Thinking of installing Gentoo

[jonnyw]

I'm thinking of getting another hard drive, and making my pc a dual booting one with windows/linux.

In looking into the didfferent types i've heard that gentoo gives you an OS that is optimized for your particular hardware.

Does that mean that the DF client would run faster on a system configured for my hardware than say Red Hat or Mandrake would?

I'm a linux n00b (although i have used it at uni) so am not sure whether it is worth the effort (i'm off uni at the moment so do have the time) of trying to install Gentoo

If it does improve amount of work done in other linux OS's, then it should be more productive than windows also (which isn't optimized) (shouldn't it??)

[Kosh]

Chinasaur posted a link to some distro reviews yesterday (link). It should give you some idea of what to expect from Gentoo, read the distrowatch article if you want some idea of the current mess in the benchmarking area.

From what I know I do not think you will see much direct benefit from running Gentoo, if you are running with a minimal installation then Gentoo will perform about as well as any other distribution. I'm guessing that you will be using this as a desktop and by optimizing other applications you may see some benefit just because if they don't use the processor as much then DF can take over. However, there are two important points: the current DF client has a pretty wide deviation from the average production and you may not notice the improvement, the other point is that Gentoo does not optimize itself and the installation process is long, if you want to learn about linux this can be pretty interesting and useful, but if you want instant performance look somewhere else.

I think you can reach a good middle ground by compiling your own kernel, by going to 2.5 from 2.4 I managed to get 2.5% improvement with the Phase I client, I haven't had time to start poking things around with the new client yet but I think Dyyryath has something up his sleeve.

Not that I'm really trying to discourage you from using Gentoo, it is a lot of fun, just don't expect your production to double.

[jonnyw]

cheers for that, will look into them now.

I also understand that i wont double distribution, but i could imagine it being possible to squeeze another generation or 2 per 24 hours.

Also, although i understand its supposed to be one of the hardest to install etc, i figured (as you said) it would give me the best understanding of linux along the way, and i've got the time at the moment as well.

If it all goes pear shaped i could always go for one of the easier to install distributions.

[pointwood]

Gentoo Linux 1.4 Live CD has just been released

[jonnyw]

Originally posted by pointwood
Gentoo Linux 1.4 Live CD has just been released

i'm sort of trying to make it harder for myself really, so that i can get a better idea of how linux (and its instalation) works.

If all fails i'll get back to y'all for easier ideas

[pointwood]

That's sorta the approach I'm taking too (n00b here too ), I really like the way Gentoo portage works (the package system).

It took me a couple of tries to get a working Gentoo system, but it was a great learning experience and I probably wouldn't have tried to compile my own kernel yet if I hadn't chosen Gentoo.

If you need help, I can recommend the official Gentoo forum and irc channels:

http://forums.gentoo.org/index.php
http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/irc.xml

Good luck

[jonnyw]

Originally posted by pointwood

If you need help, I can recommend the official Gentoo forum and irc channels:

http://forums.gentoo.org/index.php
http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/irc.xml

Good luck

I'm sure I will need help.

cheers for the info

[Dyyryath]

You'll find that there are several Gentoo users around here, and some are quite knowledgeable about both Gentoo and Linux in general. You shouldn't have any problems finding answers.

Heck, we'd probably even be willing to help you, Pointy.

[pointwood]

Yes, I know there are several Linux guru's around here but in my experience they are mostly sleeping at this hour and then they're not of much help at all

If you need quick "live" help, irc is often the best way to get it and the gentoo irc channels is always full of helpful people

After reading about Gentoo and installing it, I introduced it to my personal Linux guru and he likes it a lot

[Dyyryath]

Originally posted by pointwood
...in my experience they are mostly sleeping at this hour...

You must be talking about those hours when that big, bright thing is up in the sky.

[pointwood]

You can turn that off - just look for some kind of switch somewhere on the wall in the room