An anonymous reader writes “One thing should be mentioned – the VLOS Installer is cool.” Here’s a review of VLOS PPC, which seems to indicate that while there are still some issues, it’s certainly coming along at a nice pace.
VLOS 1.2 PPC
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I used one of the earlier versions, and it really is the easiest way to get into Gentoo and try out portage etc. The community was very friendly (albeit quite small) back then, around 1.0 / 1.1.
Kudos to teh guys bringing together their work on the installer project, and a late-stage Gentoo system. They are also one of the only distributions happy to provide mono/unfree packages (probably because its Gentoo – so there are so many ebuilds out there!)
The “cool” installeris nothing more than a 2 year old version of Suse’s YAST installer. Nothing was very cool about that version aside form it’s look. It was very buggy and in it’s infancy.
it’s anaconda, not yast
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=400&slide=2…
VLOS is buggy as all hell.
They modified Porthole, and emerge so that you can’t emerge certain packages without paying, most can be installed via emerge at CLI but you can’t convert 1.2 to Gentoo via emerging certain packages.
I don’t understand… where do they ask for your credit card number? Is this done server-side when an ebuild attempts to fetch package source/binary from a VLOS ftp server? As I recall they actually piggy-back their distribution on the actual Gentoo rsync mirrors, so the package availability should be exactly the same (except for the install stages they roll themselves).
Can’t you just grab the 2005.1 profile for your arch from a standard gentoo mirror and emerge -e world? That should do a fairly comprehensive transformation to “vanilla” Gentoo.
I’ve posted here many times before lamenting the state of Gentoo-based distributions. The tools and infrastructure are practically designed with third-party distributors in mind, so why is VLOS the only non-LiveCD distribution based on Gentoo? It seems that VLOS is a poorly-executed project. The world would benefit from another attempt.
Additionally, I think that the OSNews community would benefit from another attempt at a VLOS 1.2 review, especially one that is more x86/x86-64 centric… from your comment I suppose you wouldn’t be the best man for the job…
I want to try Linux on my PowerMac 7600, but I keep hearing icky things about Linux for Mac; how things don’t ‘just work’ for most people.
I also want to try Gentoo again, but with a more friendly (less time-consuming) way of installing.
Double dissapointment here..anyone got recommendations?
I have just finished emerging e17 and KDE on VLOS 1.2 for both x86 and amd64 (two of my main machines). VLOS is really awesome and by far the quickest way to get Gentoo on your system. VLOS is a fantastic piece of work.
If you want to get into a gentoo environment and are too lazy to read 100 or so pages definitely try VLOS. The Gentoo GLI installer is still in alpha and didn’t work properly at it’s current experimental stage.
The VLOS members are helpful as are Gentoo’s community.
“…If you want to get into a gentoo environment and are too lazy to read 100 or so pages definitely try VLOS. The Gentoo GLI installer is still in alpha and didn’t work properly at it’s current experimental stage.
The VLOS members are helpful as are Gentoo’s community.”
From what I’ve read, it seems that the VLOS anaconda port is barely out of alpha. The goal of the GLI project is to (eventually) have all the capabilities of a command-line Gentoo install. The goal of VLOS seems to be to monetize the use of the Gentoo Project’s rsync mirrors and community resources. The VLOS community is somewhere between nonexistent and quite small, which doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not helpful, but you’re still going to want to use the Gentoo Forums and Documentation (way more than 100 pages) as your primary support media.
…but you seem to think very highly of it. Why don’t you write up a review and submit it? It’s bound to be more useful that the review linked in this article.
I hate the word “community” – sounds like “sect”!
And what the hell can I use vlos? Onli to loose 1-2 hours and to tell my girl – “i used mod of gentoo, dear!” – “what the fuck is gentoo?” will tell me she…