[SC.LUG] gentoo linux

[Simeon]

Hello Matthew,

srmlou> Message: 3
srmlou> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 10:44:35 +0100
srmlou> From: "Matthew Tolley" <matthew at matthewtolley.com>
srmlou> Subject: RE: [SC.LUG] gentoo linux
srmlou> To: "South Cheshire GNU/Linux Users" <sc at mailman.lug.org.uk>
srmlou> Message-ID: <MCBBLOJGGFKBCJCIBBODOEPCCCAA.matthew at matthewtolley.com>
srmlou> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="iso-8859-1"



srmlou> Great - when is the next LUG meet BTW? I will come armed with blank CDs or
srmlou> DVD !

:)

srmlou> If it's more than 3 weeks away I might do as a couple of you have
srmlou> recommended and wait for Mandrske 9.2.

The other's have already given the best advice - Mandrake have a habit
(IMNSHO) of rushing out with a new version .0 which has lots of flashy
features but tends to have problems - these get ironed out in the
point releases (I think the only time they broke this trend was when
7.1 knocked the spots of 7.2).

Too many cute penguins for my liking though ;p - I find it hard to
believe their approach would appeal to the business community as much
as RedHat's approach; can anyone comment?


srmlou> Silly question (I'm a non-techie, remember) - can I run a dual or tri-boot
srmlou> machine (I have plenty of HD capacity) with different OSs? I'm in the
srmlou> 'dabbling' stage when I've not yet decided which version to go for, and a
srmlou> lot of my stuff is still on Windows. (not for long, mind!).

Yes, in a word, although make sure you've backed up all your documents
first (whilst a multiboot install onto the same disk is easily
possible, Murphy's Law states that if you've not done a backup, you
will do something daft like mke2fs the wrong partition). You'll need
to partition your disk (i.e. shrink the area held by windows and add
new partitions after it) - there are a few gotchas (which may have
been fixed as I've been out of linux for almost a year) involving
where bootloaders are installed relative to the 1024th disk cylinder
(certainly with old versions of lilo this was critical, but I'm not au
fait with grub or current versions at the moment). Others will no
doubt jump in here (so I'll leave a nice space......)



There - they've said it all ;)

srmlou> Initially, I built my own PC and did a disc partition to run Red Hat and
srmlou> Windows together, had some difficulties (I didn't know anyone that could
srmlou> guide me round Linux) and had to fall back on Windows (yuk!). I'm absolutely
srmlou> DYING to kick Windows into touch now though. I just need to get used to
srmlou> Linux first. Needless to say I've gone off Red Hat a bit and I'm looking for
srmlou> something that suits us brain-dead non-technical people and pretty much
srmlou> explains itself.

IMHO there seems to be two types of linux user; one which like Red Hat
and one that doesn't. I don't know why. I moved onto RH after a brief
spell on Slackware but this was entirely because I knew someone else
who used RH. After that I migrated to Debian and stayed there
(although I looked in at Mandrake every now and again).

Mandrake and SuSE have always been the dists which appear to be waived
at new users, I think more because they visually present a world not
too dissimilar to windwoes and use nice interfaces to control things
rather than advocating text editing and emacs-vi wars.

Since I got my current machine I've not had time to tinker so it's stayed 100% on the
dark side. However I intend to add another disk when I get a chance
and install Gentoo onto it, having downloaded the ISO and stage files
this afternoon. So we'll see ;-) If it's not good, I suspect it'll be
debian time again.........

Simeo