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Graphical Gentoo Installer In The Works

Posted by timothy on from the cool-kids-must-retreat-now dept.

JonLatane writes "Without a doubt, Gentoo has set itself apart from every other distro out there. Because it's source-based, it's notorious for its speed. Because of emerge, it's notorious for being simple to maintain. And because of its "install system" (if it can be called that), it's notorious for scaring off potential users before they even get to try it. Well, that's all going to change, because there is a graphical Gentoo installer in the works. It can run with a dialog frontend that bears a striking similarity to Ubuntu, or for faster systems a GTK+ frontend is available."

4 of 627 comments (clear)

  1. mirror and a comment by winkydink · · Score: 5, Informative

    mirror here

    Won't Gentoo lose all of it's coolness factor if anybody who can click a mouse can install it?

    --

    "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

  2. Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll" by DrYokomohoyo · · Score: 4, Informative

    You don't have to compile anything with gentoo to get up and running if you RTFM and download the packages cd along with your install image. You can have a system up and running in a few hours. Then if you wish you can rebuild all your packages over a weekend while you are out fishing.

    --
    Insert clever sig (here)
  3. My thoughts, having installed Gentoo by Elpacoloco · · Score: 4, Informative

    I could handle emerge. What I couldn't handle was all the constant re-configuring of all the little /etc files.

    That's why I use debian. Debian makes the /etc files based on silly questions that it asks me, and then puts helpful comments in the file so that should I need to change it later, I can.

    Config tools, please.

    Other than that, I was able to get the hang of Gentoo.

  4. Re:Boring correction... by mrchaotica · · Score: 4, Informative
    Not true!

    Installing Gentoo can teach you about partitions, some system services, and bootloaders, among other things. People say "but you're just copying commands verbatim!", but the text actually does give you useful information. For example:
    Next is the cron daemon. Although it is optional and not required for your system, it is wise to install one. But what is a cron daemon? A cron daemon executes scheduled commands. It is very handy if you need to execute some command regularly (for instance daily, weekly or monthly).
    Watching GCC output scroll by won't teach you a damn thing, but reading the installation guide will.
    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz