Gentoo (was Re: 5.3)

[John Murphy]

Aled Morris <aledm at qix.co.uk> wrote:

>It seems to include "make world" as part of the install procedure, so if
>you install it on some random leftover PC with a less-than-speedy CPU,
>you are in for a long long wait.

Could be the best way though, if it's clever enough to optimise the build
for the hardware and selected usage.

>I gave up when it tried to download more stuff from the 'net and the
>machine I was installing on didn't have a net connection.  The ISO is
>supposed to be a complete standalone install.  Skipping this stage left me
>a machine that wouldn't boot.

Scary, but I think I'll look into it, and perhaps some other distros,
by triple booting, when I get some time, and a spare slice. 

>I'm amazed that Linux is soooo popular when it can be this painful!

One person's pain is another person's ecstasy! Someone (or group) must
have designed Gentoo or whatever distro with some purpose in mind.
Ease of install may not have been uppermost.

I grabbed a systemrescuecd-x86-0.2.15.iso from  http://www.sysresccd.org/
which seems a 'good idea'.  I am often called on to mend computers with
OSs which use fat file systems, and it offers some features which could
be useful. I don't think it handles freebsd filesystems, but I've never
had trouble with those.

-- 
John.