For Gentoo all that''s needed is a stage 3 tarball (~80MBs). The LiveCDs provide a usable environment, but I prefer to do my installs from Knoppix. The theory is the same. Everything is installed from network, for the most part. Just be careful when using a slower machine, especially without much RAM - compile times are long enough as is. If you have two machines, look into using distcc.

My recommendation is to play with Knoppix for a bit, or use Mandrake or Red Hat to get the hang of it. Going with Gentoo with no Linux experience is difficult, but people have done it.

Also, useful tip: create a seperate partition for /home. Then you can change distros at will. Play with as many as possible, until you find one that YOU like. Choice is what Linux is all about.

When you get the p3/p4/whatever version, its precompiled with gcc optimization flags for your architecture (eg. -march=pentium3)

I bought my gentoo CDs (for a pitance), so I''m assuming that the isos on the mirrors are the same - my universal liveCD had the stage 1 and stage 3 tarballs (stage 3 is precompiled, with the architecture its optimized for in the name (I think my CD had stage3 for several architectures on))

I imagine that the packages CD contains only prebuilt binaries for your architecture

Anyway, installing Gentoo for the first time (except for people who are already *nix wizards) is going to take a while even if you don''t compile everything, the documentation on their website is so good though, that you hopefully shouldn''t go far wrong (and the people on the gentoo forums are very helpful)

Good luck with whatever you choose anyway

quote: Original post by CProgrammer
Yes how is it with accessing files in the other os''s partition. I mean that would be usefull.

The linux kernel has support for most common filesystems, including FAT, (NTFS is sketchy). That means linux can read your windows filesystems, but windows won''t recognize anything other than win32 filesystems.

quote:
Plus why cant I use the same File Format for both partitions. If not why doesnt Linux support the other file system?
-CProgrammer

You can use whatever filesystem you like. I use a combination of ReiserFS and ext3 for linux, no windows. I have had systems before using only FAT32 and shared partitions between win/linux, but it is a bad idea. FAT32 sucks, it is slow and lame. You have a lot of filesystem choices with linux: ext3, reiser, ext2, sgi''s XFS, etc...

I would use FAT32 for windows, and whatever you want for linux, and you can share files fairly easily, but only one way.
-grazer

I love gentoo, but unless you're going to set up distcc (distributed compiling) or use all precompiled packages, installing it on an old computer is going to suck. For someone new to *nix, I would recommend trying FC2 - only three cds, and the easiest install you could imagine.

EDIT:
Oh yeah, NTFS support is no longer "sketchy," they added that to 2.6 at some point (no longer listed as "experimantal," not even write support).

[edited by - darkhamster on April 20, 2004 7:42:37 PM]

quote: Oh yeah, NTFS support is no longer "sketchy," they added that to 2.6 at some point (no longer listed as "experimantal," not even write support).

NTFS write drivers are still pretty "sketchy". If you have a look at the info on it, you can only write to existing files and the files can''t be resized.

Hope this helps.

Don

My experience with "FC2" (Fedora) is that it''s slow, didn''t detect my monitor (well, LCD screen) correctly, I didn''t have any sound after installation (whilst it''s not the only distro where this has happened, other distros have done it correctly)

Also with Fedora I''m pretty sure that you can''t even read ntfs without recompiling the kernel (Red Hat/Fedora are the only distros I know of that do this), and I think you need to download a plugin to play mp3s with anything

Mandrake is the best "works straight out of the box" distro I''ve used, though if Suse 9.1 Pro has the couple of annoying bugs fixed that made 9.0 unusable for me, then it''s not far behind


Generally though, reading ntfs is fine with virtually all distros, and writing to is a bad idea if you''re using 2.4, and limited if you''re using 2.6, but at least it should be safe with 2.6