[StALUG] trying out Gentoo

[garryg]

Hey Rory,

well, attempting to install gentoo for the first time was fairly hardcore
for a gui user. just spent the last week getting my head round logical
volume management! afraid to say failed gentoo instalment twice. got as far
as installing the stage 3 tarball but things went downhill rapidly once
portage came into the equation. there were a few other probs during earlier
stages but not sure if it's cos was doing it in virtualbox or not (you did
say to bare that in mind if things went wrong and i was looking for help).
no matter, i'll have another crack it once i figure out dual booting and
then find out if was virtualbox, my inexperience or a combination of both -
i know which one my money's going on though!

Cheers,

Garry
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[Rory Beaton]

Hi Garry,

I'm not too familiar with Gentoo but my impressions of it were that it looks
great for building a minimalist or highly customised system tailored to a
specific application but a lot of effort for a standard box. If I wanted
something minimalist, I'm not sure I'd want to install the entire toolchain
necessary to build Gentoo. And I suppose I've never recovered from waiting
upwards of 10 hours for X to build on a DEC 3000 running NetBSD...

I'm a confirmed SuSE and/or ubuntu/debian advocate these days - ubuntu's Long
Term Support (LTS) model is better than anything else on offer at the price
(free) and their server build is fairly compact. SuSE's Yast2 is a nice tool
and the console version is great for remote admin but debian's apt-get is just
a dream come true!

Virtualbox does have some issues and my best advice would be to get the latest
build directly from Sun/Oracle. I've failed to get Win7 to install and have had
problems getting various CAD/modelling apps installed on XP in Vbox on my ubuntu
workstation.

rb

Post by garryg
Hey Rory,
well, attempting to install gentoo for the first time was fairly hardcore
for a gui user. just spent the last week getting my head round logical
volume management! afraid to say failed gentoo instalment twice. got as far
as installing the stage 3 tarball but things went downhill rapidly once
portage came into the equation. there were a few other probs during earlier
stages but not sure if it's cos was doing it in virtualbox or not (you did
say to bare that in mind if things went wrong and i was looking for help).
no matter, i'll have another crack it once i figure out dual booting and
then find out if was virtualbox, my inexperience or a combination of both -
i know which one my money's going on though!
Cheers,
Garry

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University of St Andrews Webmail: https://webmail.st-andrews.ac.uk

[Jim McLaren]

On Thu, 12 Aug 2010 11:13:44 +0100

Post by Rory Beaton
Virtualbox does have some issues and my best advice would be to get
the latest build directly from Sun/Oracle. I've failed to get Win7 to
install and have had problems getting various CAD/modelling apps
installed on XP in Vbox on my ubuntu workstation.

Likewise, especially with the recent builds of VB. I can't get USB to
function correctly on version 3.2 so am still working on 3.1. I've
installed Windows 7 on it, but not really done much with it yet.

Agree about not diving in with Gentoo until you are more used to Linux.
I use Ubuntu 8.04 LTS at the moment, but will be moving to 10.04 as
soon as harvest is out the way!

Rather than dive in at the deep end, I would suggest using
Ubuntu/SuSE/Fedora, and buying a good book on the distro. Once you are
comfortable with the command line, then by all means have a go at the
more complicated stuff.

[Rory Beaton]

Post by Jim McLaren
On Thu, 12 Aug 2010 11:13:44 +0100
Likewise, especially with the recent builds of VB. I can't get USB to
function correctly on version 3.2 so am still working on 3.1. I've
installed Windows 7 on it, but not really done much with it yet.

Interesting...was this the 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 7? I was trying with 64-bit
and I kept having the problem of the installer "losing" the source
drive/directory.

I agree that USB is an issue - I spent too long trying to get the guest OS to
see my graphics tablet and security dongles are a nightmare!

rb

------------------------------------------------------------------
University of St Andrews Webmail: https://webmail.st-andrews.ac.uk

[Jim McLaren]

On Thu, 12 Aug 2010 12:10:54 +0100

Post by Rory Beaton
Interesting...was this the 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 7? I was trying
with 64-bit and I kept having the problem of the installer "losing"
the source drive/directory.

64bit. Sounds like you either have a dodgy DVD or DVD drive. That would
be the first thing I would check.

Post by Rory Beaton
I agree that USB is an issue - I spent too long trying to get the
guest OS to see my graphics tablet and security dongles are a
nightmare!

Everything works fine under 3.1, although I haven't tried my graphics
tablet admittedly, but scanner, pen drives Palm treo sync cable and
other things all work fine. Upgrade to 3.2 and nothing gets recognised
on any guest system, be it Windows or Linux.