The DIY Gentoo Linux Guide

[likewhoa]

If one follows your Gentoo guide will they get the effects shown here?

 

no, the guide will only get you a strong base system in which you can build a desktop from, if you follow the guide fully you should have a base system in 3-5 hours, then setting up a desktop is just a matter compiling the X Windows and Gnome/KDE/ or the XFCE Desktop environment. I use Gnome myself.

 

http://gentoo.org/doc has guides on setting up your desktop

My guide is just for a base system which is the most important phase of setting up a stable and fast Gentoo Workstation

[Dillweed]

Thanks for the great guide. I've used Gentoo for awhile now and find that the installation has gotten a lot easier than it use to be. I generally find that installing Gentoo or distro for that matter is pretty easy...for the most part. What always gets my shorts tied up in a bunch up is updating the stinkin' OS. I hate to emerge --sync and then start updating my system and then have something break or an emerge fail. Would it be possible to get a good updating guide or maybe some tips on what you guys do when updating your OS, especially when emerge fails? Maybe, I asking the wrong question, but reading the Gentoo forums, everyone has an opinion on how it should be done, and I'm not sure which is the correct way, if any are correct for that matter.

[likewhoa]

Thanks for the great guide. I've used Gentoo for awhile now and find that the installation has gotten a lot easier than it use to be. I generally find that installing Gentoo or distro for that matter is pretty easy...for the most part. What always gets my shorts tied up in a bunch up is updating the stinkin' OS. I hate to emerge --sync and then start updating my system and then have something break or an emerge fail. Would it be possible to get a good updating guide or maybe some tips on what you guys do when updating your OS, especially when emerge fails? Maybe, I asking the wrong question, but reading the Gentoo forums, everyone has an opinion on how it should be done, and I'm not sure which is the correct way, if any are correct for that matter.

 

You generally don't want to update once in a blue moon, you should update your packages atleast once a month to avoid breakage over time because of old libraries updating to old toolsets. for the most part the suggestions when a package fails is to use common sense, read the compile errors etc..

 

• compile the package in question with saner cflags
  
• search the bugs.gentoo.org website for related info, if nothing found then you may file your own bug report there.
  
• search forums.gentoo.org for related info, make a thread if nothing found.
  
• run revdep-rebuild which is part of the gentoolkit package.
  

 

those are some of the steps i take when troubleshooting a package that fails, but for indepth debugging you will want to add "-g" or "-ggdb", you will also want to add "noauto noclean" to FEATURES variable in make.conf to further help in debugging. another tool to use is strace. example

 

strace -o debug startx

 

This will intercept and record the system calls which are called by a process and the signals which are received by a process.

 

More info on GCC debugging can be found here.

A Guide on Gentoo's Bugzilla Reporting link.

 

Hope this answers some of your questions if not all. Just remember. DO NOT leave a system without being updated for longer than 1 month and you should be fine, and also don't mix to many "stable & unstable" keywords in your system. If your package.keywords file is over 50 lines you should just go full ~arch

[boywander]

Like to try this in a couple days.

 

Probably a dim or redundant q, but 'updating profile for NPTL' for a 64 bit install?

[likewhoa]

Like to try this in a couple days.

 

Probably a dim or redundant q, but 'updating profile for NPTL' for a 64 bit install?

 

there is not need to update your profile with the 64bit stage1 tarball as it allready is running the require profile for the guide. You only switch/update profiles in a 32bit setup.

[boywander]

Thanks. Just saw you already said that above, sorry.

[boywander]

It's worked pretty well up to this point, thank you.

 

When I typed the 'find modules' command, it brought up a chevron command line where I had no clue what to do or how to exit it - so I closed the terminal window.

 

After bringing it back up the next couple steps didn't work, but I got the grub boot sector in place. When I try the download of the gentoo.xpm.gz file I get this.

 

livecd grub # wget http://weboperative.com/gentoo/grub/gentoo.xpm.gz

--07:43:09--  http://weboperative.com/gentoo/grub/gentoo.xpm.gz

	   => `gentoo.xpm.gz'

Resolving weboperative.com... 66.90.101.12

Connecting to weboperative.com|66.90.101.12|:80... connected.

HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK

Length: 2,921 (2.9K) [application/x-gzip]

gentoo.xpm.gz: Read-only file system

 

:confused:

 

Sorry if it could better go somewhere else - going mainly by this guide though.

 

I'll leave the rig as it is atm (look at the post time and location). :tooth:

[THEnumber337]

Hey likewhoa, are you running Compiz or Beryl to get those effects?

[likewhoa]

Beryl

[THEnumber337]

Also, maybe this was covered in another thread about Linux but I read through all the posts and didn't see it mentioned. How are you able to run programs such as Orthos, Everest, the 3D Mark programs, and any other programs that us benchmarkers here use that aren't exactly tailored to Linux? Also, have you had any problems with things such as Flash or Macromedia or Quicktime or Adobe or any of the other programs that you usually need to view certain things on the web, or are there equivalent Linux counterparts?

 

I really want to give this a try but I need to wait until the semester is over when I can devote more time to fully grasping it and having time to toy around with all the configurations and what not.

 

I really appreciate you taking the time to write up this guide.

[likewhoa]

Flash9 works in firefox

Acrobat comes for linux

You can play WMV in mplayer and other media players for linux.

Openoffice which is opensource is an alternative to MS Office and can read all MS Office files.

WINE is the windows application emulator which you use to run windows applications, there are forks of WINE which are commercially available and they both focus on two different things..

 

• WINEX A.K.A Cedega focuses on GAMES for windows.
  
• Crossover A.K.A Codeweavers focuses on Applications.
  

 

Prime comes for linux and there is a superpi binary available also,.. 3dmark series won't be possible in Linux through WINE.

[THEnumber337]

Do you dual-boot so you can run the 3Dmark series when necessary (i.e. OCDB entries)? Is it possible to run Orthos through WINE? Sorry if these seem like really basic questions but I have pretty much no Linux experience.