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You might want to give Gentoo a shot. It all compiles from source and is currently using GCC 4.1. It's about as up to date as you'd like it to be. I have both 64-bit and 32-bit boxes and never had a problem with an install (can't say the same for updates, but probably better than most distros) Some would say it's too advanced for a noob, but I think there are so many clear wikis, installation guides and forum support, that it ends up being one of the easiest distros out there.

Try these sites to get you started:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/index.xml
http://gentoo-wiki.com/
http://forums.gentoo.org/

I use it for work, home development and even my HTPC, and it can easily support all kinds of devices. Just google "gentoo" and the device name you're interested in and you'll likely find a dedicated wiki.

You might want to give Gentoo a shot. It all compiles from source and is currently using GCC 4.1. It's about as up to date as you'd like it to be. I have both 64-bit and 32-bit boxes and never had a problem with an install (can't say the same for updates, but probably better than most distros) Some would say it's too advanced for a noob, but I think there are so many clear wikis, installation guides and forum support, that it ends up being one of the easiest distros out there.

Try these sites to get you started:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/index.xml
http://gentoo-wiki.com/
http://forums.gentoo.org/

I use it for work, home development and even my HTPC, and it can easily support all kinds of devices. Just google "gentoo" and the device name you're interested in and you'll likely find a dedicated wiki.

With Gentoo it's the installation process. I know you just have to read through the installation docs, but it's 2006, and I don't feel like printing out the docs, and they're too hard to memorize.

Download LiveCD
Burn LiveCD
Boot LiveCD
Run through Wizard.

What's the problem? Gentoo now has an installer

Or you can always use Vida Linux which is a binary distro built on Gentoo...

you know nothing about these ppl, they are blackhats, they ruin things for no other reason than to piss ppl off and have a laugh at their expense.

Distros like Gentoo maintain a set of their own patches for the Linux kernel

The gentoo kernel which has the patches is different than the linux kernel.

* sys-kernel/gentoo-sources
            Latest version available: 2.6.17-r7
            Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
            Size of files: 40,538 kB
            Homepage: http://dev.gentoo.org/~dsd/genpatches
            Description: Full sources including the gentoo patchset for the 2.6 kernel tree
            License: GPL-2


What debian is doing is simply making a fork to accomodate their own packaging conveniences. All Mozilla seems to be saying is that if they want to fork it, they should go through all the motions of the fork.

I, too, have been installing gentoo for the past 2 days. This is my second gentoo install, so I thought it would go a little smoother, and it did (both using 2006.1). However, it was not without bumps, and it is definitely not the most elegant of install procedures. Both times I have used the online documentation and had no problems. The first time, i used the Gentoo Linux x86 Quick Install Guide (even tho I was installing amd64, not x86). This time I used the Gentoo Handbook. I think that both documents are well written and if you read them carefully, you will not have any problems getting a base system installed "quickly". For me, it took a long time (well over an hour) because I read the sections as I am installing and it takes me a little longer to understand everything because I'm still newer to Linux. Personally, I would like to see a ncurses based install process much like Slackware's (or others) where I have to be at the keyboard to set up some initial settings and select packages, but then I can walk away while everything is downloading and installing.

All in all, I would say that the LiveCD+CLI install method of Gentoo did not cause me any less or more distress than any other *nix install I have used (i have not used Ubuntu yet because after using apt in Debian, I have no wishes to use a binary-based distro). Still, I would choose Slackware's or FreeBSD's install process any day of the week.

I, too, have been installing gentoo for the past 2 days. This is my second gentoo install, so I thought it would go a little smoother, and it did (both using 2006.1). However, it was not without bumps, and it is definitely not the most elegant of install procedures. Both times I have used the online documentation and had no problems. The first time, i used the Gentoo Linux x86 Quick Install Guide (even tho I was installing amd64, not x86). This time I used the Gentoo Handbook. I think that both documents are well written and if you read them carefully, you will not have any problems getting a base system installed "quickly". For me, it took a long time (well over an hour) because I read the sections as I am installing and it takes me a little longer to understand everything because I'm still newer to Linux. Personally, I would like to see a ncurses based install process much like Slackware's (or others) where I have to be at the keyboard to set up some initial settings and select packages, but then I can walk away while everything is downloading and installing.

All in all, I would say that the LiveCD+CLI install method of Gentoo did not cause me any less or more distress than any other *nix install I have used (i have not used Ubuntu yet because after using apt in Debian, I have no wishes to use a binary-based distro). Still, I would choose Slackware's or FreeBSD's install process any day of the week.

NOTE TO SELF USE PREVIEW :op

I use bsd ports on a daily basis, and it is pretty weak, you can specify no X11 with portage:

USE="-X" emerge imagemagick

See nice and easy. Ports is very unstable with patching etc, I shouldn't have to go through:

cvsup -g -L 2 /etc/cvsup_ports
portversion -l " portupgrade -Rra

Which btw usually breaks half the packages in the system, additionally I have to watch out for questions since ports doesn't remember my original install settings, it doesn't take much account for dependencies, on several occasions recently I have patched a freebsd system using ports and found one or more packages are broken after the install, additionally at the end my pkgdb is corrupted and I have to go through the whole process of rebuilding it.

Gentoo is much more simple:

emerge --sync && emerge -uD world

Additionally providing you didn't pass USE during the build it will build according to your original settings.

In my opinion ports is the worst package system out there, even a bsd developer agrees that ports isn't that great, however, whatever floats your boat, opinions are like as*holes everyone has one, personally I like portage, if you prefer ports go with whatever works for you. FreeBSD as an operating system is great, but I would prefer to use portage for bsd as my package manager.

I use bsd ports on a daily basis, and it is pretty weak, you can specify no X11 with portage:

USE="-X" emerge imagemagick

See nice and easy. Ports is very unstable with patching etc, I shouldn't have to go through:

cvsup -g -L 2 /etc/cvsup_ports
portversion -l "that ports isn't that great, however, whatever floats your boat, opinions are like as*holes everyone has one, personally I like portage, if you prefer ports go with whatever works for you. FreeBSD as an operating system is great, but I would prefer to use portage for bsd as my package manager.

What about gentoo games? Or portage-ng? Or even the new website layout? That's right. They all failed. Just keep adding more trash to the pile, guys.. The gentoo project seems to be like the child with AD(H)D in the linux world.

What about gentoo games? Or portage-ng? Or even the new website layout? That's right. They all failed. Just keep adding more trash to the pile, guys.. The gentoo project seems to be like the child with AD(H)D in the linux world.

you don't see Microsoft telling it's customers "You don't like explorer? Fix it yourself!"

No, Microsoft says, "You don't like explorer? Tough shit!"

Apparently the fix is emerge -C pam-login && emerge -u shadow. You should probably do a revdep-rebuild to be safe.

I think I encountered this bug awhile ago and did the same thing which I figured out myself. Also having built my system from ~arch I think I removed further problems. But you are right it should have been fixed.

And a new curses based option was developed with the help of Google's SoC project - conf-update http://sources.gentoo.org/viewcvs.py/gentoo-x86/ap p-portage/conf-update/

I'll tell you what makes Gentoo an acceptable target of derision. Fanatics. People who become enraged beyond reason when their favorite tool is called into question. It's a Linux distribution, not a Holy Book. Which linux distribution you use has absolutely no bearing on what kind of a person you are. Yet many Gentoo users take any criticism of their Holy Distribution as personally as if someone had just, as you put it, kicked them in the nuts.

I mean, so what? It's just a Linux distribution. I've used over a dozen. At work I admin a dozen SuSE servers. Tell me how much SuSE sucks, I won't care. Using Gentoo doesn't make you cool. Not using it doesn't make you uncool. Here, I'll give you some more ammo, you can make fun of me: I watch Friends on TV, I run Windows XP at home, I used to work for Greenpeace. Take your pick, tell me how much Friends sucks, Windows sucks and Greenpeace sucks. I won't be hurt because those things aren't me! They are just things I watch, use, or did for a living.

I mean, how insecure do you have to be to take criticism of a Linux distribution personally?

Gentoo isn't a joke. It's a cool distribution. I spent literally weeks on end fiddling with it because it was fun. But even the people on the gentoo forums thought that funroll-loops.org was funny.

I'm not saying that literally 9 out of every 10 people who use gentoo is a ricer. It's a figure of speach, a humorous exageration. Anyone who wasn't hopelessly insecure could figure that out. If more people who used FreeBSD were like you, I'd be making fun of them, too. I like Linux, and I like gentoo, and people like you with your over the top hystrionics give both of them a bad name.

What exactly has Joe Barr said that is false

1. "The MPlayer gang seems to relish nothing more than belittling their users and reminding them of just how little they know about Linux and computing in general" -- If the shoe fits. Don't email the developer list asking questions that belong on the Mplayer-users list. Mplayer-Dev is busy enough without all that.
2. "The journey began when I downloaded the latest CVS snapshot from the MPlayer Web site" -- A review of a CVS snapshot??
3. "The first thing to bite me was the configure script itself. It refused to run after detecting gcc 2.96, which is the default with Mandrake 8.1." -- Errrm, GCC 2.96?? A review of a CVS snapshot compiled with a broken compiler, greeeaaaat.
4. "It wants a file name on the command line." -- Duh.
5. "I needed video files. That called for gnutella." -- Because we all know the only thing worth watching is stolen from P2P networks.

1. "Gentoo doesn't ask what it can do to make things easier, it asks you exactly what it is that you want it to do, and then does precisely and only that." -- Funny, I don't remember being asked anything while installing Gentoo. There's no installer.
2. "For a proper Gentoo install, you'll need to read the fine manual. Read it a couple of times. Cover to cover. Pay particular attention to the sections on USE flags and Portage." -- Uhhh, not really. The Quick reference is more than sufficient.
3. "You will hear, see, and read "RTFM" dozens of times before you're done. But don't make the mistake of thinking that simply means having a copy handy as a reference during the installation, because by the time a question appears, it may already be too late. You need to RTFM before you begin." -- I don't even know what the fuck he's talking about there.
4. "Study GCC and the options that govern the behavior of GCC version 4.1.1." -- Forget studying GCC. If you don't understand what you're doing use the recommended $CFLAGS.
5. "After reading a few pages of the manual, I realized that the minimal live CD did not equal the Gentoo 2006.1 live CD. So I stopped and got the real thing." -- Dumb. You can bootstrap Gentoo from in Knoppix, that's what I always do. The CD you boot from makes very little difference. All you really need is bash, and something to download a stage tarball like wget.

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86 .xml

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-quickinsta ll.xml

to install Gentoo (NOT the 2006.1 instructions that seem to all use the crappy installer). At the very least browse through them; I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86 .xml

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-quickinsta ll.xml

to install Gentoo (NOT the 2006.1 instructions that seem to all use the crappy installer). At the very least browse through them; I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

It is there: Python 2.5

And they are already fixing packaging problems: 2.5-r1

Bear in mind Gentoo may take longer than most to fully switch over to 2.5, since Portage itself is written in Python. They have much more to lose from getting this wrong than Debian. I have used Debian in the past, but have been a Gentoo user for a few years now; I have noticied a backing off - intentional or otherwise - from the old "bleeding edge" tendencies over the past few months, but I for one am not particularly bothered, provided it isn't indicative of infrastructure problems and doesn't become a growing trend of getting further and further behind. (I have no evidence that it is either of these things, just a bad gut feeling based on some of the not-so-good times I've had with the distro.)

It is there: Python 2.5

And they are already fixing packaging problems: 2.5-r1

Bear in mind Gentoo may take longer than most to fully switch over to 2.5, since Portage itself is written in Python. They have much more to lose from getting this wrong than Debian. I have used Debian in the past, but have been a Gentoo user for a few years now; I have noticied a backing off - intentional or otherwise - from the old "bleeding edge" tendencies over the past few months, but I for one am not particularly bothered, provided it isn't indicative of infrastructure problems and doesn't become a growing trend of getting further and further behind. (I have no evidence that it is either of these things, just a bad gut feeling based on some of the not-so-good times I've had with the distro.)

Indeed, however your comment history seems to suggest that you do.

I would highly recommend that you switch to Linux. I would expect to to experience a significant increase in both functionality and performance, as well as available applications.

My first Linux (which I still use, though I've since tried out other distros) was Gentoo, which I think is great for those who are tech-oriented, but new to Linux. The online handbook is excellent. I imagine someone who still uses Win95 is used to knowing where all the settings are, and installing Gentoo was, in my experience, the perfect way to get acquainted with them.

Like this thread here: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-223530-postda ys-0-postorder-asc-start-0.html

There are posters in that thread making legitimate complaints about the search system (like "kde 3.4 compile error" will only search for "kde" because numbers aren't indexed and compile/error are both stop words), but it appears that the system stands.

1.) Gentoo has *the best* documentation available out of any linux distro I've used (even most of the conf files are fully commented) http://www.gentoo-wiki.org/ http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/index.xml

2.) Installing / maintaing gentoo has taught me many things about linux that I didn't know before. (I enjoy learning about linux, and Reading The Fucking Manual). Hell I'd never even compiled my own kernel before I used gentoo.

3.) I dont have to reinstall the entire OS every 6 months (Fedora/Ubuntu) to get the latest version. I always have the latest version.

I completely agree with you, but I would also add that their bugzilla instance has helped me immensely, as has IRC (irc.freenode.net #gentoo).

The Gentoo Manual is very helpful, and so is the Gentoo Wiki.

And being a Gentoo user and fanboy, I find this kind of poster funny :)

I've tried Redhat, Fedora, Suse, Debian, Ubuntu, etc.. and I've settled on gentoo as my desktop OS of choice for both home and work. Here's why:

1.) Gentoo has *the best* documentation available out of any linux distro I've used (even most of the conf files are fully commented) http://www.gentoo-wiki.org/ http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/index.xml

2.) Installing / maintaing gentoo has taught me many things about linux that I didn't know before. (I enjoy learning about linux, and Reading The Fucking Manual). Hell I'd never even compiled my own kernel before I used gentoo.

3.) I dont have to reinstall the entire OS every 6 months (Fedora/Ubuntu) to get the latest version. I always have the latest version.

Yes, it was a pain to stripe my drives with software RAID the first time I installed gentoo. And yes, sometimes its a pain to update/maintain the system... but I dont really mind because everytime I have to fix something I *learn* something.

I love gentoo the way it is, but as with anything else, its a matter of personal taste, if someone else doesn't like how gentoo works, then they should use another distro ;)

Post-mortem, I believe that I caused the problem by setting a keyword in /etc/make.conf to ~X86. That told Portage that using unstable code was fine with me. I made that change because one of the packages I wanted to emerge required it, and I didn't know the correct way to allow test/unstable code in a single package.

The Gentoo of today, starts you off with either a gui install (have not tried it yet) or CLI...but, they start you off with a stage3 tarball...and you actually get a running config quite rapidly. I actually had to research to find out how to get it to bootstrap like it did in the old days and built "everything" from scratch from source. (That link HERE .

But, really...as far as Linux installs go...Gentoo is about as easy as any I've tried. With any of them, you often have to do a little research on the chipset of some component you have on board...hell, you need to know that for many items on a simple kernel config....and everyone has to do that sooner or later....

The reason why IE starts up so quickly is because the act of booting up Windows pre-loads IE in memory. When you click that blue 'E' icon (which points to an .exe file that is about 30k, as the rest is in DLLs which are already in memory), you're loading practically all of the program from memory, not the hard drive. This also means that whether you are using it or not, the amount of memory required for IE is always being consumed, even after you "close" it. Contrast this with clicking the Firefox icon, which has to read the executable off the hard drive and into memory prior to being able to run it. You didn't think the difference was due to IE being a leaner, more efficient program, did you?

There is a utility which will allow you to also preload Firefox in memory on Windows. Of course, this does not give you the ability to unload IE from memory (decoupling IE from Windows, to any degree, is problematic at best).

Of course, how much an extra 6-7 seconds of load time will impact you would depend on usage. Personally I often leave the same instance of Firefox running for days at a time and leave it minimized on a virtual desktop when it is not in use, but if I were really worried about this on a Linux box then I would use prelink.

It's not paticularly easy at this point, but any experianced Linux geek should be able to figure it out in a evening. Use a lightweight VM.

Not like Xen of VMware, but a lightweight container virtualization system like Linux-jail, Vserver, or OpenVZ.

1. So setup a chroot jail or one of those OpenVZ or whatnot.
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/vserver-howto.xml for example.

2. Install Debian Testing via Debootstrap. A minimal install is about 250 megs or so. You can reduce it further.
Here is how to install Debian from any Linux distro, this guide is for AMD64 in paticular, but it'll be about the same for any support arch.
http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.amd64/apds0 3.html

2b. If you want a 'deleteable' setup use UnionFS (ala Knoppix) to setup a read-only file system and then a layered rw file system over that. Setup everything on the Read-only portion how you like it then just purge the rw version periodicly.
http://www.am-utils.org/project-unionfs.html

3. Install all your favorite apps and such that you use to interact with the internet, browser, email, IM, etc in your deb install.

4. start up the VM container, setup ssh keys so you can ssh in without a password (but obviously you don't want to be able to ssh back out without a password.

4b. Setup a shared folder like ~/Downloads so you can access files from your container outside of that container. Maybe use mount --bind to do that.

5. Run your internet-accessing applications from that a ssh session in a xterm, or from scripts from application launchers.

The worst a hacker could do would be to take over that VM and maybe setup a file server or whatnot as a user, or maybe issue a fork bomb to try to DOS your system. A purge of the 'rw portion' will fix that.

I swear I hit the preview button...

there will always ALWAYS be a place for the determined to find software for free.

Yup. There always will be.

That convenience of one platform means less management expense. So far, companies are going with lower costs over susceptibility.

Alternatives to Windows are free. As in beer. As in licensing costs: $0. License management costs: $0. Time spent calling to re-license the operating system because you installed a sound card: $0. License audit exposure: $0. As in infinity% cheaper than Windows. As in incremental cost per unit = 0. The cost of alternative supporting application and utility software is $0. Alternative database application software is $0. Alternative firewall softare is $0. Alternative antivirus software (if and as applicable) is $0. Word processing software - $0. Systems/network management tools - wait for it - $0. Documentation,comprehensive howto resources, and technical support - all $0.

Turning away from solutions such as Linux because of cost is like being on fire and turning away from a bucket of water because the water might be too hot. Arguing against alternatives to Windows on the basis of cost is the very height of idiocy and is ultimately disingenuous. The real issue when considering alternatives is the fear of change and organizational inertia. How much of either can your company afford?

I know this is not a binary package like you asked but if you are running Gentoo, to download, compile and install the ivtv drivers you type
emerge ivtv

See
http://packages.gentoo.org/packages/?category=medi a-tv;name=ivtv
For available versions.

So I imagine this approch would be portable to other distros.

Congratulations! You now have a working Gentoo system.

1. Your kernel includes support for ALL your hard-drive controllers, not as modules (Sil680 is modular by genkernel's default)
2. Device mapper support is enabled (in LVM), it's off by genkernel's default
3. Your RAID levels are compiled in (they're modular by default)
4. Once the RAID is up and the old drive is added, DO NOT REBOOT, POWER-OFF, OR POWER CYCLE your system until the RAID is finished rebuilding and the discs are synced. This is where I goofed up. My array went poof & when I went to recover it the filesystem was really mangled. Now I'm posting from an iBook I've just learned may burst into flames at any second while my desktop re-installs everything.

Perhaps we should expand the old joke a bit.

Windows XP Home patches: http://www.ubuntu.com/
Windows XP Pro patches: http://www.gentoo.org/
Windows NT4 patches: http://www.debian.org/
Windows 3.1 patches: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

This way we can troll both sides of the fence.

yes, because we know no one else gets security holes. Writing something off because the authors jump up and down and say "holy shit, patch this" is a bit short-sighted. at least people are being informed and shit is being done about it.

yes, because we know no one else gets security holes. Writing something off because the authors jump up and down and say "holy shit, patch this" is a bit short-sighted. at least people are being informed and shit is being done about it.

yes, because we know no one else gets security holes. Writing something off because the authors jump up and down and say "holy shit, patch this" is a bit short-sighted. at least people are being informed and shit is being done about it.

Thanks, I'll look at it, but Gentoo says not to use binary drivers. More of the same here. The only xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-1.0.8762 I could find is for Fedora.

Yeah, but it isn't rocket science. With an O'Reilly Postfix book and this Guide to Virtual Email Servers, I was able to get a robust and secure system running on a Sun Ultra2 box I got off eBay...thing is built like a tank.

Also, as I mentioned earlier...check with your ISP to see if they have a business acct...usually cost a bit more, but, you have not bandwidth or port restrictions, and you get a shiny static IP address to play with.

:-)

> With todays large harddisks this is hardly any problem, and not worth the package maintainers
> time to split the packages into even more packages.

They already are ...

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/kde-split-ebuilds.xml

Seeing as you say you will be "emerging it today" I will presume you are using Gentoo, in which case you can use the modular packages instead of the monolithic ones. Just chose the select apps you want to install and leave the rest. Of course, the hard part is knowing which apps to install but going with basic desktop + what you can think of and then adding things as you realise you need/want them. See here for more information, it is a little old but probably still accurate.

yuck, linuxforums has a bunch of morons running the show, last time i checked too many restrictions were there. On the other hand, http://forums.gentoo.org/ are a charm.Hats off, free as in freedom and you can really ask all advanced questions. I work on a variety of distros, Ubuntu,Suse and Gentoo, but when in doubt always goto Gentoo forums. Just a warning, most often you need not tell them, that you are actually not running Gentoo.

There are many good resources on the web. The standard resource is The Linux Documentation Project, or http://www.tldp.org/. Another site, which is much better than it used to be, is http://www.linux.com/. http://www.linuxjournal.com/ has many great articles to guide you through a wide variety of small projects. A great newer site with helpful articles is http://www.howtoforge.com/. For help on the desktop side, http://www.desktoplinux.com/ has many articles you may find of use. Documentation and information about KDE is, of course, available at http://www.kde.org/ and it's affiliated sites (linked from their homepage). IBM is always putting up new articles at http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/ that can provide usefull information for development work under Linux. You may also find the articles on http://www.debian.org/, http://www.gentoo.org/, and http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ usefull even though the articles were written for other distros.

If you can't find what you're looking for there, you can always head over to irc.freenode.net. The #suse and #opensuse channels will be of particular interest to you. You may find #kde helpful for KDE applications. ##linux is basically a catch-all channel; we'll generally be able to field just about any question you throw at us there. If we can't, we will point you in the right direction.

Keeping up with the FOSS news can also teach you quite a bit. You already know about Slashdot. http://osnews.com/ is another very nice resource. http://www.kerneltrap.org/ is a less frequently updated site which can provide you with more advanced information. Keeping an eye on http://www.freshmeat.net/ can help you get a better feel for the various software available for Linux. And of course, with gmail you can setup alerts for Linux, KDE, etc.

If you really want to learn more about Linux, there's no better way than distro hopping. Go to http://www.vmware.com/ and download their free VMWare Server 1.0 to allow you to try out various distros without having to wipe your hard drive. This does, however, require you have a decent amount of RAM (I'd recommend at least 1 GB). Go to http://www.distrowatch.com/ for a fairly complete list of the available Linux distros, sorted by popularity.

If all these links really don't solve your problems, take yourself over to your best local bookstore and buy a book or two. The drawback of doing this, however, is that most of them will be pretty much out of date by the time they hit the shelves. On the other hand, they will give you a great foundation upon which you can build (update yourself) easily by utilizing the online resources.

Also, never forget about http://www.google.com/linux!

I like google groups better than the google linux search, but I don't think either are the best sites. IMHO any site that purports to have all answers to all linux questions isn't going to do very well with any semi-complex question. They just can't have the know-how.

IRC channels are good, but it is kind of like IM - if the devs aren't on you're out of luck.

I think it really depends on the distro. For Ubuntu, there is Ubuntu forums for SuSE there are SuSE forums. The same goes for Gentoo, Mepis, Debian, Redhat, Fedora or any other distro out there. The larger projects also have their own forums.

Getting as specific a location as you can will help (e.g. the google group on Debian is better than the one on Linux users for Debian problems). That is why IRC is great when you have a reasonably well-researched and specific question. Before you ask a dev (who may be working on fixing the problem, or may have already fixed it, or may be plagued by the same question over and over again) please read how to ask a question properly. That way you are maximizing the chance that you get the right answer, people won't get mad at you, and you won't be wasting anyone else's time.

Although this is specific to the Gentoo Linux Distribution, Gentoo has fantastic forums. Gentoo I hope that helps.

You can always learn Linux like I did. Go get a pound of pot, lots of beer, coffee, make sure Google.com is accessable, and (wish I had this when I started learning) the forums at http://forums.gentoo.org/ are imo the best place online for Linux help. (Using gentoo or not).

Your best friend will be man pages. Good luck in your Linux learning!

The same question was asked on the Gentoo forums some time back, and generated quite a long thread.

See here

It might work better if you try to go to http://packages.gentoo.org/.

What part of "Binary drivers are not yet compatible with X.Org 7.1." did you not understand? Nether nVidia, nor ATI drivers work yet, so this is not a fair asssessment of ATI's driver support. Here is the Gentoo X.org update information.