i was looking at the download part to download gentoo live cd and i see that there is 2 .iso images there...does that mean that i have to download both cause one has a size of 607 or something like that and another has 78 mb...


do i have to download both or something?

the 78mb one is minimal just what you need, rest is downloaded, the 600mb one is the full one it has a lot of extra stuff, stilla lot needs ot be downloaded though

what do u mean by alot to be downloaded?...this is the live cd....
i just wanna try it out cause im a newbie..

the gentoo livecd is just a medium for installing gentoo.

the minimal one is just enough to boot, then it will download all the latest files form a rsync mirror so you will have the latest versions of everything,

i just burned it onto a cd and booted...
everything booted up and then came a command line like
Livecd Gentoo:

and i couldnt get past that...i want to get to atleast the desktop....

but im stuck

This should get you started,the first time I installed Gentoo I printed the whole handbook,follow it word by word,do each step,and by the way the live cd is just for installing gentoo!Good Luck,it is worth the time.
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/index.xml

so ur saying that the live cd is to install the gentoo to the hdd not working on gentoo and just restarting fresh to windows?

the livecd does not boot into a fully usable linux system the way the slackware livecd does, it is only a small distro for use in installing gentoo, hopefully that is clearer

You said you are new to Linux.
Gentoo isn't the best distribution to begin the meeting with the linux world.
Gentoo is a really good product but before using it, you must know a lot of other stuff.
Begin with Fedora, Mandrake or SuSE, it's better for the moment...
bye Kess...

Kess78 I disagree, gentoo isn't so much harder than other distro's, the fact is that people get used to fedora mandrake or suse (which might as well all be clones w/ different faces) and then have problems adjusting to other distro's liek debian slackware or gentoo. I myself as a nubie several years back leanred most of what I know on an older version of slackware, then I tried redhat and mandrake and found them to be very difficult and abandoned them, but switching to gentoo was easy with no problems along the way. switching from windows it does not matter which distro you start with, just be prepaired to get adjusted to that distro like you originally were windows or mac. it's not a matter of difficulty, just a matter of which way you have experianced. Aleem if you want to learn on gentoo go for it, as long as you RTFM it should be fine, the gentoo handbook will step you through everything (it is on the website) it does a good job not only of telling you what order to do which steps, but why so you know what you are doing.

I had the same problem, I found redhat very hard to understand then I switched to slackware which I thought was very easy and logical, and now I am on gentoo which isn't difficult either but its a little differnet then other distros so took me some time getting used to it.