[CLUE-Tech] Recent Gentoo install experiences?

[Ken MacFerrin]

Matthew Porter wrote:
> My son and I recently finished building a new computer for our family
> room (around an Athlon XP 2400+), and we've been putting it through
> its paces with Knoppix.  Now it's time to install our "production" OS.
> 
> Most of our experience is with Debian, but we're still in a DIY kind
> of mood.  Emboldened by Collins' talk a few months ago, and by seeing
> how good the documentation is, we've decided to give Gentoo a try.
> (We can always go back to Debian if we get too many headaches.)
> 
> Anyone have experience with any undocumented "gotchas" that a new
> Gentoo installer should look out for?
> 
> Regardless, send some kind thoughts in our direction over the next
> few evenings...
> 
>  --Matt.
> 

I use gentoo for all my desktop machines and would agree with most the 
previous feedback.  My thoughts:

1. _Know your hardware_ and compile your own kernel..  Genkernel only 
works on 2.4 kernels and is trouble anyway.

2. For your first install, allow a full day.  3-6 hours will get you a 
very basic system.  Adding X and Gnome/KDE is a good thing to just let 
run while you sleep.

3. Always run an emerge with the "-p" option prior to actually running 
the command.

4. I highly recommend running a 2.6 kernel (gentoo-dev-sources).

5. Be thoughtful and research your partition setups.  Neither reiserfs 
or ext3 allow for an "easy" repartition and filesystem resize.  I 
personally prefer to run LVM2. http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/lvm2.xml

6. If an emerge process fails repeatedly on the same package during a 
list of package installs it can often be fixed by emerging the 
non-failing packages separately and then going back and installing the 
troubled package.  It seems on occasion that emerge gets the order of 
dependencies confused on installs.

7. Use "Stage 2".  Stage 1 is nifty but doesn't add any value that you 
can't go back and configure after you have a working system.

Have fun.. Gentoo rocks once it's running.
-Ken