From: MikkelFJ <mikkelfj-anti-spam@...>
Date: 2003-02-07T07:14:38+09:00
Subject: Re: The way of the Gentoo


"Phil Tomson" <ptkwt@shell1.aracnet.com> wrote in message
news:b1ui160qc7@enews2.newsguy.com...
> In article <3e42c372$0$150$edfadb0f@dtext01.news.tele.dk>,
> MikkelFJ <mikkelfj-anti-spam@bigfoot.com> wrote:

> Gentoo is wonderful - I'm typing this on a Gentoo'ed laptop.  However, it
> it's your first foray into the Linxu 'pool' you're jumping in at the deep
> end....  (but that's beside the point)

True, it's beside the point because isolated from the other Linux stuff, the
installer works well.
Anyway, going OT in line of many great Ruby threads ;-):
Lets not turn this into a major Linux discussion - but given the grief I've
had it would  be nice to get it out of the system (the frustations out of my
neural system, that is ;-) - If you feel an urge to tell may how stupid I am
Linux wise, please take it to e-mail - remove "-anti-spam" from email
address.

But heres the very abbreviated history:
Let my put it this way - I installed mandrake on one laptop using a USB
CD-ROM,
for hardware reasons I moved the harddisk to another laptop and the USB
drive worked. But I didn't like the idea of running an installation from
different hardware although it mostly worked so I installed Mandrake
properly on the new laptop. But subsequently I couldn't connect to the
USB-drive - go figure... ? Meanwhile Mandrake files for bankruptcy
protection ...
RedHat 8.0 stalled during package installation (apparently I should upgrade
the RPM system, but given it's burned into the ISO CD image I opted out on
that). Then I tried the new FreeBSD 5.0 release, which actually is very cool
and worked well (except I had to kick it hard to make it understand what a
40GB disk is) - beside the disk problem and the not entirely intuitive
installation, FreeBSD is fast and in retrospect easy to install - and well
documented! PCMCIA Wlan and sshd is running immediately but keyboard, sound
and X is a mess -  got X configured to laptop after much work. Basically I
could SSH log in from my Win2K laptop using Putty on wlan to FreeBSD laptop
after a 10minute FreeBSD install, once you now the drill. I decided to try
Gentoo based on a FreeBSD users recommendation, since FreeBSD is not the
easiest for stuff other than servers (notably sound support requires kernel
rebuild). I forgot I had a Pentium II and had lots of trouble installing
Gentoo Pentium III (I ordered a used PIII laptop but got a PII version due
to lack of stock). Once realizing this mistake, Gentoo actually was quite
easy to install following the instructions (more typing, but it works). Only
grief is rebooting and loosing wireless - the entire stage2 install ran fine
over wlan. The post-boot orinoco wlan problem is a very common Gentoo
problem - and this problem I haven't fully resolved. However, I'd rather
work harder as long as each step is documented, rather than an easy install
and then it doesn't work - I didn't get wlan running at all on Mandrake,
trying equally hard. My only worry is that Gentoo might be too much a moving
target to be a stable server - so I kind of want to go back to FreeBSD but
then I'll also not learn Linux.

> At any rate, you can use raa-install now to install packages.  It's still
> an evolving project, but installation works now.

I've heard about some of these projects, but haven't followed Ruby closely
for two months or so - things are moving fast here - or did I miss earlier
major events?

Mikkel