THX acoustically transparant screen across the magnaplanars and use a LCD projector for a 6' x 5' HD image.

Overall the experience has been quite good, tho having it all setup on a workstation requires much maintenance to keep all the apps communicating... a dedicated shuttle box to feed the projector/DAC would be a little nicer, tho I'd still want a central media server. Wireless is not needed here, as the few cables (spdif/video/etc) pose only a problem to the vacuum cleaner. Of course, the setup costs as much as a nice used car (which I don't own) and I find myself dreaming of 6'x5' trees rendered in imax style 3d (cow's can fly in caves, but require awkward polarized glass or expensive eye surgery for 3d flight experience).

Andy
http://benow.ca

being a bit more Maclike and locking Linux out of the desktop market.

Thank you for mentioning SuperKaramba, I was about to do so myself. Karamba is old news. I quote from here:

I had a talk with the author of super-Karamba about this..

The original karamba is dead.. the author did all he wanted to do with it. All new development will be done in SuperKaramba.. Next major version (0.18) will have taskbar support :)


SuperKaramba really moves Karamba beyond just displaying info on your desktop. Here's a snippet from the front page:

Here are just some examples of the things that can be done:

* Display system information such as CPU Usage, MP3 playing, etc.
* Create cool custom toolbars that work any way imaginable
* Create little games or virtual pets that live on your desktop
* Display information from the internet, such as weather and headlines

The possibilities really are endless!

If anybody has ever used ObjectDesktop for Windows, some of this is bound to seem familier... since OD was one of the things I liked best about Windows, I am really glad to see this project.

There is also an open source remake of Stunts called Ultimate Stunts. I've been trying to get it to work for me under gentoo but I haven't had any luck.

Well its really pretty much flawless these days. For instance i'm running a developement kernel with Andrew Morton's patchset and i still don't know how to patch the kernel ;-p

Very stable even with stupid optimisation flags etc. Perhaps you should grab a live cd and try it again ;-)

Seriously 2.6 is going to be a bit special; especially for interactive performance and the 'wiggle' test. The future of linux is going in this direction as faster hardware will mean extremely short compile times - or just more bloat - oh well.

the RIAA ain't done until gentoo won't run.

Don't forget to spite them

the RIAA ain't done until gentoo won't run.

Don't forget to spite them

I haven't had any complaints about 5 whatsoever, and a number of (very small) things that have long been problematic are suddenly better. Background filesystem checks are really nice, power management is better. And if you hate linux dependency hell, scrap the redhat and try out Gentoo. It's like the FreeBSD ports system on steriods. It's Linux with a concept of a base system. It's FreeBSD's ports with a better upgrade path. I haven't gotten far enough to see how well it really works in the longer run of upgrade cycles, though; some fdisk/grub problem is keeping the system from knowing how to boot itself (though I got FreeBSD installed in 10 minutes on the same system).

void rant
{
These are problems you *can* have with any linux or Unix distro. However, they are annyoing, and very commenplace in many distros unfortunatly. There IS alot of information on just about everything out there, but the problem is it amounts to a hudge mountain of information that you have to sift thru to find what you need. Which i agree...is annyoing.

The problem here is SuSE and Redhat, and other distros like them arnt really that targetted to users who want to do advnaced things in them.you can do these advanced things, but compared to distros like gentoo, or BSD (freeBSD or openBSD) its like climbing a mountian!.

i actually left redhat for Gentoo, and I've moved alot of my clients off of SuSE to gentoo for those reasons.

If your looking to stick with the linux kernel, but want something that "just works" I'd have to say gentoo. The website gentoo.org provides great instructions that you can just follow and get the job done. And with ports, i've never had a problem compilign configureing and installing a pice of software since i went gentoo. Even compiling things like kde 3.1 went like clockwork. If your looking for stuff that will just work gentoo is probably what your looking for, i type energe then walk away and have a coffee and come back and its working. (or in the event its something major like X or KDE go to bed and wake up the next morning).moreover, i have a crontab with one line: emerge rsync && emerge -u world that runs every night, and all the software on my box is checked and updated if there is a newer version avialable, and the results are mailed to me so i can read up on what got installed overnight. its great!

Mind you, gentoo moves closer to traditional unix that most distros, so its really only appropriate for power users or sys admins.

The problem with distros like SuSE and Redhat, is not that they are "bad" distros, but they are targeted at a different audience. Judging by your experience, I'd say SuSE is not the distro for you.

The thing about linux is there isnt one "ideal" distro. Invariably everyone is going to find a particular distro they like, depending on what they do with the box. They can all be made to do the same things, but some have to be kciked in the pants a bit to do some things, while others will just make them work on their own. Your experience with SuSE dosnt make it a bad distro, but i know i didnt like it for what i was doing, and chances are you need to find a new distro for what your doing :)
return;
}

It's tailored for gentoo, but most stuff applies to most distributions I guess. Not that I'm using them. ;)

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=49036

Then you can get consoles which look like this:
http://www.alledora.co.uk/images/fb0.jpg
or
http://www.bootsplash.org/silent-mode.jpg

Files can be recived from
http://www.bootsplash.org/

I don't consider myself a guru, but 'I would say I know enough'. I've done the whole LFS/source based distro thing for a while now so here's my take on things.

I think it's important to make a distinction between LFS and Gentoo/SGL/Sourcemage/Lunar/uPM. LFS is a book that describes the process of producing a minimal linux installation that is capable of building software. The source based distros provide scripts/tools that automate the build process for you. Which you choose is largly dependent on your needs.

It seems from your post that you are interested in learning what makes GNU/Linux tick: what files do what, what software is required and what's bloat, and generally what goes on under the hood. For this I found that there is no substitute for LFS, it took me from Mandrake newbie to power-user in a couple of months. This was a good few years ago and at the time there was no BLFS, I feel that that actually helped me with learning the stuff. LFS held my hand through the installation of the base system, but after that I was forced to RTFM, making my own mistakes and learning from them. After 2 or 3 months I had a fully functional system with KDE, apache and a bunch of other stuff. I also had learned many times more than I did in over a year of using mandrake.

My new shiney LFS system was a joy to behold, but it became a real pain to maintain. I found that an unacceptable portion of my time was spent updating software manually and it was effecting my productivity. This was around the same time that SGL first appeared on freshmeat. I had tinkered for a while with LFSmake but found that it wasn't flexible enough. SGL was wonderful, I traded a small amount of the total control that LFS gave me for a system that saved me 80% of the time I was spending on keeping my system up to date.

Unfortunatley there was a bit of a storm in the SGL teacup which resulted in SGL going offline for a while and 2 forks appearing (Sourcemage and Lunar). Initially I went with Sourcemage but I found that after a while it became too unstable and as I was using it for work I couldn't have that (it may well be better now, I've not checked it out in a while). I switched to Lunar and am still using it now. It doesn't provide the same education as LFS, but once that knowledge is aquired it provides a much more efficient means of installing/maintaining your system.

I should say that I did once try gentoo but I was put off by the complete lack of an installer. You have to jump through too many hoops (and triangles, hexagons and other polyhedra) to get the thing up and running. uPM also looks interesting but is still in a relativly eary stage of development.

To sum it all up: LFS cannot be beaten for it's educational value, but for day-to-day use Lunar suits me best.

Linux From Scratch [linuxfromscratch.org] is not a disto, but a set of instructions for building a GNU/Linux system from little more than an existing distro. The Beyond Linux From Scratch [linuxfromscratch.org] project builds on this tradition, providing instructions for installing a number of other packages.

Having said that, I would recommend that anyone serious about furthering their knowledge of Linux, and at least 750MB of free hard disk space should give it a go. I got into Linux back in '93, and knew quite a lot. Then I stumbled across Linux From Scratch (LFS) - I didn't realise how much I didn't know until finishing my first complete build.

I now run an number of LFS-based systems at home and at work, and have never looked back.

BTW, I am typing this on my Gentoo [gentoo.org], 1.4_rc4 build. :-)

AKA Gentoo.

I've recently been impressed by Gentoo Linux which lets you build your system from a BSD-style ports system: the whole thing held together by a bunch of Python scripts, but otherwise your build options, tools and so on are your own choice. If that's not Linux From Scratch I'm not sure what is :-)

Having said that, I'm not always convinced that the way to a reliable server setup is to build everything yourself, but both LFS and Gentoo look good for the desktop.

Prediction: the next 50 posts will be about how much better Gentoo would be in that situation.

I have recently switched to Gentoo and like it quite a bit. I started with Linux in '94 with slackware and redhat. Been the mandrake route the last couple of years. Seriously considered FreeBSD because of rpm nightmares from upgrading from cooker packages to get needed updates. Gentoo is all compiled from source and easy to upgrade. Installing is the hardest part, installing new stuff is quite easy if you can edit text files. The gentoo forums are calmer than usenet too if you need help.

I have no experience with it personally, but I think it should work fine. The 1.4rc4 liveCD has an option for a SMP-enabled kernel, so boot with that and you can use both CPUs while installing. When you get to the compiling your own kernel point, just select SMP support and it should work fine after you reboot. If it doesn't, stop by the forums, IRC (#gentoo on irc.freenode.net), or alt.os.linux.gentoo and we'll help you.

Every other article is anti linux propaganda, Euginea needs a gentoo stage 1 boostraped up his ass to make him see sense.

Trolls, have fun with this

I think you might be looking for this

I have two AMD Athlon MP 2000+'s in on a Tyan Tiger MPX motherboard, and a gig of ram, in a full-tower case with four intake fans -- one on the bottom front, one on the side middle over the cards, and two in the middle back under the power supply. The exhaust fan is the PS, of course.

First problem! You need at least as many exhaust fans as you have intakes, maybe one more if you are counting the PS fan as an exhaust. Turn the two in the back of your case around, and I bet the CPU temperatures will drop 10 or 15 degrees.

When running Windows 2000 on this machine, the operating temp as reported by the BIOS runs between 50c and 60c.

When I run Gentoo Linux [gentoo.org], set up from a stage1 install and compiled specifically for the Athlon MP, the machine crashes as the temperature rises to 75c.

Are you playing UT2k3 in Windows, or using Office? Compiling code (something gentoo does *a lot* of!) taxes the CPUs and generates quite a bit of heat, writing a letter in Word doesn't. That might explain the difference in Windows and Linux operating temps. Also, make sure you have "make CPU idle calls when idle" option set in your kernel config, and check this thread in the gentoo forums about enabling halt-cooling in the chipset. It doesn't specifically mention your board, but it has links to sites that might.

I have two AMD Athlon MP 2000+'s in on a Tyan Tiger MPX motherboard, and a gig of ram, in a full-tower case with four intake fans -- one on the bottom front, one on the side middle over the cards, and two in the middle back under the power supply. The exhaust fan is the PS, of course.

When running Windows 2000 on this machine, the operating temp as reported by the BIOS runs between 50c and 60c.

When I run Gentoo Linux, set up from a stage1 install and compiled specifically for the Athlon MP, the machine crashes as the temperature rises to 75c.

I'm using the retail processors that came with the fan. It's plain that they're installed correctly, but the thermal pad on the bottom (even with the adhesive backing removed properly) isn't capable of dissapating the heat.

Does this mean I'm prohibited by warranty terms from running optimized code? AMD really needs to answer this question. If they want to they could easily come up with a recommended list of approved grease, or contract with someone to sell "official grease" for situations like mine.

Debian!

Or, if you speed and on the edge AND reliability...

Gentoo!

The virus writers write a virus that installs linux. My linux system dosen't get viruses or spam. Emerge the power!

It only takes two weeks to compile, and it's completly free, fast and goatse.cx proof!

Warning, this is not about getting it from a goat

This is

emerge a goat cock up my ass

> emerge gnucash

Gotta love Gentoo ;-)

If you want to install the latest, up-to-date packages, yes. If not, I think you can buy a set of CDs with all the stuff on it. Look around on Gentoo.

Gentoo does all this by default. To compile and install optimized binaries for kde, you just type "emerge kde"

Why do I have the distinct feeling that, in the not-so-distant future, most companies will receive their funding from anonymous people in brown paper bags left on the street corner...the funds in small denominations, unmarked, and non-sequential serial numbers.

Trust me...the day I win Powerball several organizations are going to receive anonymous donations.

Yeah right, like I trust a 2.2 kernel!

Gentoo + GRsecurity + Gentoo security patches Is a lot better. Don't forget to audit each ebuild yourself before emerging!

Remove the gnu/ prefix, its not good security.

Debian is nothing but gnu/Stallman's army of Gnu/trolls. Why do you think they're the only major distro that actually puts gnu/ in front of Linux? All other distros call it by it's real name, LINUX!

Join the real linux club, and be one of the 1000's of 1337 users TODAY!. No stupid licencing, no religous zealots, no gnu/ prefixes, just power and control, and we like it!

apt-get uninstall debian; emerge gentoo!

if you'd like to see how sensible people handle this sort of thing, check out the two gentoo's:

http://www.obsession.se/gentoo/

http://www.gentoo.org/

looks like so many problems would be solved if people just had some better manners.

There are two issues at hand here: legality and politeness. It is certainly legal for mozilla.org to choose and use the name Firebird for their browser -- it is indeed difficult to confuse a browser for a SQL server. It was also, however, impolite of them to do so without even taking the time to send an email to the FirbirdSQL people saying "Hey, we'd like to call our browser Firebird. You cool with that?" After all, it's not as if there's no similarity between the projects. They do different things, sure, but they're both open source, they're both computer programs, and sometimes you use a browser to access a SQL database. Fairly often, in fact.

And don't tell me that the name-choosers were unaware of the SQL project. It took them, what, four months to pick this name? Or was it five? Five and a half? And in all that time, these inveterate computer geeks never even typed the word into Google? (As of this writing, the FirebirdSQL project still tops the list of results for that search.)

It's not as though there's no precedent for two OSS projects to share a name. Look at Gentoo the Linux distro and Gentoo the file manager. At the very bottom of that second link you'll find a little note from the developer of the file manager saying "Gentoo the Linux distribution has nothing to do with gentoo the file manager, except the latter runs on the former. I actually used the name first, way back in September 1998. I've been in touch with the Gentoo folks, and we're cool."

So, ultimately, the parent post is only partially right: the legality of this move is a non-story. The story lies in the fact that the name change was made in an impolite way, apparently without any attempt to contact the FirebirdSQL group at all. Would it really have been so hard to have sent that email? They could even have exchanged reciprocal links, so that anybody who did get confused would easily be set straight. In the initial announcement of the name on the MozillaZine forums, Asa Dotzler (sp?) wrapped up with the words "Hopefully this will be the end of naming legal issues for a while." Well, he got his wish -- about the legal part, anyway.

Get them to Gentoo - the best way to learn Linux (which is the best OS so far). Lots of very good documentation, very friendly forums full of volonteering teachers, nothing related to any corporation. And don't forget to go there yourself, otherwise in a month you won't understand your cousins :)

In the joke above there is a bit of a joke. Now seriously.

I think the best non-corporate education content is sites about the Bible and Zen Buddhism. Kids will learn there the eternal concepts, what is good and what is bad. You may find sites with better media-presentation about the subject, but... keep the subject.

Gentoo Forums

I was about to post exactly that. Whether or not you run Gentoo, the people who do generally know their stuff, and there is probably little that you can run into that they haven't already. Search for what you're looking for, and it's probably already been discussed and solved. If not, ask about it, and you're likely to get a bunch of helpful replies in less than an hour.

I've solved many, many a problem on those boards, and gotten many an idea on how to approach other problems. Highly recommended.

Doug

#gentoo on freenode
Gentoo Forums

Not dicks. Helpful. Usually you'll get your question answered in no time flat.

gentoo is good, and even debian can be "a really cool dist the size and speed of a fresh win98 install", but dependencies may introduce a bit of bloat.

Well, everything's compiled from source
and personally I've looked through and fixed
All of the USB core in the kernel, the ADSL driver for my modem, povray.
I've partly gone through Arson
and looked at lots of other source (including postgres)

So, I'm sure the ADSL software is spyware free the USB core looks ok too(if a bit badly documented and buggy)
and I've never found anything bad in povray.

its just that the number of howto's and online material is extensive, there is one for almost everything you could ever want to do...

if anything ever arises that you can't handle, or if you're a newb such as i was merely a year ago, then people are more than helpful if you actually describe your problem instead of saying "someone give me the command to install ms word"

lol dependancies....

of course i am speaking from the perspective of a happy gentoo user ( and the gentoo forums)

Gentoo works on Apple's PowerPC hardware too.