I followed the step-by-step and got the thing 'running' easily enough. I am referring to getting it 'up and running as a desktop' is no easy undertaking.

I must be talking about a different gentoo though, mine is using 'emerge', not 'apt-get'. ;)

and it is slowly emerging.....slowly

jdc2048,

I've only been using Linux since August, but I've learned a fair amount so far. But I didn't think I'd start with stage 1 if I were to install Gentoo.

--Erich

Hey, success, whoooo-hoooo!!!

It appears it was the missing vert/hor refresh settings. I added them in and voila!

And I just got kde 3.1.0 up and this is interesting. kinda XP'ish looking.

*cough* emerge unmerge kde; emerge blackbox *cough*

I started with stage 3, I don't know a whole lot about the difference between stages 1 & 3. But building it up to a desktop has been a little slow. You need to download and compile everything, all dep, all apps, etc.. The download and install of kde took around 12 hours.

</edit>
!!!unmerge kde!!!!, you gotta be kidding me, after all this time???
LOL, I may do that, I went from 41mb memory in use with fluxbox to 150+ with kde.

I just did an install, it was hard for me, I have been using the various easy distros, redhat, suse, mandrake, I used to have the BeOs, loved it. Anyway I have a basic install, but can't get online with my modem, I used modprobe serial and modprobe ppp_async and then wvdialconf under the cd image when installing to emerge everything, but when I run modprobe serial under the booted system, it says can't find module?

*switch*, now using gentoo, kde 3.1.0, konqueror

</edit>
next target, get the wheel working on my trackball, should be easy enough.

If you install kde it his highly recommended to emerge kdebase only to start with.Otherwise you spend forever compiling crap like kdeartwork and koffice and stuff like that nobody uses.
There is a desktop configuration guide on the gentoo website.

Tso--
Just install adifferent distro on another partition, tell grub or lilo where to find it and viola....mulitboot

I think Gentoo is just great. Once you understand how things work you don't want anything else!

Wheel working on trackball, not a problem, just added the "ZAxisMapping" option to the Input section.

Now to find a document that maps all the emerge packages, of course a simple "ls /usr/portage" will work I guess.

later all

Something that might be nice know...if you don't already. You can emerge a different version than the "defualt" program very easily. For example (since this is what I just did) if you want xcdroast you can type

emerge xcdroast

and it gives you version .98 alpha 10 (or something like that.) But it's up to alpha 13 or rc 13 or something so I did this:

emerge usr/portage/app-cdr/xcdroast/xcdroast-0.98_alpha13.ebuild

and it worked beautifully. This is good to know so that you don't get stuck with older stuff.

first of all, if your going to install gentoo go to the website and print out thier docs. If you have standard hardware just follow the guide step by step and it should be kinda easy. If your doing somthing like trying to install on to an ataraid partition or somthing.. prepare to have some "fun." Anyways.. if you plan on sticking with gentoo its probably worth the extra 3 hours or so to start from stage1 instead of 3. In Stage 1 and 2 theres only about 4 commands or so total, really doesn't take much.. just /scripts/bootstrapbuild.sh or whatever it is and go do somthing else for an hour or two.

If you have a 2nd PC, load up the Gentoo forums & IRC chat channel on it ;)

I went from using Mandrake 9 for a week to doing a full Stage 1 install & have never looked back. Never had problems with the install, but I guess I was lucky & the Hardware Compatability Fairy blessed me ;)

I think I will sum up my experience thus far.

It is my opinion that this Distro (gentoo) makes a great toy for the enthusiast. But speaking from a business point of view, this Distro is not feasible or is only useful in certain situations.

If I were tasked with installing 400 PC's with a desktop O/S + Office Apps + other standard apps, then this would be fairly low on my list of choices. The one exception to this of course would be if all 400 PC's were identical & I had a cloning method (I.E. Norton Ghost).

The install time for me is current > 1 week and still chugging (on OpenOffice). This is simply unacceptable when you have more than 2-3 machines to install.

But again as a challenge for the Linux enthusiast, this distro is outstanding.