Wow, it works!

T-Minus10 · n00b Joined: 11 Dec 2002 Posts: 6 Location: Atlanta, GA

I've been thinking about using linux for a long time now. I've been installing some distro anually and forgetting about it since about 1998.

What's been my problem? It wasn't easy of installation: Get my CDs from some distro, take ten minutes to install, and look at the pretty typewriter my computer's become. My computer, which was formerly used for a variety of different things was suddenly reduced to tetris and kedit. How do I install a program? Download an RPM and watch it break. Fumble around wondering what the hell I am doing typing random characters into the command line.

Enter Gentoo.

I downloaded myself the Gentoo image and printed out the installation manual. There's something nice about the gentoo installation. It both holds your hand and gives you responsibility. The guide does what it's supposed to do, guide you, as you yourself actually get things done (and while getting things done, get to know your new O/S)

Partitioning. Making your file systems. Mounting things. Configuring: All in the installation. By the time I was through the installation (which took a few hours due to a few small difficulties) I realized that this whole Linux thing wasn't all that foreign. I knew enough to handle the command prompt pretty well, plus, "emerge" makes the previously complicated process of installing new software not only easy, but foolresistant as well.

Now, I don't have a linux typewriter, I have a linux box which can get things done.

Gentoo isn't commonly considered a distro for beginners. I beg to differ with this common consideration. Gentoo's the distro that's now converted half of me to the light side. And if winex gets better, maybe my other, addicted-to-games-side will convert as well.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

Moved from Forums Feedback. This is more of a Chat topic rather than forum related.

Glad your having a good time with Gentoo.

T-Minus10 · n00b Joined: 11 Dec 2002 Posts: 6 Location: Atlanta, GA

ya, i just read feedback and said, "yes, goes in there"

slougi · Posted: Fri Dec 13, 2002 2:14 am Post subject: Re: Wow, it works!

OpelBlitz · Posted: Fri Dec 13, 2002 3:57 am Post subject:

Gentoo is also the first linux distro I'm comfortable with, and I'm not very good with the CLI. If something happens, I'm not all that quick at fixing it.

I learned a lot about how a kernel is made and all that with the formidable installation. I don't regret it one bit. Now if this emerge KDE would ever finish!

sa · Guru Joined: 10 Jun 2002 Posts: 450

I just tried the new suse linux the other day. it made me feel like a newbie... gentoo is 100% better. :wink:

psharp · Posted: Fri Dec 13, 2002 3:23 pm Post subject:

I've studied a bit of public perception of risk - interestingly absolute risk is not the issue - its all about control.

That's why I think Gentoo scores - you do it all yourself transparently, as a newbie it teaches you to embrace CLI, not hide it under all sorts of systems which just make you more nervous. So even though compiling yourself could cause more probs it's less scary than the thought of apt screwing up...

Just my opinion.

zez · Posted: Fri Dec 13, 2002 9:51 pm Post subject:

I've experienced exactly the same thing, gentoo can be an excellent distro for new users, but it depends on what the user expects. My friend wanted to try linux and naturally I directed him towards Mandrake. He was pretty happy at how slick Mandrake looked, but he ended up reinstalling Mandrake multiple times (more than 3 at least) because he killed something doing it the manual way, not the Mandrake way. The problem was my friend knew that linux was a CLI OS and he wanted to use it as one, but Mandrake wants to channel the user into a GUI. So I introduced him to gentoo and he chugged along and ended up liking it better than Mandrake.

For people that want to use linux graphically, Mandrake/Red Hat are fine, but for people who expect linux to be all command line, even if they have never used a unix in their life, gentoo is great

As far as I go, I started on WinLinux and PhatLinux (afraid to partition, lol). Eventually I went to Mandrake, then Slackware, tried Debian, and am now very happy with Gentoo. The only time I actually have had that "control" feeling was with Slackware and Gentoo. Debian was close, but using dselect didn't make me happy

the_bard · n00b Joined: 03 Dec 2002 Posts: 60 Location: Albany, NY

I started out on LinuxFromScratch, myself. Actually, I guess you could say I tried SUSE and Redhat first, but it felt a little too much like they wanted to throw me out in the water, and see if I could swim. They dropped this supposedly fully functional desktop environment in my lap, and I had no clue how to do this, change that, or undo something else.

One of my friends linked me to LFS... and I immediately fell in love. I compiled everything possible from scratch first, and only resorted to binary packages if the source wasn't available.

Then I just got tired of reading .configure --help, and looking up dependencies, all by hand. I read about Gentoo on Slashdot, I think, and hopped on over to take a look. Two days later, I've got a functional Gentoo installation

.

I love emerge... rather than having to handle everything manually, emerge will handle it for me. The USE variables are what did me in... it gives me the flexibility of compiling everything from scratch. If something goes wrong, I can still step in and figure out what's wrong... but I only need to think about it if something goes wrong. Otherwise, I can type "emerge whatever", and walk away.

BlackPhoenix · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 01 Oct 2002 Posts: 124

Same here...I started out with Redhat...easy to use, but was more geared to professional use...I wanted to replace my desktop...

Went Mandrake...when I was a newbie, I liked the install...but the default configurations are ugly as hell, and the GUI tools they give you, while being neat, are too limited, and you are stuck using CLI anyway... So it gives you a false sense of user friendliness... You expect everything to be able to be done GUI-wise, but its not true...

Then someone told me about Desktop/LX from Lycoris... More limited, power-wise, but the default config were actualy nice...so I was able to actualy stand looking at the desktop long enough to want to LEARN about Linux (I never kept Mandrake, out of 4 installs, more than...2-3 days). Problem was...I am a fan of bleeding edge..and the RPMs for that distro take slower to come up than desktop environnement packages take to end up in Debian's STABLE branch!!

So, I was always going with the source code, and compiling everything... And then, I heard about Gentoo, without detail...so I went to the web site and read about it... I had heard praises about FreeBSD's port system, and it seemed like Gentoo's was better... And it would compile all that bleeding edge stuff for me... I was drooling...

Installed it...screwed up majorly...I wasnt ready, I broke everything...went back to Lycoris, came back to Gentoo after a few weeks, I missed Portage too much...and here I am now, with everything working properly.

A lot of the tweaking stuff is handled well by the ebuilds, too... (patching of stuff comes to my mind...), so that makes it way easier...

And being able to rebuild my system just by doing emerge -e world has proven unvaluable at times when I had problems I couldnt figure out... The equivalent of that for most distro is to just reinstall from scratch...which is...awkward =P

Anyway, Im done now...Go gentoo!