Yip ive got heaps of space on my harddrive, i hate fdisk and when i instlled slack i used DrakX off madrake 10 can i do the same with gentoo i guess so???

Dunno about DrakX but I find cfdisk to do the business.

I would say yes, insofar as I couldn't run Gentoo so successfully if I hadn't used Slack for a couple of months. They are different, but using Slack familiarizes you with the command line, locations of base config files that distros like Mandrake and SuSE hide from you with wizards, and generally gets you used to "playing in the mud". Gentoo actually has package management though, which is what finally made me look for an altenative to Slack (otherwise I'd still be using Slack, which is my other love).

Portage and Software
the Portage Manual

Links to more documentation relating to every aspect of Gentoo can be found on The Gentoo Documentation Resources page, and what can't be found there can probably be found on the Gentoo forums.

Man, portage sounds cool, but can i still compile from source since i like that.

Portage downloads and compiles everything from source, unless you tell it not to, by either using the --usepkg switch, or by using the binary ebuild for larger programs (some, like OpenOffice.org or Firefox/Thunderbird, have 2 entries in Portage, one for the source ebuild and one for an ebuild that will just install the binary; these are usually distinguised by <program_name>-bin. Check the current Portage tree at http://packages.gentoo.org/categories and type mozilla-firefox in the search box to see what I mean.

I got gentoo 2004.1 and now what the deal with install is it easy or what do you just make partation the target it then install to it is it as easy is that, im installing with livecd and packages cd

Its not exactly that simple. Have a look at the gentoo install docs. Read them a few times and print them out before you install. If you follow it step by step its not that hard.

It takes quite long to install gentoo if you start from stage1. It took me 12 hrs on an Athlon XP 2500+ machine. If you want to install GNOME or KDE, that's another 12 hrs. If you have a slow machine, consider installing from stage3. The install guide for gentoo is one of the better written ones available. Follow that and you should be fine.

Im doing a stage 3 i only want it to take a max of 3 hours.

Good luck with that . Even from a stage3, Gentoo is a complicated install that requires a fair amount of reading along and careful editing (plus still some compiles).

Let us know how it goes NZ_Boy_2004.

Remember that once you get it installed you have a basic Gentoo installation. A few x apps is all you have so don't expect it to be all singing all dancing straight away. But it does give you the opportunity to have a distro where you only install what you want and don't have to carry all the excess baggage of kde or gnome.

Yer but ive got the packages cd for my alton xp as well wouldnt that contain the stand stuff.

It's only one CD; how much "standard stuff" are you expecting? Plus, while Gentoo does not have to be compiled, it is meant to be compiled, so I'd suspect that most of what is on the Packages CD is stuff that is really big and unwieldy to compile (GNOME, KDE, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org), rather than the type of full and complete package set that a 3CD distro like Mandrake might provide.

Lastly, what you consider "standard stuff" may not be what everyone else considers "standard stuff", and since Gentoo is really about choice and customization/optimization, it's not so likely that the Package CD is going to take that away from you by deciding just what you need to have on your system.

But can you look at the contents of the Packages CD and see what exactly is on it?

slackeware only has 2 cds, and it contains more then i need.

Yes, but Slackware is meant to be fully installed from the CD's, whereas Slackware is meant to be compiled from across the network.

But you obviously know your needs better than I can-- just don't be surprised if that three hours is a bit optimistic, is all.