I've heard so much good about Gentoo, but I just don't have the time and effort to do the installation. Some people have said it's taken them from half a day to a week to install it, can't understand the pleasure in that

well, ill be the first to admit that I AM not the expert of experts.... but the installation process for Gentoo is not really that bad. A stage3 installation does not really take that long. Most likely the those long installation stories are from people doing stage 1 or 2 installations. Probably the longest part of the installation is compiling the gui (either kde or gnome). The gui could literally take you 10+ hours. So i planned my installation out, so that i knew i would be in bed or at work during these long compile times.

Consider this...Gentoo is truly a dynamic distro. With one installation all i need to know is a few "emerge" options and I can keep my system "new" forever. Im not really arguing your point (frankly your opinion is very practical), but Im merely reinforcing the "good things" youve heard about Gentoo.

Give it a shot sometime, the documentation is some of the best ive seen for linux.

take care.

*****

Does Gentoo cost money or is it free to download?

Also, does it have KDE and Gnome like the rest?

I am a also, learning.


I got Fedora Core 3 installed perfectly on a Compaq Presario 900 US Model. And running on my newly built Soyo, AMD 2800, 512mram machine.

I wasn't impressed at first when I got my FC3 DVD edition. First I had to do bunch of updates and knowing that distro is only a month old didn't impress me at all. Later on I found it quite stable and extremely easy to get things to work so I've changed my mind about FC3. As a hardcore slackware user I did some configuration manually such as windows partitions mount points and FC actually didn't complain about it. Also UT 2004 installation from DVD drive went smooth unlike installation with SUSE linux. In general this is a very good distro for beginners and even advanced users who don't have time to compile bunch of libraries and applications. Only thing that I wish to see in future FC releases is language files on separated CD so users who really don't need them won't batter with download. Or FC developers could give us an option to skip language files during the installation.

I've used FC3 for 2 days and the went back to FC1. Don't know why nautilus hang easily, and you just can't kill it no matter what unless you reboot it. My first impression of this FC3 was that it would be the one that would replace my FC1, but now I'm just dissappointed that my favourite file manager hang very easily. It's really embarrasing that when I want to show off this new FC release it hang and I have to reboot. Bad impression on Windows user that tried to convert to Linux... I know that it's GNOME fault but...

Gentoo is free and yes you can install GNOME and KDE. The only thing thats different about gentoo is that you usually have to compile all or part of the distro, so it's highly optimised for your system. I've never tried it myself but I have tried Vidalinux which is a version of Gentoo thats already been compiled for specific architectures and I think it's a very good distro.

The biggest thing I saw was the great improvement in performance of yum.

Anyone else agree with me?

-Corey

Dear Folks: I have tried FC3 and found out that it is absolutely NO GOOD!!!-I went back to Fedora Core 2 which is much better. FC3 is a big headache and I won't detail the many problems I had with it. I will say that I will pass on FC3 and will upgrade from FC2 bypassing FC3 straight to FC4 when it comes out. I think I will try to put FC3 off on my unsuspecting brother who knows nothing about it and then let him have the big headache. FC1 was ok and so was Red Hat Linux 9. I won't detail the many corrupt downloads I had with FC3-until I finally managed to get a complete uncorrupted set of FC3. I just would never again have it as I think it is trash and they need to send this garbage to the graveyard or the junkyard; take your pick. I hope this posting is useful to someone. Thanks for the info.

That has nothing to do with the operating system itself. I hope this isn't all you're basing this on.

-Corey

I have to agree ... I have FC3 on one of my work machines and while I hate all things DeadRat and will be first in line to bash them, it's not full of problems like you describe. It's perfectly stable and useful.

Perhaps your bad experience was due to faulty hardware or user error?

Actually no-some of the best hardware with a buggy operating system. My 2 systems work FINE with FC2-i386 and Ubuntu and Red Hat Linux 7.3. Red Hat Linux 8 to FC1 [both 32-bit version & 64-bit version] and FC2 [64-bit version], FC3 [32-bit version & 64-bit version] & FC4 [32-bit version & 64-bit version] and Mandrake [32-bit version] and Debian [32-bit version & 64-bit version] were all too buggy and full of all kinds of problems. I really like Debian and Red Hat Linux 9 though in spite of the problems. I like Debian for their policy and their stability and much software and for being so mainsatream; not a fly-by-night. Red Hat Linux 9 is one of my favorites but it would not install on my laptop as it has the Intel 440 X-series chip [the bug, you know] and the x-server would not start on it and also on Red Hat Linux 8 and FC1, too. Red Hat Linux 9 would only recognize 128 MB of the 256 MB of RAM on my Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 agp 8x graphics card. I picked out my hardware for its compatibility with Linux as well as the printer/scanner/copier I bought for its compatibility with Linux. I went out of my way to pick only hardware that was Linux-compatible. My AMD Athlon 64 3400 processor with a K8T-neo-fisr2? motherboard which was designed for an AMD Athlon 64 processor. I mailed my powercolor brand graphics card made by the tul company with an ati radeon 9600 se chipset and 128 MB RAM on the graphics and agp 8x to my brother in florida and he loves it. It supposedly outperforms my nvidia graphics card but I don't like ATI because they are not linux-friendly and Nvidia is linux-friendly and I did not like the way it did not perform as well as my Nvidia graphics card, in my opinion. I am also mailing Windoze XP SP1 which I paid $200 for to my daughter in Florida and I hope she doesn't get mad at me for mailing her what in my opinion is trash and nothing but a big headache and that's why I went over to Linux. I am now a diehard Linux fan.

Now with FC2-i386-a little tweaking and the blank screen on my Dell Latitude C600 laptop went away and no more problem and it works GREAT!!! I have learned my lesson. On both my systems [one a 64-bit system and the other a 32-bit laptop system] I will only have FC2-i386 or Ubuntu or Red Hat Linux 7.3. I would like someday to try out Debian again if they ever get the bugs out of it especially the problem of low resolution of 800x600 even on monitors & graphics cards where the actual resolution is supposed to be 1400x1050. I don't know how to fix the resolution problem with Debian even tho I love Debian. I plan on trying Linux From Scratch some day when I will have some time and see how it does. Anyway, these are the distros that work on my systems. Sure do love FC2-i386!!!

Well, have to go. Everybody have a nice day.

Sincerely,

Jean Brown Harrell

PS: On some things FC1 is or was good just not on my laptop and my 64-bit system with its expensive LCD monitor which cost me over $400.