New to Gentoo and loving it

dholowiski · n00b Joined: 04 Feb 2003 Posts: 22

I hope this is the right forum, I wanted to post a message to say I have installed Gentoo and am NOT having any problems. To whoever wrote the install documentation, thanks, you did a wonderful job. The only other linux distro I've installed has been Mandrake, and Gentoo is a world of different from Mandrake. Portage has been nothing but a joy to work with. The only problem I had was that I spent four hours trying to get the network to work, recompiling kernel etc., until I realized I had disabled DHCP on my broadband router (duh!).

Anyway, I'm running a completley Xless install, which might be kind of ab-normal, but it's on a machine that's going to be a server/audio/video player box and I didn't want to bloat it with extra 'junk'. Gentoo made this laughably easy, and with the assistance of the USE flags, I've got mplayer set up to run completley from the console. Now I only have to wait until I get home tonight to transfer over 26GB worth of divx's to try it out!

idl · Posted: Wed Feb 05, 2003 12:05 am Post subject:

Video with no X, now THAT i'd like to see!

OddFox · Posted: Wed Feb 05, 2003 12:31 am Post subject:

Perhaps he's using aalib?

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ebrostig · Posted: Wed Feb 05, 2003 1:33 am Post subject:

He is using framebuffer to handle the graphics.
Mplayer can use the frame buffer device as a graphical display rather than going through X-windows. This removes a layer and increases the performance.

Of course he could also emerge a browser that uses framebuffers and live happily without KDE/GNOME/Flux/<insert fav wm here>

Good job and welcome to Gentoo!

You will gain guru status easily if you share the configuration of your system here

Erik
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Chickpea · l33t Joined: 03 Jun 2002 Posts: 846 Location: Vancouver WA

Welcome!

idl · Posted: Wed Feb 05, 2003 1:47 am Post subject:

<--- me looking like a fool

ebrostig · Posted: Wed Feb 05, 2003 11:00 pm Post subject:

noff · Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2003 1:16 am Post subject:

OT, but Ebrostig when did you become a moderator?
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ebrostig · Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2003 1:31 am Post subject:

neilhwatson · l33t Joined: 06 Feb 2003 Posts: 719 Location: Canada

To echo dholowiski's words I too have just tried out my first Gentoo install. I've left the dependancy hell of Mandrake. Having also used Redhat and Caldera (years ago) I wanted to try something new.

Pros:
1. Emerge allows source building, much like debian IIRC, and takes care of dependancies more intelligently than rpms.
2. Building from source allows greater control over application configurations and features at compile time.
3. Applications seem more uptodate than with other distributions.
4. New runlevel method has powerful possibilities.

Cons:
1. Installation intructions did have some errors. For knowledgable users this was OK but the less patient will likely give up.
2. Installation is more time consuming. Reminds of the old days of linux. For the power user this is OK.

So far my experience has been good. I really enjoy the power and chooses available to me.

Many thanks to the Gentoo team!
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dholowiski · n00b Joined: 04 Feb 2003 Posts: 22

Actually, I was hoping to use svgalib, as mplayer can output to that too. It took a bit of figuring to get svgalib installed without it installing X, KDE, Gnome etc. - thank goodness for the USE flags. I'm having some problems getting it to work, but at least I know I can use framebuffer if it doesn't work.

In response to neilhwatson, I agree with your pros and cons. Especially the install time, but I was willing to wait. I have a VIA EPIA 5000 (500mhz) and it took about 14 hours for downloading & compiling (from scratch, stage 1 and stage 2). I'm far from being any type of a "power" Linux user, and always ended up in dependency hell whenever I tried to install software on anything else. Words just can't express how much I love portage...

As for my system configuration, it's easy. I started with the 40MB stage 1 install, and did the bootstrap, then the stage two, and stopped after that. I followed the instructions step by step and they were flawless. I just didn't do stage 3, didn't use any pre-built GRP package sets. Also, if your interested, here's my USE string from /etc/make.conf:
USE="-arts -kde -gnome -gtk -mikmod -motif -opengl -qt -qtmt -quicktime -truetype -X -xmms xv"
It may be overkill, but it works for me.