Possible New User: Pros/Cons of Gentoo?

Dralnu · Veteran Joined: 24 May 2006 Posts: 1919

I'm thinking of ditching SuSe 9.3 for another distro. I've got a friend who is/was estatic over Gentoo (He gave me my first Linux distro, FC3, which I never got to run, and SuSe 9.2, which also didn't work since it didn't have support for my winmodem I had back then). I've heard alot go either way with Gentoo, and was hoping for feedback from users who can give me some good, hopefully unbiased info on Gentoo installation, running it, packages, ect.

One thing I am looking for is something that is UPDATED. Thats one reason I'm not looking into Debian, and Slackware I'm personnaly just going to wait on for some time, since Gentoos all-source install seems like a good thing to me personally.

My system:
p4 2.35Ghz
80GB HDD (32ish for Windows, rest can be put up for Linux)
512 SDRAM
CD-RW
DVD-ROM
Intel Extreme Graphics card (onboard) w/ 64MB DDR SDRAM
_________________
The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.

steveb · Advocate Joined: 18 Sep 2002 Posts: 4564

This is my personal viewpoint.

Pros for Gentoo:

Good package management
Good support from the community (Gentoo Forum, Gentoo Chat, etc...)
Is flexible enought to fit in almost every need you have
Does not heavy patch original packages

Cons for Gentoo:

Needs some time to get installed
Needs some time till you understand the way Gentoo works
You are the last and only one testing a package (maybe 1'000'000 Gentoo users installed the package but still... the binary you get, when you compile a package is your binary. Probably not alot users have exactly the same binary (md5 sum would not be equal on all of the 1'000'000 packages))
Commercial support is not always there (mostly SuSE, RedHat, etc.. are supported from big Vendors (IBM, Oracle, whatever...) but you will have hard time to find/get support for Gentoo)

My advice: Use Gentoo. It is very flexible and unique in his way of doing things. You need to invest time, but you get something back for that.

cheers

SteveB

Dralnu · Veteran Joined: 24 May 2006 Posts: 1919

I've heard Gentoo can take HOURS to compile everything, and probably my install will end up being mostly from download/install instead of just from CDs.

P.S. Double-checking: x86 is the system I need for a system like mine, correct? The documents didn't seem to do much for clarifying that.
_________________
The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.

ce110ut · Apprentice Joined: 27 Sep 2002 Posts: 200

steveb · Advocate Joined: 18 Sep 2002 Posts: 4564

AllenJB · Veteran Joined: 02 Sep 2005 Posts: 1285

Dralnu · Veteran Joined: 24 May 2006 Posts: 1919

Googled x in x86. Not so much for results.

No, I don't know what it means (guessing x = i3/i5/i6 in i686 or some such deal as that?)

I'd like to have KDE (most of it), Firefox/Opera (One, maybe both. Firefox is a def. need), development tools (basic C/C++ workspace), enoguh multimedia I won't have to worry about alot of issues with how well things will work, command-line tools (w3m should be in there via dependency, plus I'd like to try out centericq), and a good lightweight WM (pref. IceWM)

I've got the main CD iso downloaded, and I'll start install tonight or tomorrow morning. In either case, I'll make sure to do what I can for telling you what I see as problems with install/usage/configuration.

Configuration I think will be my biggest problem, so I think I'm going to get my hardware device list off Windows (it does have its uses) and use that to help with the configuration and all that.

For the record, I'm purely a SuSe user. Havn't tried Debian (Did use Knoppix/DSL/Slax as LiveCDs once or twice, literally, but that was trying to repartition my HDD)
_________________
The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.

Dralnu · Veteran Joined: 24 May 2006 Posts: 1919

GUI install would be nice. That is possible from the downloaded image I take it? I think I got the Unviersal CD, but will double check that. Thanks for all the input. You all have really lived up to what I've heardabout the Gentoo commun.

EDIT:
Removed long quote that didn't print out right.
_________________
The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.

Dralnu · Veteran Joined: 24 May 2006 Posts: 1919

Sorry for several long post. but what I downloaded was the LiveCD (as it was the ONLY one with x86 listed under it after looking at the Get Gentoo! line at the top of Http://www.gentoo.org/ , so thats what I downloaded. This won't cause any problems, will it?

The Universal CD has listed:

alpha amd64 hppa ppc (32 bit) ppc (64 bit) sparc64

to which I don't see which to select, but LiveCD has

x86

listed. Like I asked, that won't cause a probem, will it?
_________________
The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.

ce110ut · Apprentice Joined: 27 Sep 2002 Posts: 200

killomatic · n00b Joined: 17 Mar 2006 Posts: 38

He said he has a P4, amd64 won't work on his sytem. He picked the right one.

at240 · l33t Joined: 12 Aug 2005 Posts: 603 Location: UK

Dralnu,

Use the minimal x86 CD if you have a working network connection.

Use the x86 LiveCD otherwise, or if you particularly want to use the graphical installer (which I don't particularly recommend).

Just to reconfirm: x86 is what you want for a Pentium 4, not AMD64.

ce110ut · Apprentice Joined: 27 Sep 2002 Posts: 200

aidy · l33t Joined: 07 Apr 2005 Posts: 915

BTW, if you use the new livecd install method, you have a working installation with graphical environment and everything in minutes, and after that you can install/update whatever you wish.