That wasn’t so hard… was it?
Just used a networkless installation off the 2007.0 LiveCD and everything is “working”.
If by working you mean hopelessly out of date, indeed.
The difficult part now is to get the complete system upgraded. I found Pothole. It’s a perfect GUI for using Portage. Works great, I just need to figure out how to utilize Gentoo’s so called “most important contribution” to package management before it pisses me off.
The errors, even in Pothole are cryptic. “Before this shiny new nVidia driver will work, so that your system doesn’t perform like a 89 year old grandaddy who forgot his Viagra, you need to fix 7 errors in a conf file in the /etc filesystem. Type in “man emerge” and look for the configuration section.”
What a crock of sh*t! Where exactly do I start looking for these 7 conf files with errors? Where is a log that tells me these specific files have errors?
If it doesn’t work out of the box – that’s like me saying my most important contribution to the world is that I’ve consumed way, way too much Diet Coke in the past 3 years since I switched from Mountain Dew – it’s a useless contribution.
Also I’ve decided that if your LiveCD performs as poorly as an installed system (due to using svga driver instead of nVidia), you gotta get your act together.
I’m done ranting.
5 replies on “Gentoo Up And Running!”
Wow! I guess you’re not too happy with Gentoo, eh? I installed it a couple of times to play with after it first came out (four years ago?), but I never stayed with it because something would screw up fairly quickly and my package situation would be screwed.
Yeah, I’ve been on Ubuntu since Hoary and I prefer that, even with a decade of Linux experience. Go with what works, OK? Don’t make your life more difficult thatn it has to be.
Thanks for the comment Daeng.
After some debate with another linux groupie, I’ve decided that Gentoo is NOT an Operating System. It’s a hobby.
Gentoo requires a lot of patience and willingness to learn, even for a proficient linux user. Might i suggest trawling through the documentation/wiki/forums or just stick with a more user friendly distro like ubuntu or fedora if you wish for something that “works out of the box”.
Nice said: Gentoo is not OS its a hobby…
Yeah, after the install number 101 onto different computers during last 3 years it becomes very useful and ubuntu is a booring experience. Very good for my wife. She likes it.
First, you didn’t even try. Gentoo is not for lazy, “out of the box” people. It’s a specific metadistro designed to suit every need possible, if you carefully configure it.
It’s not bloated (like most distros), its not binary (with the hell of libraries and dependencies), doesn’t have releases (so you can overwrite your so carefully written config files).
I’ve been using it on production servers for over 3 years, and at my Desktop and Notebooks for around 4 years, and I can truly say its stable, fast and reliable. Can’t say the same about the other distros I’ve tried (including Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, Slackware, and so many others).
Expectin the LiveCD to use a binary, RE driver, instead of a compatible, generic and stable video driver its just plain stupid. Next time, do your homework! That includes reading documentation and following manuals.