Gentoo

[slayerza]

Hi guys,
I've been wanting to try Gentoo for a long time but never really had the time. Now that I do have some time will it be better to experiment on some older (P4 Celeron 3G 512MB RAM) hardware first or kill my daily use system and go for it?

My thinking is that if I kill the daily use machine I can still get in the internet for some help via a Windoze notebook, but it will cause me some troubles seeing as this will be a first. OTOH if I install it on the older hardware will it be a true representation of the power / speed of this distro?

Slayer

 

[SuperAntMD]

Why not dual boot and see for yourself then you can always wipe the partition you like least once Gentoo is set up and running?

 

[phiber]

One thing i learnt with gentoo, it can take a ****ty machine and make it perform like it shouldn't!! If you know the true speed of your P4 and wanna be amazed you will be by installing it there.

Dual boot is a good option, depends if you want to use gentoo as your only OS or not!

 

[FacELesS.]

I personally would first install it on the p4, then atleast you have your current machine for internet which you will need. The first time gentoo install results in a bit of reading I must say.

 

[Giarc86]

How do i get Gentoo to boot into Gnome or Xfce?
I was just messing around trying it out in virtualbox, but it boots to command line.
Not a big issue as I'm just playing around with it

Thanks

 

[slayerza]

Thanks for the info, I suppose I'll rather gain some experience on the P4 first as it is only gathering dust and keep my main machine running until I decide to move over.

 

[MyWorld]

How do i get Gentoo to boot into Gnome or Xfce?
I was just messing around trying it out in virtualbox, but it boots to command line.
Not a big issue as I'm just playing around with it

Gentoo in a VM? That is a mayor waste of time seeing the compilation of everything takes quite some time.

If you are talking about the LiveCD, the it means that your display properties are not recognised.
Look in /var/log/Xorg.0.log to see what the problem could be.

If it is an installation:
echo gnome-session > .xinitrc
startx

After that read the documentation to get gdm loaded at boot.

 

[w1z4rd]

Dont get the minimal install CD unless you have a LOT of time and bandwidth.

 

[Giarc86]

It says failed to start the x server lol
I'm hopeless with major command line

It is an installation, the live cd shows graphic, but after install it's command line.

 

[MyWorld]

If you are logged in, startx and after it fails give me the output of this file:

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log

 

[Giarc86]

Theres alot of output but the last few lines:

(EE) open /dev/fb0: No such file or directory
(EE) No devices detected.

Fatal server error:
no screens found

 

[MyWorld]

Your device drivers are not installed, or configured.

What gfx card do you have?

Also, post the following file here:
/etc/X11/xorg.conf