Gentoo - The easy way

Hi everyone.

Im part of the team that is Kororaa Linux. Kororaa is basically an automated, binary installation for Gentoo linux.

Pros:
1) Must faster than a normal Gentoo Stage 3.
2) Uses binary packages - thus no compiling neccesary for installation.
3) Has XGL installation CD + LIVECD

Basically Kororaa gets you a fully working Gentoo system in matter of hours with all the popular apps that you can ask for.

check it out!!

 

Wow. Matter of hours? Is that fast? I had heard that Gentoo installations took a long time, but I haven't ever tried.

Cool to have a real linux guru on the boards! I'm not much more than a script kiddie, myself But a happy one, never the less Lovin' linux life.

 

Never tried Gentoo but I think Ubuntu is easy enough to use assuming you don't have a new PC.

 

Heh, then you haven't built a recent version of Gnome/KDE from source. On my aging PIII machine, days is a better measurement than hours.

 

Once you install Gentoo and get used to its package management system named portage, you will never use anything else.

 

Have you ever used Apt in Debian? That's pretty easy and straight forward. So portage is even easier? Could you compare the two for me? I have thought of playing w/ Gentoo, I hear it's a fast once it's running...

 

Ok. Remember that gentoo compiles everything from source.
With the right CFLAGS (used for gcc compiler) optimized for your processor, your system can become deadly fast. The installed programs will also become much faster.

Portage vs. Apt

In Portage, you can compile a package with many different features via USE flags. USE flags tell the compiler to compile the app with certain neccessary features or wanted features.

eg: I want to compile Mplayer with dvd, alsa, dvr, vcd abilities.

Code:

# USE="dvd alsa dvr vcd" emerge mplayer

\

Portage also allows you to upgrade applications very easily without any issues. Portage allows you to pretend to do an installation so that you can see if any packages are affected. There are a lot more features that portage has, but im not going to get into it here. PM if you have more questions.

Portage comes with all gentoo mirrors. all the ebuilds are guaranteed to work.
unlike apt where certain repositories are to be added in.

Portage is better in every way. Its based on x-BSD plugin style installation.

 

Wow - Kororaa sounds awesome!

Much like a few members here, I'm a Debian user myself but want to try out Gentoo. When I was in College, my hall-mate told me his stage3 Gentoo installation took him 3 days to finish.

I have a few questions though.

1) Doesn't Gentoo have a sort of binary install?
2) Even if 1) isn't true, how new are the binaries? Assuming they are not bleeding edge, once our system is running we will have to update and thus compile all of them anyway right?
3) "has XGL installation CD." does that mean the Kororaa installs XGL for us or what?

Looking forward to your reply

 

Thanks djpharoah. Now gentoo really is on my must do list. Now I just have to find the time and a test box....

 

1) Gentoo doesnt have a binary install. Thats why Kororaa was created.
2) There are binary packages that are precompiled. They are GRP packages. However they are pretty old.
3) The Kororaa XGL CD will install XGL + KDE/GNOME for you.
But please read the kororaa forums before you start your installation. Make sure your computer is able to run xgl.