Archived thread 1008073 from Gentoo and derivatives. Markdown source: Gentoo_and_derivatives/thread_1008073_Going_To_Try_Gentoo.md
I've just downloaded the Gentoo AMD64 livecd and I'm going to give it a go and see what happens. I've done a bit of research and I'm still going to check over some things before I Install.
Emerge seems to be quite advanced and I'm quite happy with using it, hopefully I can get to grips with Gentoo by installing the LiveCD and then I can for the whole package.
I do not recommend installing from the liveCD, more often than not it's very buggy instead download the minimal CD and do a stage3 install following this _**Handbook**_. Follow that and you should be good. Really the question about whether liking Gentoo or not comes down to only one thing, do you like sourced based distros and a package management system which compiles everything? If you say yes to that then after all the configuration you'll most likely really enjoy Gentoo. Portage is absolutely fantastic although I'll admit it does take some getting used to since it's unlike anything else in most other Linux distros (has more in common with the ports system in *BSD).
I'll try it in a Virtual Machine, I downloaded the ISO and then I read that Slackware 12.2 was released so I'm going to put Gentoo on hold and try Slackware 12.2 first.
Vince4Amy said: I'll try it in a Virtual Machine, I downloaded the ISO and then I read that Slackware 12.2 was released so I'm going to put Gentoo on hold and try Slackware 12.2 first.
:KS I just got an early Christmas Present
Don't use the graphical live CD installer! Do a stage 3 install or don't bother.
The method described in the Gentoo Handbook is the way to go. You'll have a better chance of completing a successful Gentoo install and you'll learn a few things about Gentoo as you're working your way through the steps.
I recommend you obtain your stage3 tarball from http://funtoo.org since they're built more recently. Hence, you will have fewer packages to update once you've completed the installation.
Gentoo is planning to start releasing its own "official" weekly stage3 tarballs at some point, but for now, funtoo is the place to go. ;)
The method described in the Gentoo Handbook is the way to go. You'll have a better chance of completing a successful Gentoo install and you'll learn a few things about Gentoo as you're working your way through the steps.
The handbook is awesome, I've read through some of it, very good documentation.
Vince4Amy said: The handbook is awesome, I've read through some of it, very good documentation.
Gentoo has some of the best documentation along with Arch and most *BSDs. It was unfortunate that their wiki got wiped out since it was really fantastic but at least they are slowly rebuilding.
C!oud said: Gentoo has some of the best documentation along with Arch and most *BSDs. It was unfortunate that their wiki got wiped out since it was really fantastic but at least they are slowly rebuilding.
I noticed that too (how couldn't I?!) Do you know what happened?
http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/outage-10-08.html
It makes for rather dramatic reading actually. What makes it personally amusing for me is that the wiki went down right when I tried to get gentoo running on my vaio... something that is difficult to do without the wiki (at least if you are as new to the whole linux game as I am). Oops!
AT least there is Google's cache..
There's also a backup of 99% of the Gentoo wiki at http://www.gentoo-wiki.info/
It's read-only, but it's great for old documentation you can't find anywhere else.
Why they don't just restore the original wiki from that one, I have no idea.
I believe that they aren't doing that because they want to change the way the thing is set up, and sort of go through and so some "quality assurance" checks for lack of a better term to make sure that the new wiki is done right.