im planning on getting gentoo 2004.1 for my PowerBook G4. but ive been hearing some stuff that its really tricky to install. is this true? the only linux ive ever used has been RedHat9. and the install was so easy, and i used the graphic installer. im a total n00b. ive only installed one program from the command-line and it still doesnt seem to work. well just wondering if the whole gentoo for my G4 would be a bit tougher than i thought.

If you want an honest answer - yes it is, at least compared to redhat. Gentoos instalation is basically a liveCD that takes you into commandline as root. Then you have to make filesystems, write configfiles etc. There are no gui:s whatsoever in the installer. If you want to try out gentoo, be sure to print the instalation handbook (about 100 pages).

After you have installed gentoo, you only have the ~100 mb base system and have to install everything you need (x.org etc)

well.. do read the user docs before you start installing Gentoo.

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/index.xml

Specifically, you may want to read the faq for PPC

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-ppc-faq.xml

I've only installed Gentoo on x86 platform, so you might want to check out the details first. There is a nice guide for those using x86 architecture and it explained everything step by step. This is for PPC after checkin the pages

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-ppc.xml

the whole installation thing could last pretty long depending on how you want it done. If you decide to compile from source codes - some huge packages like xorg or kde took about 12-16 hours on my old Celeron machine. Otherwise, it's easy to use and flexible for you to configure.

Do check the forum often for answers. Tonnes of friendly pple out there willing to help you.

http://forums.gentoo.org