Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo Installation

[Holly Bostick <motub@planet.nl>]

Rumen Yotov schreef:
>>
> Hi,
> Beside this official Gentoo installer, there's another distro based on 
> Gentoo, which uses "anaconda" as graphical installer, current version 
> seems to be 1.1 - it's called VidaLinux google for the site. Never tried 
> it, so no experience.
> But it was paid for a Pro/Full version (support), check their site.
> OT: some people think it's rather abusing Gentoo's 
> development,infrastructure,package system (no flames please ;)
> HTH. Rumen

Not flaming.... but I will say that I installed Gentoo using VidaLinux 
(there's a couple of thread on the forums about how to turn a Vida 
install back into 'real' Gentoo, which I utilized).

It was not a good idea, and I do not recommend it.

I don't know if Vida is a "good" distro on its own account (as I didn't 
use it on its own account), so this is not any kind of judgement about 
the distro itself.

However, because it's kinda-half-binary based (there's a Club which you 
can pay to join to get access to a repository of pre-compiled binaries, 
and I think I read an announcement that it was finally up and running, 
though presumably still small), because of the backend needed to support 
Anaconda, and because, while Vida is Gentoo-based, yet not Gentoo, if 
you use it to install, things will be ... different... than what they 
"should" be (as per the Handbook, for example), and because the base 
system is not explicitly documented (afaik) by either Gentoo or Vida 
(why should it be, after all?), you are not going to know (or will have 
a very hard time figuring out) what 'extras' Vida might have installed 
that you don't need, or what aspects of the Gentoo backend you might 
need that Vida didn't install (because Vida doesn't need them).

Basically, you wind up reinstalling the entire system again anyway, with 
all that implies, and  while it's all very nice to do that from within 
an installed system than from the console (unless you had the good sense 
to use the Alternate Install guide and install from a Knoppix LiveCD 
boot, or another previously-installed distro), the result is that you 
get Gentoo, but without that sense of confidence that everything is 
correctly built, and to your specifications. I still don't know how 
much, if any, Vida cruft I have hanging around, some two months after I 
installed.

And it just wasn't worth it, if I have to lose my confidence that way, 
to save (admittedly) a big chunk o' time.

I really wouldn't recommend it to anyone else, unless they actually 
wanted to use Vida, in which case, good luck, Godspeed, and hope it 
works out. I'm a Gentoo user :-) .

Holly
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