On Saturday 23 Jul 2011 14:28:32 CJoeB wrote:

> The thing is, I don't want Windows on the computer at all.  My laptop is
> 4 years old and it was booted into Windows once and that was only
> because I didn't hit the F2 key fast enough to get into the bios to
> change the boot order.  Then, Windows got removed completely.
> 
> The computer I am getting is a desktop for home use and everything I
> need is in Linux.  I don't want to have to put up with all the "pain in
> the ass" stuff Windows puts you through.  I have to put up with Windows
> all day at work and it's like a breath of fresh air when I can come home
> to my Linux system.

In that case you can create a back up of all the OEM partitions as I suggested 
and then wipe the drive clean and install gentoo.

If things break you'll have to replace components yourself - to be honest 
unless a CPU/MoBo goes bad on you it is relatively cheap to by a drive or PSU 
these days.

In other words, consider yourself self-insured and definitely don't waste any 
money on extended warranties.


> >    William's comment about running Gentoo in a VM is very valid.
> 
> I've never installed a virtual machine so wouldn't even know how to go
> about it.

There's loads of howtos in Google for this.  It is not difficult at all (most 
of the times) but there is no reason to boot into MSWindows only to run 
Gentoo!  


> >    There really aren't any specific 64-bit things I'm aware of that
> > 
> > you need to choose. It's all pretty generic these days, at least with
> > the Intel processors. I've not used an AMD processor in a while. Boot
> > from pretty much any Linux Live CD and then do the stage 3 install and
> > you should be fine. ia64 isn't TTBOMK knowledge something you need to
> > pay attention to. All my Intel i5 & i7 machines are amd64 stable with
> > a few ~amd64 packages.
> 
> So, if I choose the amd64 iso and Stage 3, it doesn't have to be on an
> AMD machine?

Correct, you will use this iso (or systemrescueCD or Knoppix) and a Staqe 3 
equivalent to build a system on an Intel 64bit CPU.


> >    One note about the Sandy Bridge processor is reight now it does
> > 
> > require a specific CFLAG setting to get everything to build correctly
> > due to a gcc bug.
> 
> So how do I know if it's a Sandy Bridge processor?  Nothing in the specs
> that I read says it's anything more than and Intel i-7.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge#Desktop_processors

HTH.
-- 
Regards,
Mick