ubuntu to gentoo jump

By meeseontheleese
in Linux

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John_M

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Gentoo was, and still is, my first flavor of Linux. It's fast, sleek, beggin to be thrown to the very top of the list, and it has great docs on how to install.

Freenode Gentoo channel helps almost as much as the docs do, and the livecd is nice. Just follow the docs, and ask any questions on the irssi premade on the livecd and use links to view pages also premade onto the livecd.

My personaly, I compiled Xorg, Fluxbox, Eterm, and about 9-10 other apps, in about three and a half days total, including the 91 updated dependencies I had to do. After that I was totally ready, totally upgraded, and totally setfor Gentoo.

Oh, and don't fear the install time because I'm on a:

AMD K6-2 (331mhz)

64 MB's of RAM

Quantum Bigfoot 5.59GB HDD

So, in other words, it was fast for me. :p

Some of the other apps were: XMMS, Bluefish, Firefox, Thunderbird, GVim, Vim, Gaim, Gkrellm2, ftpcube, and openoffice.

Trust me, from a computer user on an old machine, Gentoo is the future.

Proficient

meeseontheleese

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I just wish Gentoo wouldn't trash my hard drive so often, I worry about this laptop sometimes, I've already had one drive die on me :(

Maybe one of those 16GB SS drives would be an investment... mmm...

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drive trashing.............*gulp* :cry:

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Crimson Behelit

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So I've decided to jump to Gentoo!

I am currently bootstrapping my system... I imagine I have a few hours left of bootstrapping until I can compile the base system and configure my kernel.

When I am done following the instructions of installation guide (ie when I have a stable and working Linux commandline environment), what should I do next?

My aim is to build a Gnome-box similar to Ubuntu's default environment. That being said, I want things like firefox, nautilus, nautilus cd burner, cpu frequency scaling support, etc.

My vague gameplan is to (once base installation is complete) is to emerge X following these instructions.

Next, I'd imagine it would be wise to follow these instructions on installing and configuring drivers for my nVidia 6600.

Next, I'm going to emerge gnome.

That's it as far as my gameplan goes... if any other experienced Gentoo user has any advice or criticisms, I'd love to hear them. Is there anything that I am overlooking?

Like I mentioned above, my goal is to set-up a system which is tailored for the gde and resembles Ubuntu. The truth is I love ubuntu to death, but the prospects of compiling a similar system specifically for my rig (see sig 'Desktop Workstation') is tantalizing.

Thanks for reading, take care

joe

Enthusiast

John_M

Posted
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The only place I could imagine a clutter would be the two folders portage uses when it emerges, but they are easily cleaned.

After you emerge something, say a program or world update, do these two commands:

rm -fr /var/tmp/portage/*

rm -fr /usr/portage/distfiles/*

That empties the downloaded files emerge uses, and empties the precompiled program emerge did before it merged those files with the /. They are all deleteable AFTER emerge completes it's merge.

Besides that, smart management of your HDD goes along way. On my 5.59GB HDD, I know all about those commands, I have to. :D

Emerge is a wonderful tool that makes Gentoo amazing. Don't forget, joe1031, you need to --sync before you install Gnome or X.

emerge --sync

That will update your portage to the proper ebuilds and give you the most updated downloads available.

From then on, it's totally up to you as to what you install, have fun with Gentoo, it's awesome.

Veteran

Crimson Behelit

Posted
Posted (edited)

Well, I'm in!

I successfully emerged x, gnome, nvidia, et all!

Now I'm going to focus on setting up the proper resolution and all that other fun stuff

[update]

The resolution change went fine! Now I'm going to need to set up sound, and install all the software packages I need including xmms, bmp, mplayer, firefox,gimp, oo.o, and hddtemp

Does anyone know how I would be able to initiate cpu scaling? It's supported in the kernel...

Edited by joe1031
Proficient

meeseontheleese

Posted
  • Author
Posted
Well, I'm in!

I successfully emerged x, gnome, nvidia, et all!

Now I'm going to focus on setting up the proper resolution and all that other fun stuff

[update]

The resolution change went fine!  Now I'm going to need to set up sound, and install all the software packages I need including xmms, bmp, mplayer, firefox,gimp, oo.o, and hddtemp

Does anyone know how I would be able to initiate cpu scaling?  It's supported in the kernel...

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Not really sure to help you, but plz report back when you have all up and running, since you too were an ubuntu fan im wondering how much faster it will run compared to ubuntu. Also which version are you using, AMD64 or X86. If amd64 then plz tell me if your able to get flash on their.

Veteran

Crimson Behelit

Posted
Posted

I can't say I've had any luck with Flash, but I havn't bothered to try... from my understanding there isn't a native 64bit flash out yet, so the only way to get flash to operate on any distro would be to set up a 32bit chroot environment which would execute a 32bit firefox and 32bit flash plugin.

Flash isn't really a priority of mine, so I'm sorry I won't be able to help.

I installed Gentoo x86_64... it was pretty snappy (read: fast)... however, I believe the performance increase was negligable considering the amount of time it took to install/set-up.

I reckon I'll move back to Ubuntu after a few more days of tinkering as I truly admire it's approachability and accessability.

Gentoo is a great distro with fantastic documentation, but it just isn't well suited for a relative noob such as myself...

Mentor

thechitowncubs

Posted
Posted
I can't say I've had any luck with Flash, but I havn't bothered to try... from my understanding there isn't a native 64bit flash out yet, so the only way to get flash to operate on any distro would be to set up a 32bit chroot environment which would execute a 32bit firefox and 32bit flash plugin.

Flash isn't really a priority of mine, so I'm sorry I won't be able to help.

I installed Gentoo x86_64... it was pretty snappy (read: fast)... however, I believe the performance increase was negligable considering the amount of time it took to install/set-up.

I reckon I'll move back to Ubuntu after a few more days of tinkering as I truly admire it's approachability and accessability.

Gentoo is a great distro with fantastic documentation, but it just isn't well suited for a relative noob such as myself...

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I figured you would, good try :yes:

Community Regular

j79zlr

Posted
Posted

I agree that Gentoo is not really any noticeably faster, but it is the flexibility that portage gives the user that is its real advantage. As far as production stable, absolutely not, the portage tree is just too unreliable, I would go with FreeBSD for anything that needs rock solid security and stability. For my desktops, its Gentoo all the way.

Proficient

LaNcom

Posted
Posted

There are several ways to make Flash work on amd64, without the need for a chroot:

- Use a 32bit-compiled browser (firefox-bin, Opera).

- Use a 64bit Konqueror with a 32bit nspluginviewer (I brought this to gentoo, search the gentoo-amd64 forum)

- Use gplflash2, compiled from CVS ( http://gplflash.sf.net ) - it's not really perfect, but good enough for quite a few Flash-enabled websites.

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