Gentoo, The plunge?
 

Greetings from Sydney :)



I'm really looking to take the dive with Gentoo but I am extremely worried about my system and whats going to happen to it, not for the more obvious reasons, but the subtle ones.
This post could be considred both support and general inquiry so I considered it best here, sorry if I was mistaken.

I tried to install Gentoo 200.7 LiveCD on vmware last night and it crashed and burned several times for no apparent reason, it just failed to run in so many ways on so many different levels, and certain parts I am sure were not my box but a bugged (or so it seemed) installer).


Spec wise I am running xp/vista on an AM2 4200+/ 2gig DDR2/Asus m2V (had issues with the Attansic nic on some distros') and a foxcon Nvidia 7600GT with a Soundblaster Audigy 2ZS carrd using a 19inch pro view wide screen LCD.

I have several partitions comprising of 1.2 Terrabytes and I'd like to dedicate a part of it to Gentoo.
I first started with Slackware many many years ago and I remember needing around 25 floppy disks to install it, those were the days I knew my way around bash and zsh but I was never really "good" at it.

I installed Ubuntu last year on a different PC and while I really liked what it had to offer in terms of "Out of the box" effeminacy, it semt like I was really not in control of how it got that way, and I don't know about you guys, but how did you feel the first time you compiled and ran your first kernel?

I felt on top of the world and I was around 16.

I run a ventrilo server/UOAM server (a map server for ultima online) and have around 140 torrents that I am seeding/have uploaded alongside 290gigs of mp3's which have taken me 11 years of ripping/downloading to make and around 400 gig's of Movies all self ripped and perfected of which, if I lost, well.. Ye, it would really fucking hurt :).

That all being said, I want Gentoo, I want that control, I want everything tailored to My system, not a broad umbrella generalization install which assumes many things but does little (in some ways).

I'm scared of the install, I'm scared because even the latest build failed and I don't want to lose my precious data.
Its a double edged blade and it seems the only way i can give it a go is to risk losing everything and I don't gamble.

Do you people have any suggestions for me?
Whats this I hear about Vidalinux?

Many thanks!!

Honestly, if you want that much control, you'd be better off with this. About the only difference is that Gentoo comes with a prebuilt base. If you want a source distro that you can control, (I know I sound like a fanboy) go with Slack.

If I had the knowhow to use LFS I assure you it'd be my first choice, I often browse that site and drule, but for me, its not an option.

It's not really that hard, it's the patience that kills. It takes so long to make a LFS system, but Gentoo isn't really all that quick either. I guess it all depends on how much time you're willing to spend on putting it together.

Anyone else have any ideas?

You could try Sabayon Linux. It's a distro based on Gentoo (or more like Gentoo with everything installed for you). It's kind of bloat, but you can uninstall stuff with emerge (part of the package manager). It also have live-cds, so you can try before you decide if you want to install it or not.