Linked by Dave Scott on Mon 17th Mar 2003 17:36 UTC
I recently read Dustin Wilson's Newbie Gentoo Review and as a 'n00b' who recently installed Gentoo, I found it to be a good article about Gentoo. It is a very good overview of the installation and configuration process. After reading all the comments about how most people thought or were looking for it to be a newbie walkthrough, I thought that as a 'n00b' who has recently installed Gentoo, I would try to write a little something about installing Gentoo for the newbie.
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I've installed Gentoo on a few different systems, and with the 1.4rc2 release, I've had a blast. It works very well, whereas 1.2 was problematic for me on two of the same systems. I have really learned more about Linux in general because of Gentoo's "thorough" install system. Currently I've got it on a PC with an AMD 761-based mobo with a Promise RAID/ATA100 chip, running three hard drives (one in a removable bay), a DVD-ROM, a CD-RW, ZIP-100 IDE, two 3Com NICs, an external Courier v.Everything modem, and onboard AC97 audio AND an SB Live! card... and it works perfectly!
BUT, and it's a big but, not without a ton of investigative forum searching. Bookmark http://forums.gentoo.org right now.
Kernel configuration is fun (not). I thought I had enabled parallel port use, but there are two VERY different switches, and only one was on. Boot to the CD and recompile the kernel... very easy to figure out. I may write a n00b doc for that soon.
Setting up the CD-RW was a chore, but nothing some forum searching couldn't fix. Again, a kernel recompile was necessary. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=20175
Learning about 'etc-update' and 'rc-update' is essential! 'etc-update' allows you to choose between different lines of different versions of configuration files for a particular package you've installed. 'rc-update' is the command you use to add a service to the default startup. Once you learn Gentoo's way of accomplishing this you'll look at other distros in a new light (very dim). However, I'd suggest doing an 'emerge xxdiff' and use 'xxdiff' for compares instead of the 'etc-update' command, if you're running XWindows.
Learn the few simple commands in 'emerge', such as 'emerge search XXXX' and 'emerge --pretend XXXX'...
Finally, always remember to use 'emerge sync' BEFORE you install any packages, to make sure you've got the latest version. If a new Portage is available, by all means, compile that first before installing other packages!
Hopefully these tips will help some of you in your quest to install one of the most interesting distros available. Good luck, and stick with it!