Gentoo Convert

Debian GNU/Linux user. Before that I bounced around between RedHat Linux and Linux-Mandrake. Several months ago, I tried Gentoo Linux and really liked the ideas behind it. However, I really didn’t have the time to play with it or get it working. The documentation at the time really sucked… Well, now the documentation is getting much better. The installer environment is getting better, too. They’ve even included the VI editor (no more of this "nano -w" bullshit) to make editing config files easier! On my computer (which used to be a fairly fast machine), the newest version (1.4 Beta_r2) takes about 2-3 hours to bootstrap and another 3 hours to install the rest of the main system. Then, to install XFree86 4.2.0, GNOME, KDE, and several other apps that I like to use, it takes about a total of 18 hours. Why does it take so long? Gentoo compiles every program from source. So it may take some time to do all that, but after everything is said and done, I have a system that is custom-tailored and built to the specifications of my hardware. I will say this, too – it’s wicked fast. Things just seem to run much much faster The biggest difference between Gentoo and other distro’s I’ve used is that they use an adaptation of the BSD Ports system. With Gentoo, you can install an application using the emerge command. emerge mozilla will download the source code for mozilla, check to see that all dependancies are met (building the required depentancies first), then build Mozilla. (On my AMD Athlon T-bird 900, this takes about 2 hours!) Okay, Mozilla is probably a bad example as it’s one of the apps that takes a very long time to compile from source. Better examples might be gAIM, XMMS, and WindowMaker. Yet one thing remains: when the software is finished compiling, you’re left with an application that is tailored to use all the instruction sets of your CPU, and runs VERY fast. The next major difference (for me, anyway) was the addition of the Device Filesystem. DevFS is nice in the fact that you don’t have some 5000 or so device nodes in your /dev directory. This makes it faster. It’s also nice because if you have PnP enabled, DevFS will find your device (provided you compiled support for it into your kernel) and create a device node for it automatically. It takes a little getting used to, but I must say I really am beginning to like it. If I start needing to tweak it more and more, I’m sure I’ll really enjoy playing with it. The last thing I really like about gentoo is the definitive geek factor. The only thing that (IMHO) screams "GEEK" louder is installing Linux from Scratch. Esentially, Gentoo is a distribution that started out as LFS and grew up into something with a managed source tree, and a user-friendly method of managing, installing, and uninstalling applications. Gentoo Linux is not for the weak at heart, or the linux newbie. It requires definite knowledge of your computer, and a fair amount of linux know-how. People who are afraid of tinkering with their system need to go with RedHat, SuSE or Mandrake. Pain lovers and power users who don’t want to spend their time installing each package from source should stick with Debian or Slackware. Users who want a dynamic, highly configurable and extremely robust distribution of linux need look no further. As for me, I’ve done something I said I’d never do. I switched away from Debian on my desktop. Gentoo, while not the easiest distribution, is winning me over even more every day. Oh yeah – I can easily do emerge ut2003-demo and have the new Unreal Tournament 2003 demo installed in about the 10 minutes it takes to download the demo. (And I did just that! Man, that game so rocks!) Anyhow, enough out of me for now. Thanks for visiting and Keep Coming Back!!!]]>