[CLOSED - NEW THREAD COMING] So what's your Distro and Why? - Page 2 - Administration

Beginner

Monday, June 2nd 2003, 12:45pm

Im using LFS and Mandrake

Hi,
I'm using Linux From Stracth (LFS) and Mandrake. My computer runs fast using LFS and easy to use. At the first time I'm using Mandrake then Yoper. After that I thought that something missing from that distribution. I ever tried Suse for a while, Lindows and Lycoris. They didn't suit my needs. Then here it is ... an LFS package. Installing it under Yoper and it works. After that intalling the X Windows and KDE. AwesomeI It works.
If you want a Linux box with full control try LFS

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dimitri

Trainee

Posts: 156

Occupation: Engineer

22

Monday, June 2nd 2003, 9:30pm

Quoted

can you also use the source to install things then? and can you make some sort of installation packages?

In gentoo everything is copiled from source (well there are mor and more binary packages now, but normaly you will compile it)
Of course you can still make your "old" configure - make- make install.

Writing own installation packages is not too hard. These scripts are called ebuild. They tell the portage system where to download the source, which dependencies have to be resolved and how to compile and install it. The ebuilds are written in normal bash sytanx.

Dim

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Mystilleef

Beginner

Posts: 46

23

Tuesday, June 3rd 2003, 1:20am

Quoted

Original von Incubator

can you also use the source to install things then? and can you make some sort of installation packages?

How did your SUSE experience go?

Like dimitri mentioned, Gentoo is a source-based distribution. All packages are compiled from source code with options of customizing and optimizing packages to your CPU architecture.

In Gentoo, the package manager called portage, takes care of the acquisition, the installation, the management, and the update of packages usually through a single command. Installing all the KDE packages, for example, under Gentoo, is as simple as follows:

[code:1]
# emerge kde
[/code:1]

Go to sleep, and in the morning KDE is installed and ready to be fired. Oh, yes, I forgot to mention portage takes care of package dependencies so you don't need to worry about that. I'm only scraping the surface of the possibilities of the Gentoo package management system. Its use is only limited by your creativity, and clearly puts rpm and apt-get to shame.

Hey, don't argue with me, give it a try first. And then call me a liar.

Mystilleef

KDE Seeker.

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erugger66

Trainee

Posts: 68

24

Tuesday, June 3rd 2003, 2:32pm

Quoted

Original von Mystilleef

Hey, don't argue with me, give it a try first. And then call me a liar. Mystilleef

I took Mystilleef up on this and installed Gentoo on a test system here at work. I am a real Linux noob, seeing as how I am a CPA by trade, but have delt with computers from my time in college. We have used Linux at work for our mail server for 5 years now and I just started to try to understand how it works so I can take over administration rather than pay someone to do it.

I am running SuSE 8.0 at home and love it, my wife isn't as pleased (can't run the kids games, etc.) I started using SuSE back in August 2002 if I remember correctly.

Back to Gentoo. I just finished the install, with KDE. It's nice to see what a "clean" install of KDE looks like. I still need to tweak it some more and I am learning a lot.

The Gentoo community is great and the Forum, also using phpbb, is a wealth of info. The documentation is also great. If you don't mind the time it takes to compile your system, check Gentoo out :!:

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Incubator

Beginner

Posts: 39

Location: Belgium

Occupation: Student

25

Tuesday, June 3rd 2003, 3:08pm

well, the reason why I still have second thought about doing this, is because I have no test system to try it on.
If I screw up (and that happens, too often) 70GB of valuable info is gone in a flicker.
I've read the install info but when I came upon the disk partitioning, I froze :/
It ś been way too long since I touched the dos fdisk program and cant afford to try anything out on the only computer I have.
Plus the current partition set up is this:
hda: ntfs (windows)
hdb1: ntfs (massive data storage)
hdb2: linux native
hdb3: linux swap

but for gentoo I need to create a boot partition in the beginning of the first disk right?
and that might be a prob :/
(for me anywhay

)
thats why I currently prefer mandrake's easy partitioning. I dont mind using command line for other things, in fact sometimes I prefer it. But I do prefer that system critical things are in that case done for me.
Reason; during my futile attempt to get red hat 9 working, it complained about my ext2 partition where mdk worked on perfectly. It said it crossed that famous 1024 cylinder border.
So I deleted that one and made a new one with the partitioning tool from red hat (in the installation) but it still kept complaining. I installed anywhay and when booting, I ended up with a sccreen full of L 99's

oh, and i didnt get a chance to try SUSE yet

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Paul_Vandenberg

Beginner

Posts: 16

26

Tuesday, June 3rd 2003, 4:08pm

I use Red Hat. I like that it's easily obtainable and there's lot's of third party apps for it. I've used Mandrake and like it as well, but I don't want to get too attached in case they go belly up. SuSE is nice, but it seems hard to find apps (RPMs) for it. Also, you don't see new versions on the store shelves here in Canada until about 3 months after the release date. I've also tried Debian. Maybe I'm stupid or something, but I just couldn't get the X server to work. Overall, the installation seems to fiddly.

Anyway...my 2 cents.

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cdrradar

Beginner

Posts: 2

27

Tuesday, June 3rd 2003, 11:41pm

I'm (still) working on my LFS 4.1 system hosted off a Slack 8.1.

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Mystilleef

Beginner

Posts: 46

28

Wednesday, June 4th 2003, 4:29am

Quoted

Original von erugger66

Quoted

Original von Mystilleef

Hey, don't argue with me, give it a try first. And then call me a liar. Mystilleef

I took Mystilleef up on this and installed Gentoo on a test system here at work. I am a real Linux noob, seeing as how I am a CPA by trade, but have delt with computers from my time in college. We have used Linux at work for our mail server for 5 years now and I just started to try to understand how it works so I can take over administration rather than pay someone to do it.

I am running SuSE 8.0 at home and love it, my wife isn't as pleased (can't run the kids games, etc.) I started using SuSE back in August 2002 if I remember correctly.

Back to Gentoo. I just finished the install, with KDE. It's nice to see what a "clean" install of KDE looks like. I still need to tweak it some more and I am learning a lot. The Gentoo community is great and the Forum, also using phpbb, is a wealth of info. The documentation is also great. If you don't mind the time it takes to compile your system, check Gentoo out

The fun has only just begun!

KDE Seeker.

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Mystilleef

Beginner

Posts: 46

29

Wednesday, June 4th 2003, 4:32am

Quoted

Original von Incubator

well, the reason why I still have second thought about doing this, is because I have no test system to try it on.
If I screw up (and that happens, too often) 70GB of valuable info is gone in a flicker.
I've read the install info but when I came upon the disk partitioning, I froze :/
It ś been way too long since I touched the dos fdisk program and cant afford to try anything out on the only computer I have.
Plus the current partition set up is this:
hda: ntfs (windows)
hdb1: ntfs (massive data storage)
hdb2: linux native
hdb3: linux swap

but for gentoo I need to create a boot partition in the beginning of the first disk right?
and that might be a prob :/
(for me anywhay )
thats why I currently prefer mandrake's easy partitioning. I dont mind using command line for other things, in fact sometimes I prefer it. But I do prefer that system critical things are in that case done for me.
Reason; during my futile attempt to get red hat 9 working, it complained about my ext2 partition where mdk worked on perfectly. It said it crossed that famous 1024 cylinder border.
So I deleted that one and made a new one with the partitioning tool from red hat (in the installation) but it still kept complaining. I installed anywhay and when booting, I ended up with a sccreen full of L 99's

oh, and i didnt get a chance to try SUSE yet

Yes, just to be on the safe side, install it on a test system first. Get comfortable with it, then back up your hard disk and take the plunge.

KDE Seeker.

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Incubator

Beginner

Posts: 39

Location: Belgium

Occupation: Student

30

Wednesday, June 4th 2003, 5:14am

might have found alternative, if I arrange that windows is on the big disk and clear hda (the first disk) gentoo will have the proper disk for itself and to create the boot partition on

(the mind has been doing too much work lately it seems

)

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ntws01

Beginner

Posts: 7

31

Wednesday, June 4th 2003, 4:08pm

I use Mandrake, I have been using it since Mdk 8.2 but I have also tried over a dozen other distributions including Debian, Slackware and Red Hat.

The reason I chose Mandrake is because I know where everything is, I used to use Windows 98 before I switched to Linux a few years ago so I liked having some sort of control panel, Mandrake has two that I use (MCC and KDE control center) and that covers just about everything. I find the mandrake community cold because of all the people in it, my requests for support go unanswered with the exception of one mailing list I am in which has users of several difference Linux distributions.

Previous the Mandrake 9.1 I was alway's looking for a different distribution to replace it, the most promising was Lycoris but it was a little to much like Windows right down to its disfunctional automount feature which it wouldn't allow me to disable without corrupting the /ext/fstab file, I couldn't install Gentoo because I had no previous experience custom compiling a kernel and I didn't know what modules (?) to include. I would have used Debian but I couldn't get the included version of Lilo to work and I couldn't use the CD to get into the newly installed distribution (this is possible with slackware). I would have used Red Hat but I absolutely hate that distribution, I regard Red Hat as lazy because I have had the same bug since 7.0 cause my system to no longer run X (even with a reinstall) and Red Hat has done nothing to try and fix it. I looked at Conectiva but outside of KDE it was not in english and for some reason the Home folders were inaccessible so only root could log in. In fact I almost gave up on Linux until I got Mandrake 9.1, while slow it is nice and with a few changes to the settings it works the way I want it to, I could probably boost the speed a little by using XFS next time instead of EXT3.

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Incubator

Beginner

Posts: 39

Location: Belgium

Occupation: Student

32

Wednesday, June 4th 2003, 5:17pm

uhm, if i´m correct, if you select the tarball3 for gentoo install you dont have to configure your kernell and select modules manually like that.
(of course you need to know a few names of what programs you want to install)
thats what i understood from the install guide

Dim, correct me if i´m wrong pls

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ntws01

Beginner

Posts: 7

33

Wednesday, June 4th 2003, 5:19pm

Quoted

Original von Incubator

uhm, if i´m correct, if you select the tarball3 for gentoo install you dont have to configure your kernell and select modules manually like that.
(of course you need to know a few names of what programs you want to install)
thats what i understood from the install guide

Dim, correct me if i´m wrong pls

Sounds simple enough, perhaps someone could direct me to a full tutorial for installing Gentoo?

Thanks for the help

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cmbofh

Intermediate

Posts: 539

34

Wednesday, June 4th 2003, 5:52pm

Quoted

Original von ntws01

Sounds simple enough, perhaps someone could direct me to a full tutorial for installing Gentoo?

Thanks for the help

That's the one I used (maybe this is even an updated version...):
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml

It's step-by-step but requires some background knowledge.

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ntws01

Beginner

Posts: 7

35

Wednesday, June 4th 2003, 7:19pm

Quoted

Original von cmbofh

Quoted

Original von ntws01

Sounds simple enough, perhaps someone could direct me to a full tutorial for installing Gentoo?

Thanks for the help

That's the one I used (maybe this is even an updated version...):
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml

It's step-by-step but requires some background knowledge.

O.k I'll take a look at it, thanks

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erugger66

Trainee

Posts: 68

36

Wednesday, June 4th 2003, 7:42pm

You do have to do a little tweaking of the Kernel even with the Stage3 tarball.

I spent all day yesterday trying to get alsa working. It was easy with one exception, I chose the wrong driver for my sound card. That killed me dead. Nothing would work after several tries. Then I found out what I did wrong and then

Editing the Kernel to set this up was very easy with
[code:1]make menuconfig[/code:1]

My test system looks real cool, but it has taken some time to setup.

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Incubator

Beginner

Posts: 39

Location: Belgium

Occupation: Student

37

Wednesday, June 4th 2003, 8:30pm

luckily i already know now wich linux drivers i need to take for sound and video

but one other thing:
is n_hdlc and pppoe enabled in the kernel by default?

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dimitri

Trainee

Posts: 156

Occupation: Engineer

38

Wednesday, June 4th 2003, 8:39pm

Hi,

Quoted

but one other thing:
is n_hdlc and pppoe enabled in the kernel by default?

This is a thread about Linux Ditributions in the Off Topic Forum.
It would be nice if questions are posted in the Forum where they belong, so that the Off Topic Forum doesn't become too much Off Topic itself

Dim

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cmbofh

Intermediate

Posts: 539

39

Wednesday, June 4th 2003, 8:49pm

Quoted

Original von dimitri

It would be nice if questions are posted in the Forum where they belong, so that the Off Topic Forum doesn't become too much Off Topic itself

Dim