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silentwhispers
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 11, 2004 6:55 am    Post subject: Mandrake 10 vs Gentoo, which is best for novice Linux user? Reply with quote

Hi everyone,

How are you all today? I am currently a Mandrake Linux 10 user (yep, I agree with alot of people on Mandrake 10, it isn't great). I am considering moving to Gentoo but I am afraid I'll be lost. I'm not expert at Linux but I'm also not exactly a newbie either (started with DamnSmall Linux live cd, Flonix to Mandrake 9 to 10 over short period of time). I upgraded Mandrake 9 to 10 and I must say 10 isn't great. My question about Gentoo is, is it easier to handle than Mandrake and does it cover an even broader scope of hardware than Mandrake? (ok 2 qs *hehe* ;p) I'm not really thrilled with Mandrake and would like to switch to and try a new distro. The pc Mandrake 10 is running on is several years old (Pentium 400 mhz, 64 mb ram, 5 gig hd, not to mention Mandrake hogs alot of it *boooo*). Would I need better for Gentoo to run? Thanks everyone :)
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 11, 2004 7:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Moved from Other Things Gentoo.
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 11, 2004 9:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

With your specs, I'd suggest running a lighweight window manager such as fluxbox. There are other alternatives, but fluxbox is my personal favourite. Its very fast and lightweight, but you have to configure everything yourself through text files. Once you get used to it however, you'll find it pretty easy.

As for gentoo, if you stick to the excellent documentation, you should have no problems.
I'm guessing that you might be able to save on some harddrive space if you install a very lightweight system, e.g. exclude everything kde or gnome related.

Installation will take a while, after all, you compile everything from source. If you've get plenty of time, go for a stage1 install. Not only for the optimization, but also for the learning experience.

Hardware support is as good as the kernel will allow. Some distros provide custom rpms to install specific hardware, gentoo has ebuilds for certain hardware. However some stuff, you just have to go ahead and compile yourself. If you dont have any exotic noname hardware you shouldn't run into trouble. And if you do, the gentoo forums will help you a LOT.

Wenn it comes to package management, I think gentoo's system is the best, installing and updating packages which are in portage, is easier than anything else I've tried. All dependencies are downloaded as well and then compiled and installed in the proper order.

Gentoo Performance:
I would think that gentoo should run better on your hardware than mandrake. Especially if you select only what you really need, via use flags and cpu optimizations. As mentioned before, compilation from source will take time. But I think the results are worth waiting for.

One final note, before you jump into the deep end. It is always advisable to have access to the internet during the installation procedure, should anything go wrong. That way, you can browse the docs and forums if you run into trouble. It might also be a good idea that you read up on any vital hardware that your system might need to work for the initial setup. i.e. network, scsi,etc.
If you have only one pc, a good option might be to install while running knoppix.
One more thing, if you are at all comfortable with configuring and compiling your own kernel, please do so and dont use genkernel. The docs refer to both methods, but experience has shown that a quite a few users have run into trouble with genkernel.
It might work for you with no problems whatsoever, but keep in this in mind in case you run into problems during the kernel installation and configuration part.

I think thats about it for now. If you do decide to take the plunge, good luck and have fun.
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 11, 2004 5:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ChojinDSL wrote:
It is always advisable to have access to the internet during the installation procedure, should anything go wrong. That way, you can browse the docs and forums if you run into trouble. It might also be a good idea that you read up on any vital hardware that your system might need to work for the initial setup. i.e. network, scsi,etc.

If the livecd supports your network card/chip AND you don't mind text based browser, then you can make full use of the virtual consoles (Alt-Fn to switch back and forth) -- both links and irssi are on the livecd:
VC1 -- run your Gentoo install
VC2 -- use links to browse the install manual at www.gentoo.org
VC3 -- use links to browse forums.gentoo.org
VC4 -- use irssi to connect to the #gentoo channel on irc.freenode.net

Basically, Gentoo requires patience and the ability to read the install manual -- and being careful with what you type is a plus, typos are the primary cause of problems with a Gentoo install ...

Otherwise, just relax and go with it! #gentoo is the largest and most active channel on freenode and forums.gentoo.org was nominated for Linux Format's awards for best Linux support resource :D
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 11, 2004 11:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

let's just say i've learned more in 5 days of gentoo then in 2 years of debian and suse
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 11, 2004 11:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Start with mandrake. (and save your config files onto a cdr :P)
after you get sick of it .... try gentoo.
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 12:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think it depends.
Lets be real about this. If Mandrake has all you will ever need already installed and setup in a nice usable fashion then obviously Mandrake is the better choice. But if you to install something after it is set and running, want to upgrade a package, want to remain up to date with security, and have broadband access then Gentoo is the only way for a newb to go. It would be nice if they had an experienced gentooer hold their hand through the install but a determined newb can install gentoo with these fine forums.

If you do not have broadband then might I suggest installing knoppix. It has a lot of packages laid out nicely and then they can simply apt-get new packages or up to date security patches and the like. The real prob I have with the other distros is its almost impossible to stay up to date unless you reinstall with every release. It is so easy to break dependancies and all that jazz unless you have portage or at least apt. I have played with all kinds of Distros and was constantly reinstalling when the new release came out so that I could stay up to date. It was not much fun. Gentoo has made installing and updating almost trivial.

The one drawback you might find after the system is running is that it will take a while with that computer to compile certain packages like kde or openoffice.org. So you might take advantage of the binary files that some packages have like openoffice. But I do not believe gnome kde or the like have binary packages that will be released more often than the scheduled release cycle.
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 12:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, I say Gentoo because it is easy to install stuff with Gentoo. A lot of noobs turn away from Linux because installing programs in Mandrake and other RPM-based distros can be a real pain in the arse.
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 12:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pwnz3r wrote:
Well, I say Gentoo because it is easy to install stuff with Gentoo. A lot of noobs turn away from Linux because installing programs in Mandrake and other RPM-based distros can be a real pain in the arse.


oh man, can i attest to that! before gentoo i was running YDL, rpms were a bitch. if i wanted to install something, i had to go out and get rpm's for their dependencies, go through a series of trials and errors to get the right order, and then i could get my app. not so fun. that is in fact the main reason i switched to gentoo. i love portage. is just so easy, yet so powerful at the same time
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 12:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ahh, time to put on the 'ol flame-retardant suit.

If I was you, I'd stick to Mandrake 10 for the following reasons.

1)Gentoo's not hard to install as long as you can read and follow directions, however it takes some experience to know what all those commands are. It's one thing to parrot commands from an installation handbook, it's another to completly understand them.

2)Portage is the most flexable package management system I've ever used but it's also the most complex. It's takes some practice to learn how to use it properly and generally during this period, you'll end up breaking your system beyond repair.

3)I wouldn't consider Gentoo a stable distro... x86 packages seems to break on me every once and a while. If you don't enjoy tracking down wierd errors, filing bug reports, tweaking/breaking/fixing things constantly, you might want to reconsider using Gentoo.

4)If you are taking a "dive in head first" approach to learning Linux, Gentoo's a poor choice. The file system directory isn't very standardized and portage uses a lot of Gentoo-specific scripts. There are better options for this style of learning Linux.

5)Hardware.... do you really want to sit around waiting for stuff to compile on 400Mhz all the time? Doing a 25 hours plus, stage one install, doesn't make you leet, it's makes you stupid. :P

6)Speed and optimization... I think this is a myth but other's seem to think likewise. I'd say that the speed of Gnu/Linux in general is more determined by what services, applications and desktop enivorment you run, rather than CFLAGS.

That being said, Gentoo is a wonderful, but sometimes annoying distro that can do just about anything. The forum community will be more than willing to help you out if necessary and the documentation is excellent.

As for making Mandrake 10 faster, try using a lighter window manager like Openbox, use lighter applications, make sure DMA is turned on if possible and turn off unused services.
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 9:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

10k1 wrote:
Ahh, time to put on the 'ol flame-retardant suit.

If I was you, I'd stick to Mandrake 10 for the following reasons.

1)Gentoo's not hard to install as long as you can read and follow directions, however it takes some experience to know what all those commands are. It's one thing to parrot commands from an installation handbook, it's another to completly understand them.


Practice makes perfect.

10k1 wrote:

3)I wouldn't consider Gentoo a stable distro... x86 packages seems to break on me every once and a while. If you don't enjoy tracking down wierd errors, filing bug reports, tweaking/breaking/fixing things constantly, you might want to reconsider using Gentoo.


I would say gentoo CAN be as stable as anything else. I generally have no problems with stability, but then again, everyone has different experiences with that.

10k1 wrote:

5)Hardware.... do you really want to sit around waiting for stuff to compile on 400Mhz all the time? Doing a 25 hours plus, stage one install, doesn't make you leet, it's makes you stupid. :P


It's not about leetness. Its about building a system thats customised to your needs.

10k1 wrote:

6)Speed and optimization... I think this is a myth but other's seem to think likewise. I'd say that the speed of Gnu/Linux in general is more determined by what services, applications and desktop enivorment you run, rather than CFLAGS.


I would think that good use of USE flags plus some decent CFLAGS should help improve performance, as well as minimal use of background apps, daemons and services. Its a bit of a paradox, to run a custom compiled distro on such slow hardware, but then again, on such slow hardware, once all is installed, it might make the biggest difference.
On the other hand, if this is your only system, and you need it to be running within a certain time, then perhaps gentoo should not be your first choice.

10k1 wrote:

That being said, Gentoo is a wonderful, but sometimes annoying distro that can do just about anything. The forum community will be more than willing to help you out if necessary and the documentation is excellent.


This I totally agree with.
Perhaps the best reason to use gentoo is the forum community.
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 4:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, I'd like to say that I compiled from stage1 on my server, which is a 400Mhz PentiumII box with 512MB of ram. I don't remember how long that took but I installed Xorg on there too, and I even got bzflag working :P

But yeah, it's not pointless to install on a 400Mhz box.

I was running FreeBSD5-CURRENT before Gentoo on the box.
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 6:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ChojinDSL wrote:

Practice makes perfect.


Yah but you have to know what those commands do to extract any kind of "learning experience" out of installing Gentoo.

ChojinDSL wrote:

I would say gentoo CAN be as stable as anything else. I generally have no problems with stability, but then again, everyone has different experiences with that.


I personally think that even the 'arch' portage tree moves too fast to be considered stable. The 'arch' and '~arch' keywords only designate if the ebuild is stable not the compiled program and the only way to check if the program is stable is to run it, for a long long time. That's why the packages in Debian stable are so outdated. It takes a long time to confirm a program is stable. I feel that the 'arch' portage tree moves to fast to confirm any kind of stabilty for the compiled programs... just because nothing's broken yet doesn't mean it's stable.


ChojinDSL wrote:
It's not about leetness. Its about building a system thats customised to your needs.


I think the merits (optimization, mainly) aren't worth the investment of time. I doubt he'd see any difference in speed with a slimmed down mandrake and a stage one gentoo... plus it was a joke eh.

ChojinDSL wrote:
I would think that good use of USE flags plus some decent CFLAGS should help improve performance, as well as minimal use of background apps, daemons and services. Its a bit of a paradox, to run a custom compiled distro on such slow hardware, but then again, on such slow hardware, once all is installed, it might make the biggest difference.
On the other hand, if this is your only system, and you need it to be running within a certain time, then perhaps gentoo should not be your first choice.


Yah but if you want any resemblance of stability you're going to be running fairly standard CFLAGS which isn't going to do much for speed. I believe that the applications, daemons and desktop enviroment that are running are responsible for the feel of speed and response, not which obsecure and unstable CFLAGS you compiled things with.

ChojinDSL wrote:
This I totally agree with.
Perhaps the best reason to use gentoo is the forum community.


That... and portage rocks! I don't particularly like Mandrake but it's pretty easy to install, and more or less works out of the box.
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 6:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

nilson wrote:
Well, I'd like to say that I compiled from stage1 on my server, which is a 400Mhz PentiumII box with 512MB of ram. I don't remember how long that took but I installed Xorg on there too, and I even got bzflag working :P

But yeah, it's not pointless to install on a 400Mhz box.

I was running FreeBSD5-CURRENT before Gentoo on the box.


agreed pII chips were always pretty damn good but in most cases were cripled by huge memory prices, 64meg is pretty light especialy when you think of the way linux caches progs
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 9:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

10k1 wrote:
ChojinDSL wrote:

Practice makes perfect.

Yah but you have to know what those commands do to extract any kind of "learning experience" out of installing Gentoo.


Well the handbook does a fairly good job of explaining said commands...
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 9:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

If you want ease of use and laziness, set up Mandrake. It's a fine distro.

But if you want an easy but LONG alternative that actually TEACHES you how linux works, go gentoo without a doubt..
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 11:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

/me as the drill sargeant from Full Metal Jacket:

GOD HAS A HARD ON FOR GENTOO! :twisted:
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 14, 2004 12:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

ChojinDSL wrote:
/me as the drill sargeant from Full Metal Jacket:

GOD HAS A HARD ON FOR GENTOO! :twisted:


No. God doesn't exist.

Nice try.
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 14, 2004 1:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Zyklon wrote:
Well the handbook does a fairly good job of explaining said commands...

Yeah, Gentoo pretty much taught me how to use the tar command. :wink:
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 14, 2004 7:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

klavrynd wrote:
let's just say i've learned more in 5 days of gentoo then in 2 years of debian and suse

Seconded... and that was just by installing the bitch..
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 15, 2004 2:25 am    Post subject: Re: Mandrake 10 vs Gentoo, which is best for novice Linux us Reply with quote

silentwhispers wrote:
Hi everyone,

How are you all today? I am currently a Mandrake Linux 10 user (yep, I agree with alot of people on Mandrake 10, it isn't great). I am considering moving to Gentoo but I am afraid I'll be lost. I'm not expert at Linux but I'm also not exactly a newbie either (started with DamnSmall Linux live cd, Flonix to Mandrake 9 to 10 over short period of time). I upgraded Mandrake 9 to 10 and I must say 10 isn't great. My question about Gentoo is, is it easier to handle than Mandrake and does it cover an even broader scope of hardware than Mandrake? (ok 2 qs *hehe* ;p) I'm not really thrilled with Mandrake and would like to switch to and try a new distro. The pc Mandrake 10 is running on is several years old (Pentium 400 mhz, 64 mb ram, 5 gig hd, not to mention Mandrake hogs alot of it *boooo*). Would I need better for Gentoo to run? Thanks everyone :)


I switched from Mandrake. My last Drake was 9.2. I saw 10 and, well, I bolted. :D

Haven't looked back either. I've come to really like Gentoo.

If you've just done GUIfied installs, the Gentoo one could be quite a shock. Especially coming from Drake. Drake does have the GUI user friendly thing down pretty good these days. Gentoo, you've got to be comfortable with the command line. Maybe not the ultimate Linux guru but you should know your way around fairly well.

Gentoo does have some of the best documentation I've seen. If you can follow the Handbook (and some of the others like the Desktop docs), you can probably pull it off. The docs are really well done.

So I'd suggest you read first. Read the handbook and the documentation for some of the specific things you plan on using (like Gnome, KDE, Alsa, such things). If you're left feeling mystified, that could be a sign you could get lost during an install. Which could be really frustrating. Especially if you end up unable to get online and yell "Help!"

Definitely print out everything you might even think you need before starting.

I've also found the forums around here to contain a lot of useful information. I haven't had to actually ask for help myself because there's usually some thread where somebody else has had the same or similar problem. Sometimes finding information in the forums is a bit of a chore. The search feature of the forum software seems a bit limited. I've gotten to using the Google "site" option to search the Gentoo site. Turn up a lot of useful information that way.

Also, the community here seems to me to be one of the more friendly ones. In all the reading I've done on the forums, I've rarely seen people copping attitude. It's generally a nice place and people are helpful. The forums are a really great resource.

I find that once you get past setting things up, Gentoo is pretty easy to maintain. Doing an update with emerge is pretty simple. Though you can get clever with "~x86" and unmasking packages and outsmart yourself. I just did. :D

Just spent the last couple of days reinstalling because I did a Very Bad Thing. But it was my fault.

The initial compiles take big, honking wads of time. But in my opinion, the end product is worth it. In fact, what attracted me in the first place was the prospect of a system compiled for my machine rather than some "lowest common denominator" RPM kind of thing.

Your mileage may vary but for me, it made a big difference. The last few days, I limped along on an old, back up partition with Drake 9.2 on it while I was trying to put my Gentoo back together. Drake was slow. I'm sure not going back. I'm spoiled now. :D
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 15, 2004 2:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

One vote for Mandrake 10. I've brought several new users into Linux with Mandrake 8-10. However, most of them wouldn't even use a -Windows- command prompt. Any mention of a Linux console session would send them right back to Windows. Mandrake served as a useful intermediate step.
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 15, 2004 2:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

10k1 wrote:
3)I wouldn't consider Gentoo a stable distro... x86 packages seems to break on me every once and a while. If you don't enjoy tracking down wierd errors, filing bug reports, tweaking/breaking/fixing things constantly, you might want to reconsider using Gentoo.


You know, coming from Drake, that's not my experience. I don't find Gentoo any less stable. Drake does have... hum... issues. Guess all distros do. Thing is, if you try to find information on a problem with Drake, it's harder. At least in my experience. They are a commercial distro so they don't have incentive to publicly publish information. They do want people to buy support after all.

I had my problems with Drake. Particularly--and I this is a "don't get me started"--the way DiskDrake can totally hose a Reiserfs partition. I abandoned DiskDrake and went back to the good old command line. Near as I can tell, they did not test DiskDrake with Reiser at all.

Drake has become bad about rushing through testing. And they test only for a very narrow scenario of "buy a boxed set, stick the CD in the drive of a very middle of the road machine, take the defaults." I joined a beta test once and found a problem with doing an FTP install and they blew it off. Point blank said they weren't going to do anything about it.

I think if you're a "newbie" and willing to go along with what Drake thinks you should want, you're fine. And I still mention Drake as a possibility for people coming from Windows who want to try Linux. But if you get off Drake's narrow little path, that apparent "stability" can go right out the window.

Hell, even if you just want Gnome you can run into problems. They're a KDE heavy distribution. I was always squabbling with my Drake over that. It was very irritating...
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 15, 2004 9:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

IMHO for very very newbie users better is mdk (10.0, 9.2 is bad than 9.1 and oldier). But mdk is only for first-steps in linux/unix systems. Gentoo - this distributon is recomendate (in my opinion) for intermediate/advanced users.... of corse all is my humble opinion ;)
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 15, 2004 6:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mkbilbo wrote:
10k1 wrote:
3)I wouldn't consider Gentoo a stable distro... x86 packages seems to break on me every once and a while. If you don't enjoy tracking down wierd errors, filing bug reports, tweaking/breaking/fixing things constantly, you might want to reconsider using Gentoo.


...
think if you're a "newbie" and willing to go along with what Drake thinks you should want, you're fine. And I still mention Drake as a possibility for people coming from Windows who want to try Linux. But if you get off Drake's narrow little path, that apparent "stability" can go right out the window.

Hell, even if you just want Gnome you can run into problems. They're a KDE heavy distribution. I was always squabbling with my Drake over that. It was very irritating...


I agree with you completely on this point. Mandrake has a set way they'd prefer you to do things and when you don't follow that path, things go downhill really fast. My biggest grip about Mandrake10 is how they handle printing, I can not for the life of me get it centralize printing configuration, I have to go to each application and configure it myself. Not to mention they include totem as the default media player, :roll:
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