How many tries before your first successful Gentoo install?

ectospasm

Inspired by this thread, I was wondering how many times you had to install Gentoo before you got it right? Personally, it only took once; I attribute that to (in descending order of importance) the most excellent installation documents and my prior GNU/Linux experience with Slackware.
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st. anger · Apprentice Joined: 30 Oct 2002 Posts: 273

syko · Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2003 8:38 am Post subject:

Long answer:
Just once, but it took me some time to work up the courage for that (for some reason it seemed like a big leap at the time :wink:

). After that install, I've done 2 more (on my box) and I'm still perfecting it. I'm thinking that next time around I should have the ideal system, if I don't forget which kernel options I need to compile and which programs I need to emerge. Shouldn't be too long till I do another format, either - I just installed Fedora.

Short answer:
I installed it once, and it worked just fine. Now I'm perfecting.

chrispy · Apprentice Joined: 10 Nov 2002 Posts: 228 Location: Tokyo

first time, almost 2 years ago, I screwed up halfway, and I was really pissed at myself, coz the instructions were right there in front of me, I was the one stupid enough not to read them correctly in the first place

gaute · Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2003 1:29 pm Post subject:

I got it working the first time, but my ext3 fs fucked up so I had to reinstall sometime this spring.
I also had some years of slack before I turned to Gentoo.
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gkmac · Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2003 2:36 pm Post subject:

First tried in on my main PC when it had a 20Gb hard drive and it took about three or four attempts to get the hang of it.

Then I swapped the hard drive for an 80Gb and installed Gentoo on there (about six months ago) and it's still the original install I'm using today. I replaced RedHat with Gentoo on my server and laptop about five months ago, they too are still on the original install.

ozonator · Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2003 3:18 pm Post subject:

Just once, and had no problems, but as has been mentioned, the install docs are brilliant. I was even able to get a couple of friends to install Gentoo (both geeky, but neither with much *nix experience), and with a minimum of question-answering from me, they each got it first try, too.

Looking at the results of that other poll (currently showing almost 90% having used a different distro before Gentoo), it's likely that most of us benefited from that prior experience. I'd bet that if the question were, "How many tries before your first successful Linux install?" the results here might be rather different.

Having installed several different distros and a couple of different BSDs, one thing seems clear: for someone with a bit of experience and good instructions, the best and most reliable installers are the most minimalist ones. Gentoo, thankfully, leads that category.

ed0n · Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2003 3:48 pm Post subject:

just once , I printed the documentation and started installing

MatzeOne · Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2003 4:46 pm Post subject:

Retriever II

Unne · l33t Joined: 21 Jul 2003 Posts: 616

I got it right on my first try. So did my friend who'd never touched Linux of any sort in her life. Thanks to the install docs, they are spiffy.

lghman · Guru Joined: 29 Nov 2002 Posts: 548 Location: Florida

I have to say that I have yet to have a gentoo installation on any of my computers take more than one try. After the first few installs you dont even need the guide anymore.

--sonik
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Azaghal · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 103

I had it right the first time, but I've reinstalled at least 5 times after that, to fine tune things. I've lost count now, but right now everything is completely optimized and configured the way I want it.

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so · Retired Dev Joined: 08 Sep 2003 Posts: 115 Location: Roma

Instead I have had to install Gentoo for two times because the first had a problem with the bootloader and I didn't know like arranging :oops:

odegard · Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2003 1:02 am Post subject:

Gentoo was my first linux experience. All I knew about linux, apart from what the OS really was, was "ls" and "cp". I managed to install it on the first try with some help from the forums. I just did a reinstall after a longer stay in windowsland (not by choice) and I made it this time too

The install docs are excellent!

happypup · Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2003 1:07 am Post subject:

three only because I kept changing my mind on how I wanted it in stalled /boot / /home ect.
I finaly put /tmp and /boot, /swap on a seprate hard drive.
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ciaranm · Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2003 1:31 am Post subject:

Once. Excellent install docs, and I've used lfs enough to know how everything works.

schmeggahead · Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2003 1:32 am Post subject:

If I hadn't tried my first post-RedHat (read that command line install) on a laptop with PCMCIA card ethernet adapter, it probably wouldn't have been that many 7+ :oops:

but I punted to a P75 with an unbootable cd (surmounted that)

and did the first round with Reiserfs making it a module in the kernel (instead of built in)! Those instructions have to be good 'cause I hardly knew what a man page was. :wink:

Jesco · Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2003 10:13 am Post subject:

Once, although I had to interrupt my install because I did

oscrmyer · n00b Joined: 21 Sep 2003 Posts: 31 Location: Seattle

I got Gentoo up and running the frist time. I loved it the whole time.
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progster · Apprentice Joined: 16 Jul 2002 Posts: 271

It took me 2 tries, i can't remember what I did wrong in the beginning (it's almost 2 years ago now

), but it was some dumb mistake. I started all over and since then gentoo's been running like a charm. Now if I could only get my printer working...

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

YOu just can hardly go wrong with the awesome install docs. I got my system up and running with one try. (configuring other things like the cd burner was a completely diff story)

I do however like the do the install over and over again. I think I like the building process more than actually using it. Plan on building yet another system soon.

lamaistres · Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2003 5:11 am Post subject:

I installed Gentoo once. However, I have updated many, many times.

professorn · Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2003 1:52 pm Post subject:

Once, the manual ROXX so you can't make any mistakes if you follow it

(Notice: FOLLOW

)

quiconque · Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2003 2:51 pm Post subject:

I would have to say once, but it's really twice. I got everything right the first time, and everything ran as it was supposed to, and then I went ahead and borked everything by running an etc-update without paying attention to what I was doing. So, I popped the CD in again, and started over...