[Autistic] Gentoo saga

[Daniel Jones]

Hi

So, after several years' happy Debian usage, I finally take the plunge
and install gentoo.

That is, I finally take the plunge and /try/ to install Gentoo.  It
doesn't, like, /have/ an installer to speak of, does it?  Now all I
wanted to do was try it out, see what it's like, y'know?

So I download the .iso whilst at work and burn it there.  I takes it
home, install a spare  80GB HDD into my AMD64 PC thingie, boot from
it...  Looks like all is well, it recognises my ULi chipset + builtin
network card fine.  Cool, I thought.  So I used the default config in
genkernel (after doing all the gubbins from the doc site)

Oh, I almost forgot; I used the stage3 install.  Not the one off the
CD, though; naah, that'd be too easy.  It was corrupt so I had to
download it.  :)

Anyways, I install the kernel following the tutorial on the gentoo
website.  Good job Gentoo comes with sshd(and I have a KVM) is all I
can say.  Only to find that my builtin network card /isn't/ installed
by default by the kernel (I didn't do a menuconfig; hey, like I said,
I just wanted to try it out) so I had to redo it with a menuconfig. 
Yes, genkernel does a make mrproper while it is doing stuff. 
(Thinking back on it, I could have just gone into /usr/src/linux and
done a make menuconfig ; make; make modules_install but I didn't think
of that)

And you'd think an emerge gdm would at least give you a default window
manager, wouldn't you?  Nooooo.  Not even xterm.

I guess I'm too used to having my hand held.  Even /slackware/ holds
your hand more than this.  But, I have to admit it, even though this
is taking aeons to complete (why /is/ the mirrorlist site taking so
long to resolve?) I'm going to stick with it just because.

Just because, OK?  :)

Gotta go now; something to do with someone picking me up to take me to
London to shout(or in my case, keep my mouth shut and just walk,
desperately trying to avoid having to carry a placard) about war in
Iraq/the coming war in Iran or something.

Laters
--
Dan