Hi all
Thanks for the responses to my earlier query regarding co-location of
Debian and Gentoo on the same HDD.
I still have a few questions regarding an installation before I take the
plunge:
(1) Looking through the background docs, it occurs to me that if I
wanted to install Gentoo on my system, I would need access to a second
machine that is running all of the on-line docs that guide one through
the installation process. Is this correct? If not, how does one refer
to the (seemingly quite comprehensive) guidelines whilst in the middle
of an installation?
(2) When Gentoo installs its libraries, does this duplicate the
libraries already on my machine? For instance - if I have OOo and KDE
and Xfce4 loaded as part of my Debian Squeeze system, will Gentoo also
install its own version of OOo, KDE and Xfce4 alongside the Deb files?
I was thinking that this would have a number of implications in terms of
space and (potentially) in how the drive is partitioned for the Gentoo
installation ... unless I'm missing the point?
(3) What differences would I likely experience between running my
Debian installation and the Gentoo installation? After all, up to a
certain point GNU/Linux is GNU/Linux, and if I configured all the bells
and whistles the same way as I have currently got them set up (i.e.
preferred WM, desktop settings, applications, email and Net preferences,
etc.), I'm not sure there would be any ostensible distinction between
the two. Hence, my question refers really to the more subtle
differences between the two systems which one only picks up on after a
while of using it. For example, the last time I used Mandriva (when it
was still called Mandrake), it was chunky and locked down, a FOSS
version of Windows really, but the same applications were in use as were
on my ol' trusty workhorse Slackware 8.1 through 10.1. It was just in
the latter that nothing would happen in Slack without my having been
involved directly or indirectly in making it happen. I appreciate that
many distros tend to not have the bare bones approach that Slack does,
but this is really just to try to illustrate what I am getting at: the
subtleties experienced by a user of the system.
Any installation commitment will have to wait for a couple of weeks yet
though: I'm in the process of completing my MSc thesis and need to keep
a stable environment for the time being, so will look at taking this on
in a few weeks. This is thus background research - a bit of a
reconnaissance mission, so to speak. Any thoughts/ shared experiences
would be welcome ... unless there is another, more appropriate forum for
these kinds of experiences to be shared/ discussed.
Many thanks all.
Best wishes
AG
