Before I go into an install comparison of different architectures, I wish to note that gentoo help, in the form of online manuals and IRC channels is good, for the most part. The online install is fairly comprehensive, until you get to the install manual for ppc (RS/6000 not Apple) and Sparc. The ppc install manual is completely Apple oriented (which is to be expected) and the Sparc manual basically tells you to consult the x86 manual. This is not too much of a bad thing, however, the Sparcs do requrie some "other" operations to get them going and the RS/6000, well, that is just a lot of work (and you thought the x86 install was a lot of work). The gentoo IRC channel has a lot of people in it, mostly not talking. I asked a question in #gentoo about installing on a machine with EISA since on "other" distros I can type in a kernel parameter at the boot prompt (which I could not do with gentoo). It took all of twenty seconds before someone responded with a command line option at boot to add options to the boot kernel. Not bad. The #gentoo-sparc channel on the other hand is where we find people with responses like "why would you want to install Linux on a Sun box?" (that is an actual quote, I have the logs). As far as I can tell, no one in that channel (for the week that I was there) has installed #gentoo-sparc. I think the maintainer has, but he was not active. All the gentoo IRC channels are on openprojects.net and the list of gentoo specific channels is at the gentoo.org homepage. Note that all manuals are not on the homepage and that gentoo-sparc is at mirrors.
Lastly we compare the install process of gentoo linux on x86 based hardware and "other" hardware, most specifically, Sun sparc hardware. I have a little spot in my heart for Sun Microsystems gear. I own a Sparc 10 a Sparc 20 and an Ultra 1. I have owned a Sparc 2, 4, 5, Ultra 2, Ultra 5, Ultra 30 and worked on the Blade 1000 and E250. My personal preference is the Ultra 2 or the Ultra 30. They are cheap (respectively speaking), fast running linux and rock solid. Expansion cards (of the SBUS variety) can be had used for cheap and the older units such as the Sparc 10/20/Ultra 1 do not use much power and are small. I have had many a Solaris admin ask me why I would ever want to run Linux on Sun hardware, but after I show them how fast an Ultra 1, 2, 5, or 30 loads linux and runs, they stop asking questions. At any rate, installing something such as RedHat 6.2 sparc or Debian potato sparc on a Sun box is fairly straigtforward. If you have a CDrom dirve (sun compatible) it is as easy as booting from it and installing. There are a few small pitfalls installing linux on the Sun, particularly the "whole disk" parition and where to put the swap space, but this is well documented.
Installing Gentoo on the Sun Ultra 1 appears at first to take a similar course. The CD boots fine and you are presented with the normal shell prompt for install with a minimal survival paragraph above for installing gentoo on sparc. Getting the stage1 and 2 on the machine is almost the same as for the x86 installs, but that is about it. After this you must download a kernel and compile it (32 or 64 bit specific). This is where the problems start. Keep in mind my Ultra 1 is a 200E, meaning it has a 200Mhz Ultra Sparc CPU and a few other things like 10/100 networking and USCSI interface, so it is a little quicker than a regular Ultra 1, and it still took gentoo 5 hours to get to a stage 2. At this point in time you do not want this install to fail. It fails. After the kernel compile to stage 3 the system will not reboot into gentoo. The kernel panics with various erros such as not being able to find a loader for modules. I had downloaded the linux-2.4.18.tar.bz2 from kernel.org as mentioned in the install instructions. I found out (much) later that the stock kernel has some Sparc "issues" and that some poeple have had success with the "vanilla" kernels. I found this to be true for only a few moments as the power died after install and my drive was a goner. The joys and sad times of older hardware.
To summarize, Gentoo is a fast lightweight linux distribution. If you are in a hurry to get linux up and working this is problably not the distribution for you, however, it is well worth the wait. As previously noted, on a stock Dell machine gentoo installed without a hitch and after an emerge and installing X et al gentoo did not have any hardware problems that I could see. It even played nice with the IDE cdrom burner (which I should mention RedHat has finally gotten to work without user intervention after install). Gentoo linux is coming along quickly from what I can tell, support is readily available from IRC or the gentoo website and there seem to be an endless number of people willing to help solve problems. As with most other distros there are people in the help channel who ignore questions which are covered in the install manual, but I digress and state again that this should not be the first Linux someone installs. A little *NIX experience will go a long way in making the gentoo install and maintenance smooth. As for installing gentoo on hardware other than the x86 based or the Apple, it can be tricky at times, and some things are still undocumented. This is not to say that it can not be done, it just may take a little more effort than a "no problems" x86 install.
I think that the pros still outweigh the cons for Gentoo, and I know of many who are using it (some on laptops with USB 2.0 working) in many applications, from servers (which I think it is most suited for) to desktop systems. Having used RedHat linux since RedHat 1.0, the biggest pro for me for gentoo is not having to go fetch and install ten other rpm packages when I want to install something, or having to remove five rpm packages when I want to remove something.
About the Author:
Robert Minvielle holds a M.S. in Physics and a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering. His interests are Linux security, old hardware, esoteric hardware, and woodworking. You can reach him at baddlci@yahoo.com.
- "Part I of the Gentoo Review"
- "Part II of the Gentoo Review"
