Gentoo Installer Review

int3grate · n00b Joined: 12 Mar 2005 Posts: 9

I've been using Gentoo for about three years now, and I decided to install it on my new laptop. I thought I try the installation using the GUI. The first time I went through the setup screens, it got to compiling the kernel and froze at the very end. I had to kill the process, and I tried again. After I went through the setup, it complained about a drive being in use, so I closed setup and made sure all my drives were unmounted and started installation again. Went through all the menus, and it complained about /dev/hda4 still being in use, so I rebooted my laptop and tried the installation again. I then again went through all the setup screens, and the setup froze again while compiling the kernel!

I wasted about 3 hours total trying to get it to work and gave up. I went back to installing Gentoo manually, and found that the page by page documentation was missing (replaced by documentation on how to use the GUI installation), but the quick install guide was still intact. If I was new to Gentoo, I wouldn't be able to install it manually without the old step by step documentation.

I really think a GUI installer is important to Gentoo, and will attract a larger user base, but I don't think hiding the detailed documentation for a manual install is a good idea. Using Gentoo has been more of a learning experience than anything else. If I really wanted an operating system that was easy to use and install, I'd use Ubuntu, and I recommend Ubuntu to people who ask.

I love Gentoo, and thought I'd post my opinions back to the community. Thanks for reading,

Int3grate

nixnut · Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 5:15 pm Post subject:

Moved from Installing Gentoo to Gentoo Chat.
Not a support question, so moved here.
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mikegpitt · Advocate Joined: 22 May 2004 Posts: 3224

I always used the gentoo handbook as my step by step guide:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml

onlinepancakes · Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2006 1:03 am Post subject:

Iv used the Gentoo installer 3 times already and each time it worked great. Never had issues with it. But then again I just have it partition my haddrive, install grub, make user make.conf and install kernel and thats all. Everything else I do after its finished. I like the installer a lot though. Saves a lot of time.
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Headrush · Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2006 1:52 am Post subject:

dalek · Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2006 3:51 am Post subject:

That looks like the one I used several years ago. It was on the CD too.

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