Gentoo users

Here's the deal: I am planning to buy a laptop, one for only hacking and programming.

I have been interested in Gentoo for awhile, I have dabbled in Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, PHLAK, and Knoppix. My question is: Does anyone here have experience in installing Gentoo on a laptop? If so, what should I look forward to in getting it running, like wireless and applications? Would I be better off putting my second choice Fedora on it, or does Gentoo's capabilities outweigh its difficulty?

Thanks for your input. -Bl4ckC4t

bl4ckc4t wrote: Here's the deal: I am planning to buy a laptop, one for only hacking and programming.

I have been interested in Gentoo for awhile, I have dabbled in Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, PHLAK, and Knoppix. My question is: Does anyone here have experience in installing Gentoo on a laptop? If so, what should I look forward to in getting it running, like wireless and applications? Would I be better off putting my second choice Fedora on it, or does Gentoo's capabilities outweigh its difficulty?

Thanks for your input. -Bl4ckC4t I run Gentoo on my laptop and use it as my main system; can do everything on that little machine. Here's the lowdown on Gentoo:

1. Prepare to spend 4-6 hours getting it installed.
2. Prepare to spend 4-6 hours getting a WM installed + troubleshooting your USE flags in /etc/make.conf (read up on how to install your favorite WM in Gentoo before you do it to avoid this).
3. Prepare to spend the normal amount of time getting your wireless working that it would take in most any distro; if you're lucky, yours will be a fairly common and carefree chipset.
4. Applications are cake to install in Gentoo. "emerge –search applicationName", at a terminal, will show you applications that match your search in the repositories. "emerge applicationName" will install it. Dependencies are pulled automatically. If you ever have to install from source, expect the same as you would with any other Linux distro.

The good about Gentoo:

1. Fast. Efficient. Sexy.
2. Grows chest hair.
3. Great documentation.
4. There's nothing bad about it.

Remember, though: If you're not prepared to spend a weekend getting a Gentoo install the way you want it, don't even bother starting an install.

Still my favorite distro of all. :D

Thanks for this info, It will greatly help. Now all I will need to do, is figure out a cheap lappie that would be worth my time. lol -Bl4ckC4t

bl4ckc4t wrote: Now all I will need to do, is figure out a cheap lappie that would be worth my time. lol -Bl4ckC4t I'd recommend any laptop with at least an 800Mhz processor. Other than that, anything will do. :) Oh, and don't use a bloated window manager… use XFCE or Fluxbox (as I do), or any of the other slim ones that others may use (like IceWM).

What about KDE? I have always been fond of KDE, but if it isn't very good, I wont bother.

-Bl4ckC4t

KDE is fine… I used to be a KDE fan, too, but it is a bit slower than the rest. The choice of a WM comes down to preference.

Hi all!

Long time using Gentoo here…

Some beginer tips:

• It's very important you choose right profile, later when you install software with portage, often review USE flags (emerge -pv PORTS) and management them with /etc/portage/package.use.

• Love Fluxbox and Fluxbox will love you

• Compile your own kernel, you have to spend some hours to get specific kernel for your machine, it's easy to do it…

With that 3 tips and your admin work will do your system, as faster as you never had other one

Often, best place to beginer is Handbook: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/index.xml

Happy christmas BerMeJo