Wonderful world of new dists..

[Dan Miller]

Speaking as a gentoo user, gentoo is a pain to setup, but nice to maintain.

As for laptops, any linux distro can be hard to get to run right on 
laptops. Browse the forums, and see if people are having issues with the 
model laptop you have.

A new video card you probably would have to reconfigure X. More memory 
won't be an issue (and should not be with Debian). As for sound, follow 
the Gentoo-Alsa howto. When installing Gentoo, go step by step through 
the install guide. I recommend that you don't use the gui install, as I 
have heard it has issues.

Some gentoo quirks. Use flags - this determines what packages get 
installed and how configured (for Firefox especially). My use flags are:

USE="-imagemagick -dri -arts -gentoo-sources -dev-sources -cervisia 
-apache2 -qt3 -qt4 glibc-omitfp nptlonly no-seamonkey blackdown sdl java 
tiff svg unicode ldap nptl xv xvid nsplugin glitz cairo win32codec 
quicktime ada subversion opie sunbird thunderbird firefox ithreads 
-threads mysql mythtv gtk gnome -kde dvd alsa cdr dvdrw dvdr xinerama 
vlc mozilla dvd ffmpeg mpeg mad wxwindows aac dts a52 ogg theora 
oggvorbis matroska -freetype bidi xv svga gnutls stram vlm httpd cdda 
cvd cdio live mozbranding"

yes its alot, but I've had issues with some flags or I want some flags 
so they are added.

The second thing about Gentoo is the CFLAGS. These are system wide flags 
that are used for compiling. Here are mine: CFLAGS="-O3 -march=athlon-xp 
-pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -funroll-loops -fforce-addr 
-frerun-cse-after-loop -frerun-loop-opt -falign-functions=4 
-fprefetch-loop-arrays -finline-limit=600 -ftracer"

As a base, I recommend -03 -march=<your arch> -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer
you can add all the cflags you want.

The ebuilds are usually really good. Now and then a ebuild breaks, but 
that is rare. As for new ebuilds (say for FF 1.5 to FF 2.0) it usually 
takes a day or two after release for it to be in portage.

If you don't run the keywords, you should be fine. I have noticed a good 
speed up from RedHat to Gentoo.

Gentoo is not a noob distro, you will have to configure your partitions, 
the drivers, and compile the kernel (unless you run gen-kernel). Once 
everything is up its a great distro.

Just make sure the hardware is supported under linux and you won't have 
too much trouble. Feel free to shoot me an email if you need help after 
you have installed (or are installing) Gentoo.

Dan

Thomas Charron wrote:
>   Ok guys and gals, I'm looking at dists that are out there, and I'm 
> really leaning twards Gentoo for my laptop dual boot/VMWare.  This is a 
> brandy spankin new laptop, Toshiba P105-9722, Intel Core 2 Duo 7400, 2 
> gigs ram, blahblah.
> 
>   What are people opinions of the 'state of distros' right now?  I 
> particularly like KDE personally, but I tend to make it look nothing 
> like windows after a while.  What distros have the latest greatest 
> neatest etc?  What supports, oh, say, laptop hardware the best?  I was 
> also looking at Kabuntu for the hardware discrovery side.
> 
>   I've been using Debian for years, but I'm just in the mood to try 
> something that doesn't make me feel like McGyver when I install a new 
> memory card, device, etc..
> 
>   Thomas
> 
> 
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