is gentoo for newbies

tikal26 · Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2005 6:17 pm Post subject: is gentoo for newbies

I am completly new to linux. I mean I've use it before, but never installed it. I read that red hat might be my best choice, but gentoo seems so powerfull , specially for an AMD 64 . DO you think that I should get used to red hat and then use gentoo. or try to use gentoo from the get go. I will like to know what other linux users think.

BlackEdder · Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2005 6:23 pm Post subject:

If you have the perseverance to install gentoo (it can take a few tries/days/weeks) then I would say go for it. If you get stuck then search the fora (most problems have already been answered) or post a question. If you just want a running system then I would go suse I think.

masseya · Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2005 6:23 pm Post subject:

Very similar thread: Gentoo Advanced or Basic

This will let you know more about whether or not Gentoo is for n00bs, but it won't help you as much with whether or not you'd be better off learning another distro first. My advice: just Gentoo it.
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Cadorna · Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2005 6:46 pm Post subject: Re: is gentoo for newbies

totencham · Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2005 7:23 pm Post subject:

It's all matter of time. If you don't have much time, than try a distribution, which is ready to go just after installation (like Suse), but performance of such a system isn't as high, as on a system, which was set up from nothing, from zero (properly, of course!). Compiling whole soft takes much time as well, so if you want to try a program almost right after downloading it, chose one of the RedHat clones.
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yngwin · Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2005 9:15 pm Post subject:

Gentoo is for noobs who want to learn.

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gentoo_lan · Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2005 10:02 pm Post subject:

Gentoo is for newbies who like challenges and who are willing to fail. The first time I installed Gentoo...I borked it.. and the second...finally the third time was the charm and since then it has been smooth sailing. Though I did learn from my mistakes and will definitely not make them again.

bladdo · Guru Joined: 19 Jul 2004 Posts: 334 Location: NJ

Suse is your best option.
Although gentoo is very powerful and would be the ideal distro.
Yast in suse is great!
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Shotpiece · Apprentice Joined: 01 Jul 2004 Posts: 248

wow, split 33 1/3 to all three, thats pretty surprising.

As big a fan as I am with gentoo.. and this is was the first distribution i tried, i'm going to have to go in favor of fedora (er, mandrake if it was there). I agree that Gentoo is for "noobs who want to learn," but only really to a point. I mean a true noob would be my girlfriend (you can imagine the type), and good god i would never press this operating system on her. But throw something like Fedora on there and she'd be ready to rock. I wouldnt even have to do the install :-D

kcy29581 · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 2:11 am Post subject:

Ok I just tipped the poll to Suse's favour by one vote... I apologise to anyone who disagrees!

I also think Mandrake might be suited in the poll for newbies as well. Oh wait... Mandrake has loads of bugs... hmmm... yep, I even got rid of it last week in favour of Arch Linux on one of my pc's. Oh well, like the lovely people of Linux Format (UK) say: "full of bugs but one day they'll be fixed... ONE DAY!!!" (something along those lines)
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Omega21 · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 2:19 am Post subject:

I would not recommend Gentoo for complete n00bs, but if you do your best and tough out the install, you will end up learning a lot. I would point you in the direction of SuSe. It seems like a really good distro. You could also try Ark Linux. Its new, and has a nice install, but forces you into KDE. If you do have an Athlon 64, KDE will run beautifully. Keep in mind you can probably install Gnome, if its nice enough to let you.

Good Luck!
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kcy29581 · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 2:49 am Post subject:

tikal26,

If you want to start with Linux I strongly recommend Suse over Fedora anyday, one reason being that in Fedora you cannot play media due to copyright laws. You can MANUALLY fix this but if you want everything handled by the distribution Fedora is not an option.

Suse on the other hand is an excellent distro. One of the few distros I have tried which does not favour hugely between KDE and GNOME, thus enabling you to try both fully. Mandrake has always given an advantage to KDE users by making GNOME "look" visually worse and not using the latest version.

Keep in mind one thing though: the future. Suse is a very VERY expensive distro if you intend on using it forever. Releases tend to be every 6 months and cost a hefty £50-£60 (UK) making it cost MORE than Windows (Windows XP for example will have had a lifespan of about 5-6 years till Longhorn comes out). However Suse always have free downloads about a month after a new version is released, so thats an option.

I will say that if you feel confident enough and wish to learn from rights and wrongs jump into Gentoo. I tried Gentoo after 2 months of Mandrake/Suse, a week of Fedora and a month of Debian, and I havent regretted it since. The community is great and always here to help.

Good luck!
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taskara · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 5:01 am Post subject:

are you a newbie who wants to learn linux?

Then gentoo is the answer.
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eerok · n00b Joined: 14 Feb 2005 Posts: 69 Location: Canada

It depends on the newbie ... some like a challenge; some don't.
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Goalie_Ca · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 7:19 am Post subject:

Depends on the newbie. If they are capable of reading and wish to actually do a little thinking i highly recommend it. If they are fairly lazy and want something that just works and don't need anything fancy going on i recommend suse and fedora (depends which one again...).

If they are really really lazy and just fed-up of windows i recommend os x.
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kimchi_sg · Advocate Joined: 26 Nov 2004 Posts: 2969

Shadow Skill · Veteran Joined: 04 Dec 2004 Posts: 1023

You don't learn Linux by using Gentoo as opposed to any other distro, you learn it by asking questions of more experienced users, so going through a six hour install isn't nessecarily going to teach you jack. Following a relatively criptic manual [Its still worlds better than most of the pathetic exscuse for man pages that are written as though you already have full knowledge of the command.] verbatum doesn't really do much at all. So Gentoo really has no true advantage over any other distro in terms of learning how Linux works. With the Gentoo installation manual it pretty much requires you already have experience with terminal command syntax if you want to have any idea why certain things are done the way they are in the instructions which is real knowledge that can be applied to different situations. All of these distro's will end up requiring you to actually look at a terminal, learn the directory structure, and general command syntax none is better than another in this respect.

However the reasons I would not recommend Gentoo to someone with no experience with Linux are the following:

1. The install manual while excellent still assumes you actually understand what they are doing, when you f### up during your first install attempt if you have a little experience you may be able to fix your screw up without starting all over again.

2. You are allowed to unmerge dependencies without [or some form of explicit declaration on your part.] being told what programs you will be breaking by doing so, and there is no way in hell someone who is not running a server has a real chance of knowing what every single program he or she installs depends on unless they have OCD and catalouge every single package they emerge wich would basically mean emerging individually hundreds if not thousands of packages. Most people wouldn't waste their time doing that.

3. Tools meant to fix dependency issues clearly state that they may break your system and some are affected by the use flags you set in make.conf requiring you to comment out the flag that you THINK is making the tool or emerge command produce strange output...I would think it wold be smart of the noob to stay the hell away from these types of commands if it is indeed warning you about increased chance of breakage wouldn't you?

I would go with Fedora because it has a very wide selection of packages and the forums like these are very informative, and the install is much faster, allowing you to more quickly learn by actually using the system as you intend to.
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taskara · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 12:25 pm Post subject:

I learnt more using Gentoo for 6 months then Redhat and Mandrake for 3 years.

Using a shell forces you to learn GNU/Linux.

Manually partitioning and editting configs forces you to learn GNU/Linux.

Think about Windows, no-one really know how to run it in the backend (not that you easily can). Why? because you don't need to.

If you use a point and click GNU/Linux distro you don't learn how the system works, and you don't learn good troubleshooting skills.
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orangeman12 · Apprentice Joined: 19 Dec 2004 Posts: 283 Location: Chair

I would say that if you are just starting off with linux then Suse would be the easy to use but after you learn to use linux i would switch to gentoo because of the portage and the emerging.

zxiiro · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 3:39 pm Post subject:

I would recommend gentoo for everyone weather they are newbie or not. Mainly because with the other distros, they are only good if their default configurations work on your system. If you run into problems like it can't detect some of your hardware I find it too difficult to search for help. Gentoo has very good forums in my opinion.

tikal26 · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 3:42 pm Post subject: thanks

thanks to all of you that replied, just for the amount of support I think that I'll try gentoo if it gets too difficult I can always try something else. I'll let you all know in a couple of days I'm sure that I'll need some help. Now I;m just trying to figure out if there is way to have a light install of KDE or if I'm force to install the whole thing.

masseya · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 4:19 pm Post subject:

kcy29581 · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 7:20 pm Post subject:

tikal26,

there is a way to install a "light" kde. It's the kdebase package, read the relevant KDE Documentation on the Gentoo website. KDE 3.4 packages look to be even more stripped down!
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throck · n00b Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 39

I wanted to learn linux for many years. I installed Mandrake, Red Hat, and a few others. I even tried Gentoo about a year and a half ago. I dumped it because I couldn't figure out how to install X and kde (I didn't search hard enough

).

Using the other distributions allowed me to learn how to use a linux desktop. Once I hit the command line and tried to learn things like installing and configuring DNS, Web, etc, servers, I got lost immediately. If anything broke on my machine, I had no idea how to fix it and had a very difficult time finding any help on fixing it.

I tried Gentoo again about a year ago, and haven't gone back to anything else. Gentoo is by far the best documented linux distribution. The main site has documents for setting up and configuring Gentoo for use a desktop system and as a server. The docs are easy to follow, even when I don't necessarily know what they are talking about (I can still follow the steps).

The forums are top notch. Every problem I have had with Gentoo has been solved in the forums. And quickly at that.

The installation docs for Gentoo do contain some advanced stuff, but if a newbie follows them exactly he is almost guaranteed to have a successful install. Plus he will have at least a small clue about how his system works when he is done.

I've learned more about linux in general from using Gentoo in the last year than I have in the previous 4 years of using other distributions. I am now working out how to setup a binary package server that will automatically keep 1 to 1000 (or more even) desktops or servers up to date (compile once, distribute many).

New users of linux will have a hard time with Gentoo, but the obstacles they come up against are solvable with a little patience and some posting on the forums or IRC.

If you are looking for a linux system to setup and use, go with Suse or Mandrake or Fedora. If you want to learn linux, I recommend sticking with Gentoo and solvinig the problems you have. In the long run it is totally worth it.

throck