Okay.. so i have been wanting to run Gentoo on my notebook for a while now.. and have tried several times with varying degrees of success.. however.. it's just too much work for installing it onto my notebook. I knew that VidaLinux was Gentoo based using the portage system and whatnot... so figured I'd give it a shot as a quick Gentoo desktop for my lappy.. After asking the guys in #gentoo about just -how- similar it is.. I was informed that VidaLinux is in-fact Gentoo with an anaconda(redhat/fedora) installer.. and that an initial install is 99% Gentoo and after the first 'emerge --update --deep world" it would be 100% Gentoo.. hmm.. I thought.. so then can I just change my repositories over to Gentoo and do a pseudo-'upgrade' to the most current Gentoo??

HA!!

change my repos??

The VidaLinux repos are the gentoo.org repos...

So basically VidaLinux gives you a quick Gentoo desktop using Gnome.. (actually a very nice lookign gnome at that!)

and after doing --sync and updating portage.. you can just emerge --update --deep world and a couple hours later.. outcomes your new Gentoo installation... this is nice for getting a quick gentoo desktop up and rolling.. and you have all of the packages available for Gentoo..

Just thougt I'd offer my experience with this, in case anyone else was having ideas about trying Gentoo but not knowing if they could bare the installation routine...

I'm still dual booting with slack 10.1 to see if I feel comfortable with Gentoo on my notebook after all.. but we'll see....

So basically you're saying that VidaLinux is a fast installing Gentoo that you can later on convert to 100% gentoo. Interesting concept. I wonder how many other distros have this relationship.

Really?? I wanted to install Gentoo for a long time but the Gentoo installation was just too hard for me.

If I would like to download VidaLinux to let run Gentoo... I'm just a little bit curious, could you send me some screenshots of VidaLinux after the complete update? (so basically Gentoo screenshots)?

Yes.. it uses Getoo repositories..the only thing that can be called not '100% Gentoo' is that you still have the VLOS grub and bootsplash screens.. of course, you could always replace those with the Gentoo ones.. You can change the GDM login screen to 2 different Gentoo ones also.. there is one with the gentoo cow and one based on the 'emergence' wallpaper(green-ish 'g' coming out of a purple-ish water)

And you need to get the gentoo-dev-sources and make yourself a Gentoo kernel or else uname will still say vidalinux... but yes.. that's what it is.. a fast, easy way to get a minimal gnome-based desktop up and running..

I am currently re-installing on my notebook under a larger partition.. I had XP(15GB), Slackware 10.1(15GB), a GB of swap and a ~9GB open partition with which I tested VLOS on.. I am now installing it on a 20GB partition as we speak... It seems pretty nice though..

hey man,

after 2 full hours of compiling I got this error:

Gentoo / # emerge --update --deep world
Calculating world dependencies ...done!
>>> emerge (1 of 93) media-libs/svgalib-1.9.19-r3 to /
>>> md5 src_uri ;-) svgalib-1.9.19.tar.gz

!!! ERROR: media-libs/svgalib-1.9.19-r3 failed.
!!! Function kernel-mod_configoption_builtin, Line 114, Exitcode 1
!!! kernel has not been configured yet
!!! If you need support, post the topmost build error, NOT this status message.

Gentoo / #

do you know what I have to do?




ok thanks I fixed the problem

try recompiling the kernel to get a new .configure file. might be some other error, but it seems like this might be able to fix it. I'm not a gentoo wiz though.

How can I change the splash and boot screens to the Gentoo ones?

emerge grub and reinstall grub.. you need to compile a gentoo kernel before doing all the update deep world stuff too..

1: emerge gentoo-sources && emerge genkernel
2: genkernel --udev all
3: emerge grub
4: configure and install grub
5: set/modify any USE flags you want in /etc/make.conf
6: emerge --update --deep --newuse system && emerge --update --deep --newuse world

(if you'd like to get it done faster.. and don't plan on using the computer at all while it's doing the operations.. you can always use 'nice' to pound the processor at full-throttle while doing it.. i.e. - "nice -n -19 emerge <blah blah blah>

you can use values between -20 and 20. -20 will allow for almost *NO* interaction with the computer while it's doing it's task.. I use -19 and it's hard to do something... i.e. - when the screen kicks off after a while ofcompiling.. i always hit [backspace] to get the screen back and see how it's doing.. and it can take around 30 seconds before it kicks the screen back on.. I like it though...

Good Luck.. I actually am running 2005.0 now... After installing regular Gentoo a couple of times... you're able to do it much faster... I did a stage 3 install.. and granted I started it tuesday afternoon at work(around 3:00pm).. i had a usable fluxbox desktop by about 7:00pm (that includes the time ti took to take the notebook down.. go home.. startup.. and finish the little bit i needed..

I'm at work as I type this, and the notebook is sitting next to me compiling xchat, gaim, and firefox. Everything seems to be going nicely though.

:::I know this was way off track...but I always like giving additional info in case it helps at all... The 'nice' command is very helpful::::

Thanks a lot! I'll try that...