[gentoo-dev] Good place to start?

[gentoo-dev] Good place to start?

[Thomas T. Veldhouse]

Hello.  I am new to Gentoo and I am looking for a good place to start.  I
have over 4 years of experience with Linux and have built my own
distributions in the past.  I am looking for a more community based approach
to this and have stumbled across Gentoo.  It seems to be quite intruguing.

Can anybody give me any tips for a quick start into Gentoo?  Should I
install slackware and then rsync the sources and build a Gentoo
distribution?  I also am a bit confused as to where the distribution
resides.  It almost appears as if the entire distribution (as source
scripts) resides in "portage".  Is this so?

Thanks in advance,

Tom Veldhouse
veldy@veldy.net

Re: [gentoo-dev] Good place to start?

[drobbins]

On Mon, Jan 29, 2001 at 11:02:37AM -0600, Thomas T. Veldhouse wrote:
> Hello.  I am new to Gentoo and I am looking for a good place to start.  I
> have over 4 years of experience with Linux and have built my own
> distributions in the past.  I am looking for a more community based approach
> to this and have stumbled across Gentoo.  It seems to be quite intruguing.
> 
> Can anybody give me any tips for a quick start into Gentoo?  Should I
> install slackware and then rsync the sources and build a Gentoo
> distribution?  I also am a bit confused as to where the distribution
> resides.  It almost appears as if the entire distribution (as source
> scripts) resides in "portage".  Is this so?

The intelligence behind building the entire distribution does reside in Portage;
however, we do have an installation CD ISO image that has pre-built binary
packages.  You can download this CD and install Gentoo Linux directly.  We
have instructions (that I'm about to update) posted on the web site.

Best Regards,

-- 
Daniel Robbins					<drobbins@gentoo.org>
President/CEO					http://www.gentoo.org 
Gentoo Technologies, Inc.			

Re: [gentoo-dev] Good place to start?

[Thomas T. Veldhouse]

Thanks - I have since found the installation page (quite obvious -
especially since I found the developers page first).  I have also noticed
the rc3 has disappeared - soon to be replaced.

I am wondering about the release criteria.  What criteria must be met to
make the 1.0 release, and what is missing as of yet?  I am curious because
of the development nature of reiserfs, there are still numerous bugs -
especially related to nfs support.  I believe grub is alpha as well, but I
have not heard that it is anything but release quality in nature.

Tom Veldhouse
veldy@veldy.net


----- Original Message -----
From: <drobbins@gentoo.org>
To: <gentoo-dev@gentoo.org>
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2001 11:51 AM
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Good place to start?


>
> The intelligence behind building the entire distribution does reside in
Portage;
> however, we do have an installation CD ISO image that has pre-built binary
> packages.  You can download this CD and install Gentoo Linux directly.  We
> have instructions (that I'm about to update) posted on the web site.
>
> Best Regards,
>
> --
> Daniel Robbins <drobbins@gentoo.org>
> President/CEO http://www.gentoo.org
> Gentoo Technologies, Inc.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Good place to start?

[Achim Gottinger]

"Thomas T. Veldhouse" wrote:

> Thanks - I have since found the installation page (quite obvious -
> especially since I found the developers page first).  I have also noticed
> the rc3 has disappeared - soon to be replaced.
>
> I am wondering about the release criteria.  What criteria must be met to
> make the 1.0 release, and what is missing as of yet?

Good question. :-)

> I am curious because
> of the development nature of reiserfs, there are still numerous bugs -
> especially related to nfs support.

Hmm, I'm using reiserfs over a year here (2.2.14/2.5.12 with suse's knfs patch)
and I never had corrupted files.
It is true that there where lots of bugs in the 3.6 version but there where
only several files corrupted sometimes
over here. Since 2.4.1-pre8 reiserfs is included in the kernel and the latest
ac patch contains good fixes for various
latency problems. Of cause the only working journaling fs that can be used with
nfs is ext3.
I included Neil Browns and Chris Masons nfs/reiserfs patches in the latest
kernel package. They are of beta quality
but I did not have problems with it (running since 3 days).
If reiserfs looks still too dangerous for you, you can still use ext2.
But I think reiserfs/nfs will be quite usable in the near future when we
release 1.0.

>  I believe grub is alpha as well, but I
> have not heard that it is anything but release quality in nature.

You can still use lilo if you run into trouble with grub. I think it is
declared as alpha because the dev's want to
add a lot more functionality to it. In my eyes grub is much easier to handle
that lilo and I had no problems with it till
now.

achim~

>
>
> Tom Veldhouse
> veldy@veldy.net
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <drobbins@gentoo.org>
> To: <gentoo-dev@gentoo.org>
> Sent: Monday, January 29, 2001 11:51 AM
> Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Good place to start?
>
> >
> > The intelligence behind building the entire distribution does reside in
> Portage;
> > however, we do have an installation CD ISO image that has pre-built binary
> > packages.  You can download this CD and install Gentoo Linux directly.  We
> > have instructions (that I'm about to update) posted on the web site.
> >
> > Best Regards,
> >
> > --
> > Daniel Robbins <drobbins@gentoo.org>
> > President/CEO http://www.gentoo.org
> > Gentoo Technologies, Inc.
>
> _______________________________________________
> gentoo-dev mailing list
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
> http://www.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev

Re: [gentoo-dev] Good place to start?

[Achim Gottinger]

"Thomas T. Veldhouse" wrote:

> Thanks - I have since found the installation page (quite obvious -
> especially since I found the developers page first).  I have also noticed
> the rc3 has disappeared - soon to be replaced.
>
> I am wondering about the release criteria.  What criteria must be met to
> make the 1.0 release, and what is missing as of yet?

The release criterias for rc4 are no more new fetures, just fixes an stability
improvements.
And we want to have a automatic recursive package installation.

Things we do not have yet and that should be in 1.0 final:

- config-file/kernel-module/initrd management
- automated recursive compilation and updating.
- Bettter devfs support (currently only optional)
- A gui for installation and package-management

achim~


>  I am curious because
> of the development nature of reiserfs, there are still numerous bugs -
> especially related to nfs support.  I believe grub is alpha as well, but I
> have not heard that it is anything but release quality in nature.
>
> Tom Veldhouse
> veldy@veldy.net
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <drobbins@gentoo.org>
> To: <gentoo-dev@gentoo.org>
> Sent: Monday, January 29, 2001 11:51 AM
> Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Good place to start?
>
> >
> > The intelligence behind building the entire distribution does reside in
> Portage;
> > however, we do have an installation CD ISO image that has pre-built binary
> > packages.  You can download this CD and install Gentoo Linux directly.  We
> > have instructions (that I'm about to update) posted on the web site.
> >
> > Best Regards,
> >
> > --
> > Daniel Robbins <drobbins@gentoo.org>
> > President/CEO http://www.gentoo.org
> > Gentoo Technologies, Inc.
>
> _______________________________________________
> gentoo-dev mailing list
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
> http://www.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev