I'm just contemplating installing Gentoo Linux and I wanted some feedback from firsthand users. I have Red Hat 9 installed, but I'm looking to test out a few more OS's. :D

I think Gentoo is easily the best distro I have ever used. The package management system is excellent. It calculates all dependancies for you, so no more RPM hell. The http://forums.gentoo.org is the best Linux support forum I have ever used. The IRC channels are also pretty lively. The system itself feels a lot smoother and faster than others. It is also customised to suit your needs, since you are the one building the system. In addition there is a lot to learn from Gentoo. There are no wizards to guide you through configuration, therefore you get the configuration that you want.

A few bad points are that the system takes bloody ages to install. Although to be fair the Gentoo Reference Platform may cure this since binaries are provided. However, I still feel that installing from scratch is the best method. The fact that there are no wizards may make the system a little difficult to use for people new to Linux.

If you are a completely new Linux user I suggest that you go for a distro like Mandrake, Lycoris, Red Hat etc. The learning curve is steep with Gentoo but in the end when you fix a problem you feel that you accomplished something.

In fact, I'm using gentoo as I speak. :) There's still a bunch of windows programs that I depended on, but I REALLY like gentoo as a distribution. I'm using gnome/fluxbox ... really enjoying it.

You definitely won't go wrong here.

-cappaberra

I find Gnome to big, clunky, and just plain slow. Fluxbox is an excellent window manager. In fact it has been my window manager of choice for a long time, but it really lacks in the aesthetic department. I find that Xfce4 provides the best choice in terms of looks, functionality and speed.

As we all know Red Hat removed multimedia support from version 8 and 9. Does Gentoo comes bundled with multimedia programs like XMMS, xine etc.? If so, can please roughky list what are they?
And if I try to download Gentoo linux, is this all I should download a Pentium II:

Gentoo Linux - Gentoo i686 Install 135MB http://www.linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=45

Or is there anymore which is recommended, that I should download?

Thank you. :)

In terms of what Gentoo has to offer take a look here -http://www.gentoo.org/dyn/pkgs/index.xml As I said in the other thread, Gentoo can be whatever you want it to be - you just have to configure it correctly.

If you want a quick install, rather than the from source install, I suggest you get the latest two CD version. That version includes all the basic things that you need like X, KDE/Gnome, etc.

Anywho, enjoy your Gentooing.

These can be found here:
http://havardk.xmms.org/dist/xmms-1.2.7-rh8-rh9-rpm/

Pain though, I wonder why they did, also why don't they build in support for reading NTFS filesystems by default? Have to get an upgrade for my NTFS filesystem each time they upgrade the kernel.

For the love of god...I can't install the damn thing. :( And I'm using Mandrake 9.1, and have used RH 8/9 before. But I'll just stick with MDK I guess, thanks for all the info guys, maybe I'll get back to gentoo soon. :P

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (Galen @ Aug 11 2003, 02:34 AM)
For the love of god...I can't install the damn thing. :( And I'm using Mandrake 9.1, and have used RH 8/9 before. But I'll just stick with MDK I guess, thanks for all the info guys, maybe I'll get back to gentoo soon. :P <hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>
What problems are you having? Perhaps we can find a resolution. If you follow the install guide word for word, you should not have any problems (unless you have dodgy hardware).