<--- I don't mean Gentoo the penguin either, I mean the distro at www.gentoo.org.

I read the docs there a while ago and thought it sounded sweet then forgot about it. But today at newsforge they have an article about it that made me very interested all over again. I know some of you people use Gentoo, because I am watching everything muahahaaaa .....

But anyway I know some of you use it and would like to know all about it. From you. Because I appreciate your comments and not the journalists'.

Cheers everyone
Alim

So nobody uses or has an opinion regarding Gentoo Linux?

Okay then
ciao

Cool yet another distro i will keep an eye on.

Key word: 2.4.18

Key indeed! Surely including a beta kernel is a little rash. However the way Gentoo works assumes a vaguely 'expert' user so maybe not. One day when I try it we'll see.

It looks nice, but from what I've read it seems like an attempt at a very up to the date, unbloated distro with a frequently updated net installer. But I may be wrong.

Well they say its stable so...

i think i'd rather go along with the LFS route than this, seems slightly nicer to me. seems a bit odd to use a pre-release kernel tho. This Portage thing seems quite limiting i'd have thought, if they are choosing what packages to include in it, how many will there be? Unless i'm missing the point with it, why not just go for source...?

Therion12, you can't handle suse... you'd have no chance of getting gentoo going. Maybe you'd like to explain quite why having this pre1 XFS patched kernel is so key?

acid_kewpie that's a dark attack on therion12!!! But anyway... haha

I was thinking the same thing as you about Portage, seeing as my move from RedHat was cause by the insidiousness of the RPM. Until I try it I don't know what it's really like, but I'm so happy with Slack that I don't see it happening. I wouldn't even have moved from RedHat if I hadn't read this forum and seen that greener pastures existed in Slack.

I think if I want the latest stuff, removing the old stuff and manually installing the new is the way forward. You learn more that way.

As for LFS, yes maybe in a long time when my motivation is up to it, but for now I'd rather not do it. Seeing as you configure it alongside a regular distro anyway though, it may be a nice new challenge - just not for me right now.

Look, just becuase SuSE 7.3 is broken doesn't mean i can't handle it. It IS key becuase this is the first distro to come with such a new kernel. Btw i am running 2.4.16 right now and i find it MUCH better than 2.4.17

going lfs/gentoo is a very quick way to get a lot of experience towards linux - but it's also very difficult. i'd have to stand with kewp here - if you're having serious trouble with a major distro install, i don't like your chances of getting any lfs setup. granted... there will be exceptions ... this isn't to discourage anyone from trying - but you need to have at least an inkling of what's to come.

A couple remarks from someone who actually uses Gentoo. Gentoo itself is still pre-release, mostly used by developers on machines that are not "mission critical", so it can get away with using pre-release kernels and such. Later maybe it will split into stable and current like Debian. Portage isn't really limiting. It is based on ebuilds, which are more or less just shellscripts to install tarballs.
It's a lot like doing an LFS install with some of the mindless tedium relieved by a few simple tools. What I find to be the main advantage over installing everything from tarballs is this: the ebuild scripts give me a record of what I had do to get the thing to build. When the next version comes out, and I have forgotten how I had to tweak the thing, I can make minor changes to the ebuild and install.

- it's good to have a comment from someone who uses gentoo...

i think that people need to realize that "linux" in itself is not one entity - unless you're just referring to the kernel... and even then that's iffy. it's a huge project that includes MANY different flavors (which seems to get truer every day) - and they're not all for everyone. experimentation is good, but it comes at the cost of stability.

Sounds good. Did you register just to post about Gentoo? Thanks a lot!

I guess you're finding it pretty much stable as it is. Portage would indeed make the base install much easier. Would it be possible with Gentoo to do the installation of the required tools for command-line work, then to install everything else by yourself without the use of Portage? Nice.

Thanks for the opinions everyone.

I did register in order to post that last message. There seems to be some confusion about this stability issue. This isn't a distribution like most where you get whatever version of the software the distribution decides is good for you. What you get is ebuild files--which you can safely think of as shell scripts--to fetch, build, and install several versions. So I am using kernel 2.4.16 because I prefer to let other people debug pre-release kernels on their machines. If I needed something from 2.4.18_pre4 I might try it. I have ebuilds for both, so I get to choose. Similar remarks apply to KDE 2 vs KDE 3 and a lot of other software as well. There is an easy way to install the most recent stable version of a package, but noone prevents you from installing an unstable version if you want.