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Gentoo 2005.1, Experimental Live CD Released

safeness writes "Gentoo 2005.1 was released yesterday. Included in its release is an additional experimental LiveCD with the long awaited graphical installer. Now there's one less reason for your friends to switch to Gentoo! Get it here!" And darthcamaro writes "Hard to tell from the change log what's new ... but this story on internetnews.com notes new installation hardware support and WiFi."

25 of 347 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah yeah. by suso · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now there's one less reason for your friends to switch to Gentoo!

    Indeed! A couple more features and I'll be ready to switch back to Fedora.

  2. This is going to be good... by Dan667 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Let the Gentoo vs. everything else flamewar begin!

    1. Re:This is going to be good... by w98 · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I use gentoo 2005.0, and have used gentoo since one of their 2003 releases. Did that make me a linux expert? No. Using about a dozen different distros since the early 90's has sure helped though!

      I agree that following a step-by-step list of instructions to install something does not make someone an expert. Heck, I can buy something in a box from IKEA, assemble it per their instructions, and have a functional piece of furniture, but that hardly makes me a furniture craftsman "expert".

      Of course, if the user goes through the installation walk-through and checks other command line options, and WHY things happen in a certain order, then of *course* it will make a HUGE difference on the skill level they end up with.

      So I don't use gentoo for the "prestige" of saying "I use an OS I compiled from source", I use gentoo 'cause it's a comfortable distro for me, it's nice and fast for what I need, it supports all of the hardware I currently need it for, and that's that.

      # emerge mytwocents

  3. Perhaps its only me... by imsabbel · · Score: 4, Funny

    but somehow, putting a CD with an "experimental Gentoo" Release on it into my computer sounds just as fascinating and fun as open hearth surgery in nanibia or landing a space shuttle with chocolade heathshields...

    --
    HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
    1. Re:Perhaps its only me... by RedWizzard · · Score: 4, Funny
      but somehow, putting a CD with an "experimental Gentoo" Release on it into my computer sounds just as fascinating and fun as open hearth surgery in nanibia or landing a space shuttle with chocolade heathshields...
      Oh, I don't know. I'm kind of fascinated about just what "open hearth surgey" and "heathshields" are.
    2. Re:Perhaps its only me... by Drooling+Iguana · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's only the installer that's experimental. The actual stuff that installs on your computer will only be expiremental if you go with the "~arch" branch.

      --
      ... I'm addicted to placebos
    3. Re:Perhaps its only me... by sTalking_Goat · · Score: 5, Funny
      but somehow, putting a CD with an "experimental Gentoo" Release on it into my computer sounds just as fascinating and fun as open hearth surgery in nanibia or landing a space shuttle with chocolade heathshields...

      Are you kidding? The People's Imaginary Republic of Nanibia has some kick ass hearth surgeons. They came by Mom's place yesterday. We thought that fireplace was done for but after a double Chimney bypass it was roaring again we were all making Space Shuttle Heatshield Smores in celebration.

      --

      My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...

    4. Re:Perhaps its only me... by br0ck · · Score: 3, Funny
  4. A Gentoo LiveCD? by An+Onerous+Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    No way in hell am I going to recompile the OS every time I boot up. Do I look like I have that kind of time in my life? /me checks posting history.

    Never mind. Carry on.

    --

    You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!

  5. Re:wireless? by kernel_dan · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you are able to get wireless in Knoppix, then you can download stage1 and the portage snapshot from the internet and install from there. There is no need for the Gentoo LiveCD to install.

    --

    Illegal? Samir, This is America.
  6. Happy Geek. by Onimaru · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Looks spiffy. I'm seriously a geek in heaven lately...it seems that now my biggest problem is choosing between all the pretty, easy, functional linux installs I could be running and resisting the urge to "catch 'em all."

    I do find myself occasionally wishing, though, that some of the effort being put into endlessly fragmenting and repackaging linux could be put into taking some of the great apps available and turning them from "good, functional, usable, and fast" into "droolingly beautiful and slick as Elvis' hair."

    --
    adam b.
  7. Re:Meaning of Gentoo? by hungrygrue · · Score: 3, Informative

    It is a species of penguin.http://www.siec.k12.in.us/~west/proj/pengu ins/gentoo.html Specifically, a very fast swimming penguin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentoo_Penguin

  8. Poorly Chosen Language by SporkLand · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I was browsing the screenshots of the new installer, and they looked nice. But as I was looking through them I saw reference to a "nazi-ish firewall". I'm not the type of person that is upset by this, but I can picture the people whose sensitivities would be offended by such a remark.

    Maybe they should switch nazi-ish for strict. I'm not trying to be overly critical but I'm sure there are people who would find the comparisons between an overly-strict computer and a group that baked people in ovens offensive.

  9. Re:Typo? by sbennett · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I hear you learn lots about Linux that way.

    No, you learn lots about following instructions that way. Of course, it's still useful knowledge that a lot of people could benefit from gaining.

  10. Screenshots by Se7enLC · · Score: 5, Informative

    Screenshots are here

  11. Re:etc-update STILL sucks by jj110888 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    stop trolling and start use dispatch-conf (included in portage).

    IIRC, most of the alternatives that don't use X are simple scripts (like dispatch-conf and etc-update are anyways), so why make a whole package for something u can just slip into ~/bin (or w/e is in your $PATH) ?

  12. Re:etc-update STILL sucks by ajayrockrock · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I posted about how much gentoo config handling sucks in the last slashdot story about gentoo, and I'll keep doing so until they do something to fix it.

    Thanks for doing your part.

  13. Re:Discrepancy by dsd · · Score: 5, Informative

    The article text is confusing. There are 2 "releases" at hand.

    1. Gentoo 2005.1 - a normal official release, updated packages and installation media but nothing mind-blowingly new.

    2. An experimental LiveCD which boots into a graphical environment and includes an early version of the upcoming Gentoo Linux Installer.

    The Installer "preview" is not included on the standard 2005.1 media.

  14. Re:Now there's one less reason for your friends to by DeathPenguin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The sentence you quoted is an example of something that should never have made it on to the front page, even on Slashdot. I really wish the editors would keep such biased remarks in a blog or some place more appropriate.

    I really do want to try this new distro out. If the graphical installer is compulsory, then yes, it will be very annoying. That's not how Gentoo has done things in the past, and I can't see a reason why they would do away with manual installs now. It's probably a simple option you can disable at the command prompt when you boot the same way you disable things like APM or DHCP discovery (noapm, nodhcp, etc).

  15. No ReiserFS by Danuvius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Gentoo's "default filesystem" (the one that's recommended for the root partition in the installation manual) is not supported. No ReiserFS with the graphical installer.

    For a large portion of Gentoo users this makes the graphical installer USELESS.

    And why is there no ReiserFS support?

    According to the, presumably 12 year old, FAQ writer for the project:
    http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/releng/installer/faq .xml#reiser
    "Because reiserfs == teh suck...and libparted doesn't support it very well."

    Based on past experience, I suspect behind this decision a juvenile programmer with personal dislike for Hans Reiser due to some flamewars.

    Urgh... what a pity. I hope eventually work will be taken over by people with some sense. In the meantime I'll continue being very happy with my manual gentoo installation and recommend any GUI-installation-dependent users to head on to SuSE.

    --
    Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
  16. Re:Typo? by dratox · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I did my first gentoo install only 2 months ago(by the book), and in that time learned more about linux than from running it an entire year before with other (more user-friendly distros). You do learn alot, even by the book, because it lets you see the inards more than some distros, and forces you to see how what does what and why it's there. This is actually one of the main reasons I DID use gentoo, rather than something like fedora 4.

  17. Re:Typo? by agraupe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, that's not entirely true. You could say the same thing about the apprentice system, which obviously does work. Sure you don't become a linux 1337 hax0r over night, but, having done a gentoo install, I could see what I had done wrong with other linux systems. As you do the install, you see how things fit together, and getting from the fresh-install to working-desktop stage is better still, in terms of learning. Because X.org wasn't automatically configured, I learned how to do it by the gentoo guide, so when something did screw up with it, I could go back in and fix it. Was this the only way to get this information? No. Would a gentoo install teach you much if you're already a knowledgeable linux/UNIX user? Again, no. For those of us not in that category, the gentoo install proves to be educational, and it ends up with a system that is customized to your liking.

  18. Re:Typo? by jtwJGuevara · · Score: 4, Informative

    For instance, the gentoo installation was my first experience manually editing fstab, compiling a kernel, editing various files in /etc by hand, so and so forth. Installing gentoo is not so much a learning experience than it is a "frame of mind" changer. It completely forced me out of using gui configs to the point where I now prefer to go edit files by hand. Of course, you could always go edit files by hand in other distributions as well, but gentoo (moreso the gentoo community and documention) is more supportive of it and explains it much better than other distributions that I've seen. (Disclaimer, I haven't used debian, so I can't speak of its community and documentation).

  19. Re:Discrepancy by glowworm · · Score: 3, Informative

    And when you research the Gentoo site it mentions the Installation tool/live CD is in the experimental fork on the mirrors. Checking there shows the 2005.0 version not the 2005.1 version the article suggests.

    --
    Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina
  20. Re:What's the point of a Gentoo livecd? by jtwJGuevara · · Score: 3, Informative
    Isn't the whole idea of Gentoo that you compile everything? Isn't the whole idea of a LiveCD that you have a CD that always works that you can quickly test and use?

    What Gentoo calls a "LiveCD" is mostly different from what every other distribution refers to as a "LiveCD". It's still a true "LiveCD" in that it is a bootable cd that contains a fully working instance of Gentoo on it. However this working instance of Gentoo is a minimal, command line driven (until this release) instance and its purpose is to give you an environment in which you can begin installing Gentoo from scratch to your hard drive.