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A quick look at Gentoo Linux

Posted Mar 20, 2003 3:38 UTC (Thu) by yem (guest, #1138)
Parent article: A quick look at Gentoo Linux

I've used LFS for over a year and just started running Gentoo on my desktops a couple of months ago. Once you've been through the install once, it doesn't take much time to configure (maybe 1 hr of actual hands-on-keyboard time). The rest of the time is automatic downloading and compilation performed by the OS.

I wouldn't recommend it for newbies or critical server use though. It is way too much for newbies and too bleeding edge for server use.

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Posted Mar 20, 2003 7:43 UTC (Thu) by pointwood (guest, #2814) [Link]

"I wouldn't recommend it for newbies or critical server use though."

Depends ;)

I consider myself as a Linux newbie and I have successfully installed Gentoo Linux (and hosed it too :D ). I got help of course - that's what irc is for :) I want to learn Linux and I think Gentoo is a good way to do that. I don't think you really learn that much about Linux by installing the latest Red Hat distro. I had never compiled a kernel before and I don't think I would have tried it if it wasn't because Gentoo forced me to do it.

If you have a fast machine, the compilation time is not that bad IMHO and you only have to install it once.

From what I know, you should compare Gentoo with FreeBSD - it works in much the same way. I like the fact that I always got the latest release - "upgrading" is easy.

A quick look at Gentoo Linux

Posted Mar 20, 2003 13:43 UTC (Thu) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

>From what I know, you should compare Gentoo with FreeBSD - it works in much the same way.

Not unless you are talking about keeping up with FreeBSD-CURRENT. Installing
a FreeBSD RELEASE version is not any more difficult or time-consuming
than installing SlackWare or Debian.

A quick look at Gentoo Linux

Posted Mar 20, 2003 18:19 UTC (Thu) by pointwood (guest, #2814) [Link]

Okay, I didn't know that, but I wasn't specifically talking about the installation, I was more thinking about portage.