On Monday 19 February 2007, Mike Adolf wrote: > I have been using Linux for several years, but am new to gentoo. I > just got a new dell xps 410 system with a intel duo E6400 processor. > I have tried all the distros I've used in the past, kubuntu, suse, > mandriva. All had problems serious enough to not use them. The > problems may stem from using prebuilt x86 distros. Maybe since gentoo > is built during install it might have a better chance.
Sorry, but that's never a good reason for using Gentoo. If a binary distro compiles every option under the sun then the software will still work, but the binaries might be a bit big. Compiling on your machine gives no discernable performance benefit for the average user. Gentoo's strength is in being able to enable or disable individual features in each package. So, if you (say) can't stand Red Hat becuase it defaults to a Gnome DE, use Gentoo by all mans. If you can't stand Red Hat becuase you think it's slow, then you have faulty hardware and Gentoo is going to perform about the same... > What would be the 'best' medium for me, minimal or live CD? I have a > high speed connection. Doesn't matter, it comes out to the same anyway. The minimal CD has only the absolute minimum sources on it, so you have to download the rest. The LiveCD gets you up and running in an hour or two, but the packages on it are bound to have updates (because OSS projects release early and often), so with your first world update you will download new versions. Use the Live CD if you want to get a working machine quickly. If watching gcc output scroll off the screen turns you on (it does for most of us around here....) then use the minimal by all means. > Two avoid a typical dual boot install. I would like gentoo to boot > from my second hard drive. During boot up, I can now select which HD > I want to boot from. Will the install process let me assign a boot > disk? It's been a while since I did a virgin install, so things might have changed recently. Back when I did my last install, the process was completely different to a binary distro, and one of the steps was to partition the disk manually, install grub and edit grub.conf exactly the way you want it. So your answer is yes, you can assign boot disks, but it isn't a check box you click. But, the latest installers may well have changed the entire process alan -- Optimists say the glass is half full, Pessimists say the glass is half empty, Developers say wtf is the glass twice as big as it needs to be? Alan McKinnon alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za +27 82, double three seven, one nine three five -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
