Re: [gentoo-dev] Acquiring a deeper understanding of Gentoo

["M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@cesmail.net>]

I'm not a developer ... and I'm not in California ... but I am a Gentoo
bigot and I'm certainly willing to help out ... as are most Gentoo
users/developers. The documentation and forums are excellent, as are the
IRC channels.

As far as installation is concerned, the complexity pretty much depends
on whether you want to dual-boot with some other OS and whether or not
you have a floppy disk drive :). If you don't want to dual-boot and you
have a floppy, you can do the whole install (stage1 or stage3) from
shell scripts on the floppy and just sit and watch.

It gets a little trickier if you only have a CD; you have to boot the
install CD with the "docache" option, then unmount it, load your install
scripts from a CD, then put the install CD back in to copy the stage3
tarball and Portage snapshot. If you have two CD drives, it gets simple
again :).

The most complex case is if you want to preserve an existing OS. First,
you have to back it up, so if you nuke it, you can restore it. Then you
have to move partitions around, etc. But once you've got the hard drive
partitioned the way you want it, everything else is automatable.

Mark S Petrovic wrote:

>Good day.
>
>I am about to embark on a serious project and I am considering Gentoo
>as the platform.  My luck with installation, on which I've spent several
>solid days, thus far has been mixed, and I'm willing to hold off believing
>it's not just me.  I suspect Gentoo works, but thus far just not for me.
>But I see the promise it holds.
>
>Is there a principal Gentoo developer in Northern or Southern California
>(preferred) to whom I can pay a visit to gain a deeper understanding of
>who the Gentoo team is, what they are trying to accomplish, and how?
>
>Thanks.
>
>Mark
>
>--
>Research and Development
>EarthLink, Inc.           
>Pasadena, CA
>  
>
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