Gentoo not for "newbies"?

Mystilleef · Guru Joined: 27 Apr 2003 Posts: 561 Location: Earth

Your Personality.

Are you a tweaker?
Do you like to play around with configuration files for optimization purposes?
Do you panic when your screen spits out error messages or do you jump in excitment knowing there is something new for you to solve?
Can you spend the next 6 months learning a new culture?
Are you patient?
How do you handle stress?
How do you deal with your frustrations?
Do you mind spending a week installing one program?
Do you hate to be spoonfed?
Do you like freedom?
How about choice?
Do you know about:
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/index.html
http://www.linux.org/lessons/beginner/toc.html
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/Pocket-Linux-Guide/html/index.html
http://www.tldp.org/guides.html?
Can you read?
Do you like to read a lot?
Do you read manuals?
Do you collect manuals for fun?
You can't live without manuals, right?
How about readme files?
Do you also have an affinity for installation notes?
And changelogs?
How well do you follow instructions?
Are you intelligent and creative enough to improvise sometimes?

Being a gentoo user means being a determined and stuborn problem solver. A gentoo user does not just want things to work, he/she wants to know how it works, how it can work better and how it can work the way he/she wants it to work. The gentoo community is different because gentoo attracts a breed of unix users, that anwered yes to most of the above questions.

With the right attitude, Gentoo will be a breeze. Prepare yourself for the worst. Read extensively. Research indepthly. Be very thorough. You will undoubtedly face obstacles. But it's better if you are prepared for them. As a hardcore gamer I think you fit the breed of a gentoo user. We are just not satisfied with average performance, it has to be just how we want it, perfect.

Like any new language or culture. It takes time learn. Do not expect to be a proficient user in a day or a week. In fact, you'll probably keep learning somthing new about gentoo as long as you frequent the forums.

But first and foremost, you need the right attitude. A positive one at that. Fortitude and perserverance are you best friends. If they meet you and they like you, they'll introduce you to Gentoo. Linux is not Windows, and Gentoo is even far from it. So you need to expunge your brain of all the nasty bad old habbits of window users that you have become to accustomed to and spoit with. And embrace a better approach and a different culture to computing. So lets continue with the interview.

Are you ready for Gentoo?
If so, what are you waiting for?

P.S. Linux is not yet a viable gaming platform of choice. If you are into hardcore gaming and you are hell bent on using Linux, get your self an advanced gaming console, like the XBOX, the Gamecube or the PS2. I have the XBOX. There are not as many games on Linux as there are on Windows, so you might want to rethink migrating to Linux purely to play games. Otherwise, be prepared to embrace a whole new exciting journey. Oh and welcome to gentoo.

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senectus · Guru Joined: 17 Jul 2003 Posts: 534

woah!

Nice post..

:-)

Well its currently 1:10 am sunday morning and I'm STILL going on the gentoo install that started from friday 5pm... I haven't given up and am kinda enjoying the whole process.. so I must fit into SOME of those catagories..

masseya · Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2003 5:07 pm Post subject:

Neje · n00b Joined: 04 May 2003 Posts: 71 Location: Netherlands

My personal experience:

Gentoo is only the second distro I installed. The first was Red Hat 6.2, and I did a "Default Workstation" install and let the installer do all the partitioning for me, thinking it probably was too hard for a noob like me to understand. I never did much with it, and I wiped it off the hard drive months later when I wanted to try Abiword and discovered that I had to update about 50 libraries, tried to do that, ran into circular dependencies, tried to rpm -Uvh *.rpm (or something like that) with a directory full of updates, and broke the installation.

Months later, I heard about Gentoo, the "hard to install, easy to upgrade" distro. I had a friend over who had never tried Linux, and said "let's try something really difficult and install this Gentoo thingie". We printed the installation guide, followed it almost to the letter (for this, I even adjusted the partition numbering examples before I printed it!), it was a lot of fun, but afterwards we felt a bit cheated because it hadn't been hard at all.

At some points I got a bit sick of compile times, I was using kde at the time and upgraded often, but other distros I tried (Mandrake, Debian, Peanut) always had me running back to Gentoo because they seemed so difficult to maintain (although the new nvidia installer would have saved me a lot of frustration if it existed back then). I'm now looking at Slackware too but no way am I getting rid of Gentoo again.

As for gaming, I still dual-boot for things like Warcraft (sorry, Wine(X) isn't really for me), but I think that Gentoo is the best Linux platform for gaming, because of the optimization, the lack of unnecessary stuff running in the background, the easy way to install things (I did emerge enemy-territory recently, couldn't have been easier), and Gentoo Games ;-)

.

So, Gentoo for newbies? In my case, yes. I know very little about cat, grep, less, dmesg, proc, the list goes on (ls /usr/bin ;-)

). Still, I'm using Gentoo, and finding it easy to work with.

So, Gentoo for games? Not all games, even when you use WineX. But the list of games that run under Linux is getting longer. And I'm hooked on foobillard ;-)

although I have a few (gameplay-related) bugs to report on that.

Neje

P.S. People can use Gentoo because it's cool if they think using a system that's tailored to their own needs and their own hardware is cool (I know I do).
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nsahoo · l33t Joined: 17 Jul 2003 Posts: 618

zez · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2003 12:48 am Post subject:

Gentoo is good for new users because it forces them to learn, but maybe it's not the best as their very first linux experience. I see that you've already started a Gentoo install, but if you hadn't I would suggest just trying Mandrake out but try to do things "traditionally". In other words, compile your own kernel, use the command line often, compile your own programs instead of using RPMs, and don't be afraid to break anything. Eventually you would probably think to yourself "I really wish all this graphical cruft was gone and just leave me alone". It's at this point when you should remove Mandrake and install Gentoo. This happend to a friend of mine. I suggested Mandrake for him to start out and he ended up having to reinstall 3 or 4 times because he kept doing things his own way on the command line instead of using Mandrake's GUI tools. After that I suggested that he installed Gentoo, which worked much better for him.

Gentoo is best when the user craves more control.

y2kwizard · n00b Joined: 19 Jul 2003 Posts: 35 Location: here

I think that whether or not Gentoo is a good distro for a n00b depends on the type of n00b in question.

For instance, I don't think that Gentoo would be a great first distro for a n00b who's not willing to do some serious research. A n00b must be willing to go through lots of old forum posts, read man pages, and do some tinkering to be a good candidate for a Gentoo install.

I myself am a linux n00b, having just installed Gentoo for the first time after some halfhearted attempts at Mandrake and Red Hat some months ago....right now I'm emerging KDE, which is taking a buttload of time (I'm thinking about using Fluxbox instead). I am currently reading one of the very nice linux tutorials made available, I've used the forums to solve my X woes, and I'm planning on doing a lot of man page reading in the future.

Gentoo is a MUCH better distro for me than Red Hat or Mandrake because Gentoo has made me learn a lot about linux before even completing the OS install...and after all that learning, I'm really fired up about learning more. After the Red Hat and Mandrake installs, I just kinda sat around on my KDE desktop scratching my head.

So it all boils down to what type of n00b we're dealing with.
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slartibartfasz · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2003 10:13 am Post subject:

Spire · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2003 6:18 pm Post subject: Don't get your hopes up

I'm not sure if this is such a good idea, especially if you are a hardcore gamer who is used to buying new games the day they come out. A few, if not most games may not work at all out of the box, even with Wine, WineX or whatever else. If you run into a situation like this, nothing will be able to help you, the game just won't work for a while until someone is able to fix it. You should definitely consider dual booting until you are happy with Gentoo, even if you never actually boot to Windows. If you do become fed up with trying different versions of Wine, or messing around with settings, not to have wasted your time (installing Gentoo) and money (on the game).

That said, if you do find that Linux is suitable for your gaming needs, Gentoo is definitely one of the better choices of distrobutions out there. Every single program you have will be optimized specifically for your box. This is handy if you are the type of person who tends to scrounge around for every performance boost they can get.

S_aIN_t · Guru Joined: 11 May 2002 Posts: 488 Location: Ottawa

i think Gentoo is one of the easiest things to install. I am not sure what people are talking about when they say that there is a high learning curve with Gentoo.

Portage makes life very easy. The installation, even from Stage 1, is very simple. Just make sure to have the manual open when you installing. I find going from Gentoo to other Linuxes or Windows, unnerving.

at the same time, i dont really play games anymore. There is an occasional bout with GTA3 on my roommates computer. But the bouts are far in between and few.

I am glad to find my system doing what i want to do when i want to do it (whatever it is). Sometimes it takes a little longer to get some things going. But I have fun with it. It beats playing games.

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senectus · Guru Joined: 17 Jul 2003 Posts: 534

Well I am dual booting.. and I've completed the install.. I actually enjoyed the whole process and learnt a lot from it (as apposed to a redhat install or mandrake install *yawn*).

I haven't got it working yet.. I have problems with proc when it boots...
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=68634 <== see this thread.

But I am far from giving up.
Gentoo gives me a much better "feeling", and even though I've spent an estimated 23 hours on trying to install/fix the install of this OS and had no real success as of yet .. I still want to keep working on it..

I have a burning desire to make this work, and I'm not giving up yet..

:roll:

some suckers never learn aye... :wink:

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bashir · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 9:14 am Post subject:

ROOK · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 1:12 pm Post subject:

Couple of thoughts on this subject:

- VMWare : seems a viable means to give Gentoo a whirl without having to give up your current OS environment or go through the pains of dual booting. A friend of mine runs Gentoo via VMWare on his windows laptop and seems to work fine. Granted a VMWare workstation license may be a bit on the pricey side but I do believe they have a 30 day eval available.

- Google or <insert your favorite global search engine here> is your friend : During my first installation "experience" with Gentoo most of the issues I had (which ended up being minor) got solved via Google (and Gentoo Forum) searches.

- Research & understand first, Enter commands/make changes second: In my experience if you understand the why's and the what's that a particular set of instructions is telling you to do (for example the Gentoo installation instructions) you'll be much farther ahead on the troubleshooting "curve" when issues do arise. Takes longer but pays large divdends in the end.

Beyond that I can say that my first Gentoo install a few weeks back went pretty easily with only a few minor issues (and I'm an IOS junkie so definitely fall into the Linux n00b category). My "new" "Gentooified" Inspiron 8K is a pleasure to use (and tinker with), wouldn't go back for all the marbles in Walla-Walla, WA.
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Ben2040 · Guru Joined: 07 May 2003 Posts: 445 Location: UK

Hi
I totally agree with S_aIN_t. The installation process is not difficult at all. Mostly it is automated - bootstrap, emerge system, make dep etc. and the rest is brilliantly documented. If you can read you can install Gentoo.
And another thing.
If the Windows installation process goes wrong, what do you do? What can you do? If the Gentoo installation goes wrong, then you have a massive forum with a huge history of thousands of posts, plus the ability to ask over 23000 users to help you.

Ben

ROOK · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003 1:48 pm Post subject:

Ben2040 · Guru Joined: 07 May 2003 Posts: 445 Location: UK

Hi
Well yes I suppose. But the source thing is more what I was getting at. With Gentoo you have the pwoer to change everything going on beind the scenes, before after AND whilst something is going on. You don't get that with Windows

Ben

Unne · l33t Joined: 21 Jul 2003 Posts: 616

In my experience, using Redhat for a while, RH saved time in the short run with mostly-automated install, but in the long run it cost me far more time. I'd always manage to screw something up, and I never had any idea how to fix anything because of all the extra junk Redhat installed, and all the non-standard places it installed them. That, and searching for RPMs of dependencies whenever I wanted to install anything. Gentoo seems ideal for newbies at least in that respect. "emerge anything" and it just works. This MB is also insanely helpful, along with all the documentation.

If you don't want to "learn about Linux", you're pretty much screwed no matter what distro you use, aren't you?

senectus · Guru Joined: 17 Jul 2003 Posts: 534

KungFuHamster · Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2003 12:20 am Post subject:

My $0.02USD:

Gentoo is an excellent newbie distro, as long as said newbie has someone to give him a hand every so often. If the helper explains some of the basics of Linux and the Gentoo install, the newbie wil be able to stand on his own two feet in a short time.

How do I know this? I've converted about three people (three total linux n00bs) to the glory of St. Linus using Gentoo. And two of these people I've never even met IRL!

Booya!
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