Gentoo stages?


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Hmmm for those of you who use gentoo what stage did u choose? I've just started reading the documentation and I don't know what to choose.. And for a second question, what is the /boot partition for? Thanks

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And for a second question, what is the /boot partition for? Thanks

I am not a Gentoo guy, but the answer to your second question is:

The /boot directory holds your kernel images to boot from.

Some people (I do) prefer to make that a separate partition for various reasons, mostly traditional. With /boot being a separate parition, its size is managed, so user data cannot encroach upon it and cause problems. Also, you can muck about with the other partitions on the drive and still have the ability to boot if something goes a bit wrong.

In short: it does not have to be separate...

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Hmmm I've been reading through the gentoo handbook install guide thing and it's going way over my head.. Think I might stick with good old easy Mandrake :blush:

But I still would like to know who's managed to install gentoo and how well its worked? Were you new to linux (like me) or have you been using it for a while etc? Oh and still the original question lol..

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Hmmm I've been reading through the gentoo handbook install guide thing and it's going way over my head.. Think I might stick with good old easy Mandrake :blush:

But I still would like to know who's managed to install gentoo and how well its worked? Were you new to linux (like me) or have you been using it for a while etc? Oh and still the original question lol..

It's not that hard, you just type in what they say to put in and you'll do fine. Also after that it's easy street with portage. Just a simple emerge -u world to keep your system up to date. And installing a package (say, gnome) is simple as emerge gnome.

I've installed a stage 1 and had minimal (well, I kind of knew my way around, but wasn't a guru) linux experience before that.

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Is stage3 best for me tho? Seen as I don't really know what I'm doing! lol.. But can stage 3 be updated the same way as stage 1? And what about all this editing config files to optimize loading etc? I mean I think I got up to reading about USE in the documentation and it's talking about telling gentoo what options a package should be installed with? How would I know?! lol.. It gives the example of USE="-gtk -gnome qt kde dvd alsa cdr".. Now I understand what that means but what if one day I suddenly decided to go from kde or gnome or vice versa? And where do I get those values from ("qt" "kde" "dvd" etc)..

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if you want to learn about gentoo then your best bet is to follow the handbook and do a complete install.... you will learn a lot about linux and how everything works. only downfall is the time it takes to compile everything, depending on how fast your system is. id recommend doing a stage2 install.... stage3 takes way to long and is not necessary for mosty users unless you want that extra optimization.

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Is stage3 best for me tho? Seen as I don't really know what I'm doing! lol.. But can stage 3 be updated the same way as stage 1? And what about all this editing config files to optimize loading etc? I mean I think I got up to reading about USE in the documentation and it's talking about telling gentoo what options a package should be installed with? How would I know?! lol.. It gives the example of USE="-gtk -gnome qt kde dvd alsa cdr".. Now I understand what that means but what if one day I suddenly decided to go from kde or gnome or vice versa? And where do I get those values from ("qt" "kde" "dvd" etc)..

Maybe, although it's really only 2 lines to type that separates a stage 1 and a stage 3:

/usr/portage/scripts/bootstrap.sh

emerge system

That plus the make.conf editing. What I usually do is I dynamically update my USE flags. You can see what each package uses by doing an:

emerge -pv gnome

Once again, gnome as an example. The ones off to the right of the package name are the USE flags it will use. A + means it will be used, a - means it won't. They have a big page of all the USE Flags on their website.

And cptmorgan probably means a stage 1 will take way too long. Stage 3 gets the system up quick, but the likelyhood of updating the packages installed by a stage 3 is pretty good, so you don't really save that much time. Although you can get into your system quickly. But unless you use the package CDs and install binaries for Gnome or KDE or install some lightweight window manager, you won't get up into a GUI quickly anyways.

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I use a stage 1. It takes about 2-3 hours longer on my system over a stage 2 which takes about 5 hours longer than a stage 3 which takes about a day longer than a grp install.

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Personally, my first experience with gentoo was an aborted stage2 install. I hate to admit it, but the first time I installed it, I felt the install guide was completely over my head. I just followed the instructions on gentoo.org to the letter though, and my system was up and running despite my misgivings. It worked, but I wasn't sure how exactly how it worked. After a couple of days, I decided to bite the bullet and go for a full stage 1 install, which really helped. I learned more about linux in 2 days with my gentoo install than I had ever learned in ~2 years of Mandy/Redhat etc.

Basically I'm trying to sell you on a stage 1 install - you'll be happier with it eventually, if not because you know for certain that your packages are the latest and greatest, but then because you'll come out of it being completely sure that you know more than the average Fedora user will ever know about linux ;)

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...you'll come out of it being completely sure that you know more than the average Fedora user will ever know about linux ;)

:pinch:

I use Fedora... :unsure:

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I was looking around at the guidebooks and stuff on gentoo.org today myself. I found it to be over my head too. I went ahead and downloaded the universal-livecd and booted up w/ it. I thought since it was a live cd, that I could start messing around w/ gentoo w/o actually installing it. I guess I thought wrong! When it booted up, it just went to the command prompt, and I had no idea what to do. I tried things like kdm, start x, su root and then try some other things.

So I guess gentoo's live cd is just for installing it? I guess I got too excited and downloaded it, burned it, and booted w/ it w/o really knowing what I was doing.

LOL

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In the documentation it says 32Mb for /boot.. Is that a guide or is that a standard /boot size? Cheerz

It's just a guide.

32MB should be more than enough for several kernel versions. I have 100MB, just because it was a nice round number. :p

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I have a few gentoo systems running here. The Xbox uses GentooX which is a Stage 1 I believe. My laptop, a P3 900MHz, 256MB PC100 RAM is also a stage 1, and my router which is a p200 uses a stage 3 as it would take way too long to do a stage 1 or 2 installation on it. I am going to be upgrading my router/server up to a 1.33GHz Athlon with 512MB PC133 ram and a 9GB scsi disk, and doing a stage 1. I want to be able to do more on the router than I can now, the P200 is just a little slow. :) I used the 32MB boot on both the laptop and router, I pretty much followed the guide, since I have been using *NIX since around 1998, it wasn't that bad at all, just the wait during compilation. I really like Gentoo over Slackware, more control more optimization.

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