Pentoo seems to have the solution to install Gentoo

Chiitoo · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2010 1:30 am Post subject:

So as I figured, Gentoo indeed does have enough unique aspects that make people want it but somehow just the installation part puts them off?

Well, I only briefly tried Ubuntu before, installed it a couple of times, then Gentoo, installed it about 3-5 times from scratch now I think and after the 2 it really was no problem at all, and this is from a complete Linux newbie.

So I can't really even start to fathom how it can become such a big obstacle if Gentoo can offer enough for them to want it, it really should be a part of the fun, so to speak. ;^^
If it's about the initial updates and if there are re-installs often involved, I imagine people could just copy the data as it's not so much like with windows and the registry crap... That's just my imagination though, not sure if it works like that. :S

Just my thoughts anyways.
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rel124c41 · n00b Joined: 11 Oct 2010 Posts: 13

I think that maybe there are mathematicians that don't care about the installation as long as they can run Gentoo in their computers. It is weird because I thought that they would spend some time reading about the installation but I guess that I was wrong. They just want to see numbers and complex mathematical algorithms getting devour by their computers and of course, they want Gentoo to play such role.

-t

Chiitoo · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2010 1:42 am Post subject: Re: laziness maybe?

rel124c41 · n00b Joined: 11 Oct 2010 Posts: 13

Honestly, I don't have an answer. One of them brought me his laptop yesterday and told me to make it work with Gentoo. He did not care about Fedora, Ubuntu or anything else. All he wants is Gentoo and also he wants to make sure that install all drivers for his printer and wireless devices. It is strange that a guy with a Ph.D. on Pure Math does not care about the
technicality of his OS. It baffles my mind deeply...but I will get it done as long as he can obtain the results that he wants. Double precision digits and almost perfect approximations are hunting this guy and needs some help. Gentoo should do it.

-t

Chiitoo · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2010 1:59 am Post subject:

Well that does seem weird, though interesting at the same time!
I don't know but I would imagine a mathematician would not be afraid to learn this kind of stuff at all but obviously, Gentoo really does have something to offer.

However, how will they maintain it?
As installing Gentoo teaches one a lot about it, if not most about it, I wouldn't install Gentoo for someone who is not willing to do that for themselves.

But that's me, I may bee thinking too deeply into it. : D
Bzzzt.
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rel124c41 · n00b Joined: 11 Oct 2010 Posts: 13

Gentoo is stable enough to run everyday without a glitch. He told me that he wanted to test his numerical analysis scripts on his laptop before he runs them for sure in the super cluster(Cray). He doesn't want to fry his cpu but at least want to have an idea of how accurate his scripts are.

It is all theory but it must be implemented somehow to make it work in the real world. I am still scratching my head. Maybe he is just too busy thinking about Ramanujan and all that...

-t

Chiitoo · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2010 2:20 am Post subject:

Haha, well yeah, could be!

Either way, I think after installing Gentoo once, it wouldn't seem that big of a thing after all. Especially for someone who is more experienced with Linux than I am, though I can understand it very well that it seems a lot of work at first but you probably know this just as well.

In the end, from how I see it, a GUI installer would seem more useful for "afk-installing" when you know Gentoo already because, as mentioned many times in several threads, installing Gentoo teaches you Gentoo, so it's a big part of it and one of the reasons I got into it!

But that's me, not a mathematician or anything, just a regular user, well maybe a bit more in-depth user heh...
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rel124c41 · n00b Joined: 11 Oct 2010 Posts: 13

I am pretty sure that they would like to show Gentoo to other mathematicians but they don't want to go through the entire process. They are other options out there like Calculate and Sabayon but I think that they are not aware of them. Pentoo runs beautifully on a USB stick.

I will take care of them, that won;t be a problem. What worries me is that they want to share it with other people just by giving them a cd but there is big block in the whole process which is the installation.

Let see what happens...

-t

Chiitoo · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2010 4:31 am Post subject:

Ah, true, sharing it to others in that way might become a problem.
But well, if they can't find a distribution easier to install and maintain then they really should get IN TO it, because as many have said, Gentoo is not just about installing it and running it, there is more to it after all...

Who will maintain it after the install if they know nothing about it?
I get a bad feeling about that, really...
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couchbotato · n00b Joined: 07 Oct 2010 Posts: 45 Location: Finland

couchbotato · n00b Joined: 07 Oct 2010 Posts: 45 Location: Finland

Chiitoo · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2010 7:13 am Post subject:

I would remember only maybe 30-50% of the commands/lines needed for the installation off-hand, that is why I make notes of the most complex ones.

For example the initial mounting and chrooting commands I have on a piece of paper...
Sometimes I would use Links to go to the forum or whatever for directions I either forgot or was unaware of.
Yeah, thru the command-line and all...

But why would I want to try to do it without the manual?
It is a major part of the system after all (or that's how I see it at least).

Though, actually, now that I think of it, I do remember most of it without any reading but it has not been many weeks from the last time I did it.
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couchbotato · n00b Joined: 07 Oct 2010 Posts: 45 Location: Finland

cach0rr0 · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2010 7:20 am Post subject:

maybe i need to leave, at this stage i remember it by heart -_-
(partition, make fs, untar stage, untar portage, build kernel, install grub, reboot!)

FYI, for people interested in pentoo for reasons other than the installer, they do have an overlay you can readily plug into your gentoo install.

I use it for compat-wireless, and a handful of their pentesting tools. Very handy, tons of goodies in there.
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couchbotato · n00b Joined: 07 Oct 2010 Posts: 45 Location: Finland

Why is it so goddam hard to do Gentoo Minimal Install CD whic installs the base system, with shell and portage installed? And some GUI with parted, so you can partition your hard drive etc ?? Why? Why the hell I need to download and unpack the portage everytime I install gentoo? Why its not included in the minimal install iso file ???

Because you want to keep Gentoo within just some very underground programmers own little toolkit? Thats just unfair. I've been installing operating systems for 20 years now and Gentoo is pain in the ass. Every time is a big thing to start installing new gentoo system, and it just is so depressing.

Same old boring things over and over again... make.conf file, CFLAGS, wtf I dont know and I dont WANT to know what the hell are CFLAGS and there should be easier way out.

We live 2010 now, and you seriously think that there will n ot be never Gentoo GUI install? Well then Gentoo will die. Thats the cold thruth, sorry guys

Gusar · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2010 9:40 am Post subject: Re: mission possible

Chiitoo · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2010 9:53 am Post subject:

couchbotato · n00b Joined: 07 Oct 2010 Posts: 45 Location: Finland

Holysword · l33t Joined: 19 Nov 2006 Posts: 946 Location: Greece

I totally disagree with the idea of a GUI.

Gentoo will not attract more users because of a GUI, the only way to do that is to make it easy to install AND MAINTAIN. However, everybody knows that by doing that Gentoo will no longer be Gentoo, and I love Gentoo - kill it and I kill you ¬¬ xD

The ratio between the benefits of the installation GUI and the effort put to make a decent and flexible enough installation GUI for Gentoo tends to zero. Let's work on something more important, Kubuntu is a good distro if you don't want to worry about installation.
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v_arnold · n00b Joined: 15 Apr 2003 Posts: 52 Location: London

Every ounce of spare manpower should be directed towards the post-install experience.

The installation process has gotten easier with every passing year since 2002. If you can't install Gentoo, you will definitely have problems when kernel updates don't go smoothly.

People who have trouble installing Gentoo should either persevere or quit, instead of changing one of the defining characteristics of the distribution that's made it so desirable to use.

As far as the "PhD in Pure Mathematics" is concerned, the individual will NOT get ANY added precision by using Gentoo AT ALL, when compared to any other distribution, including UBUNTU.

And UBUNTU can be installed in 15 minutes today, 30 minutes if you haven't don't it before.

couchbotato · n00b Joined: 07 Oct 2010 Posts: 45 Location: Finland

gentooP4 · Apprentice Joined: 20 Sep 2010 Posts: 182 Location: NZ

I too see no need for a GUI. I started using Gentoo for more of a challenge and it's been just what I expected.
I use other distros for out-of-the-box installs.
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krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

At first everyone agree it would be better to have an installer to ease the process and higher the audience, but as paste try proof it's not something doable for gentoo.

With the previous installer we were seeing that (telling you, because you seems to be too new with gentoo to seen that):

People with 0 knowledge of linux (installing a binary distro... is not a proof you know linux, it's a proof you can pickup some choices in a menu) were trying to install gentoo with the installer to have the best of both world: something as easy to install as a binary distro, but specifically running like they wish with optimizations and options they wish only gentoo can provide.

- Install fail:
The installer was alpha, so most of the time (not really sure but i would say something more or less close to 60% failures), people were going in the forum to get help on why it wasn't working.
And it was hell, as (at least me, but i think many gentoo helpers also) i don't care about the installer, this thing should be use one time by the user, it's not like a binary distro where people cannot do something or seeing a bug have no choice than just reinstall the distro, it's gentoo, seeing a bug you have zillions way to correct it.
So as i don't care about the installer, i don't care about how it work (understand here: i don't care looking at installer source to see what the installer was doing), and i was just seeing someone saying "installer doesn't work", and it wasn't even need for me to ask where it fail, as i don't even know where it could fail.
To sum up, if the installer fail, you were getting 0 help from anyone, all you were getting was a "do the install with the handbook, the installer sucks". And the next side effect, doing the install with the handbook, you were able to get help, as we were able to see where you have fail.

- Install success
We were just seeing plenty people getting crazy at using gentoo, they don't want/read doc (like they do with a binary distro), they don't want to configure anything (just like with the binary distro) and they don't even know what's going on and how you can correct it.
The forum was full of angry poster that were saying things like "Gentoo sucks" "Gentoo keep crashing".... Blahblah gentoo this and that: nothing work for them.
Easy to know why, emerge apache && /etc/init.d/apache start = What the fuck ! apache isn't working, i can't setup a web server... And try to help someone to setup apache where it doesn't know anything about apache, or iptables, or even /etc/hosts* files...
It was common to see things like that: "edit your apache conf", "how?" "use nano" "what is nano?" "an edit program you can use in console" "what is console"... Finally except when in real good mood, helpers were just giving up, because we're here to help, not to teach or admin another one distro.

I'm not saying gentoo is for leet, but gentoo is for people that could read docs, not for people that expect anything to work out of the box by magic.

And for your recurrent question about why iso dont have a portage snapshot ?
Well if you don't have a portage snapshot then the user can't install old things, just to see just after the reboot everything is obsolete now.
And a snapshot too old on an iso might be a failure, like a user trying to install per example "gcc3" when no more gcc3 files are present and gcc3 was remove from the tree, failing to fetch the files... So no snapshot = no choice then --sync and get a fresh tree

couchbotato · n00b Joined: 07 Oct 2010 Posts: 45 Location: Finland

Jaglover · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2010 10:54 am Post subject:

Looking at this thread and wondering.
There is a fair amount of good Linux'es, there's a Linux for every need and taste.
There is also a do-it-yourself meta-distribution called Gentoo. It is manual by definition, it's made for people who want it this way.
Now, a bunch of people here are whining it's manual. Where is your common sense? Why did you pick something that is not for you?
Do you go into a bar, order a shot of single malt and start whining it has alcohol in it? :roll: