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Apparently, though unproven, at 02:06 on Friday 13 May 2011, Felix Miata did |
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opine thusly: |
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> I guess I missed the requirement to be running Gentoo to be able to |
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> initiate an install of Gentoo. |
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This is not correct |
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> I thought whatever Linux was already |
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> installed would be good enough, |
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this is correct |
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> until I got to the mirrorselect |
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> instructions, and found no incorporated alternative such as Indi has |
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> replied with. Indeed, not needing to have booted Gentoo to run a Gentoo |
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> installer was part of the allure that got me started. |
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That part of the doc assumes that the user is indeed running from the |
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LiveCD-like environment provided by the official installer. There are other |
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docs (far less verbose in their explanations) covering alternate install |
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sources. |
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All an installer (for any distro does) is write stuff to disk, and what it |
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writes is in the correct format so that when the user reboots into it, what |
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has been written there functions correctly as an OS. |
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Most distros provide a customized environment to do this in, usually in the |
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form of a bootable CD. This works well for them because that installer was |
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coded to take care of all the distro's quirks (and to provide a seamless |
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installer, and if necessary to dumb it down to the point where Aunt Tillie can |
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do it). |
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There is no *requirement* anywhere that the installer OS matches the installed |
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OS. Heck the installer can even be Windows, and in the case of Wubi, is IS |
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windows :-) Virtually anything that can fetch, use and unpack a stage3 then do |
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a chroot works fine as an installer, as long as it has drivers for your |
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hardware and the filesystem you plan to use. |
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Of all the Gentoo installs I have done, I can only remember the first ever |
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using a Gentoo installer - that was long ago when doing a stage1 earned |
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streetcred points. Nowadays doing a stage1 usually tags you as a sado- |
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masochist (but I digress). All my installs since then have been whatever |
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LiveCD I happen to have handy, usually Ubuntu or my trusty RIPLinux rescue |
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system on a flash drive. |
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-- |
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alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com |
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