Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: James Wall <wallservices@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] I'm up, at long last!
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2011 17:05:58
Message-Id: BANLkTimWn9d9w4sa4RkUve61A4y_28Cexg@mail.gmail.com
In Reply to: [gentoo-user] I'm up, at long last! by Alan Mackenzie
1 On Apr 17, 2011 10:40 AM, "Alan Mackenzie" <acm@×××.de> wrote:
2 >
3 > Hi, Gentoo.
4 >
5 > After a few weeks of effort, I've just gone live with my very own Gentoo
6 > system. :-)
7 >
8 > The last stage was copying most of my files over from my old box, which
9 > involved a significant degree of screwing the disk drives.
10 >
11 > It is such a relief to say goodbye to my ancient Debian system, which no
12 > longer had a functioning package system. Also, my ten year old hardware
13 > was feeling ever more underpowered as time went by.
14 >
15 > Installing and configuring Gentoo was significantly easier than Debian,
16 > even though it took about the same amount of time. The approach "insert
17 > the DVD, press the button, and everything will work OK" is fine, until
18 > something _doesn't_ work OK; then you've got several hours (or days) of
19 > tedious searching for the answer. By contrast, with Gentoo's 41 pages
20 > of detailed instructions, you really can't go far wrong. And at the end
21 > of it, there's further detailed documentation to get X and window
22 > manager etc. set up.
23 >
24 > I think there's really only two ways to install Linux: you either go the
25 > Ubuntu route, where everything's done for you and you accept somebody
26 > else's defaults, or you go with Gentoo, where you do everything
27 > yourself. I think anything in the middle, like Debian, just leads to
28 > confusion and uncertainty. I don't know where Fedora and SuSE fit into
29 > all this.
30 >
31 > Anyhow, I'm now up and running, with some installation and config still
32 > to do: things like how to get British English and German keyboard
33 > layouts in XFCE, how to make it's terminal have a black background and
34 > things like that. I also need to find a decent PDF viewer, and a decent
35 > jpeg viewer.
36 >
37 > So, thanks for all the help, everybody!
38 >
39 > --
40 > Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
41 >
42 I recommend xpdf for the PDF viewer
43
44 James Wall