Gentoo… finally.

I’ve been using Linux for almost five years now. And I think I can say that I’ve slowly but surely evolved from a total noob, who really didn’t know much about computers in general, to a reasonably skilled, intermediate user.

Back in 2004, when I first popped in my Mandrake (10-Community) installation discs, Gentoo Linux was probably near it’s peak of popularity. All the ‘cool cats’ seemed to be using this quite revolutionary distribution, which allowed you to (literally) build your own system to your own liking. Much like you would on an LFS system.

Of course this also meant that Gentoo wasn’t for inexperienced users. The installation procedure was long and rather complex, and configuration was only possible through a lot of CLI ‘magic’. Once set up though, a Gentoo system was the fastest around, as everything would be adapted to your specific hardware.
In short; Gentoo was for the elite, and I wasn’t part of them.

At least, that was what I thought about Gentoo, and its users, at that time.

Of course, I was (partially) wrong.
Yes, Gentoo is fast, reasonably complex to install and its users (at least the ones who managed to properly set it up on their own) are likely to be be quite experienced Linux users.
But no, it’s not the one and only Linux distro for the “leet”. And the CLI magic is just another, sometimes more efficient, way of maintaining a system.

Irrespectively, I’ve always wanted to try out Gentoo. Just to see what all the fuss was about. But I never got around to doing it. At first, I didn’t feel experienced enough to give it a shot. And later on, I was satisfied with Arch Linux, so I saw no need for change. Consequently, trying out Gentoo has been on my bucket list for quite some time.

Until about a month ago…

Yes, I finally did it.
Since my desktop wasn’t really used for anything serious, I wiped the Ubuntu install that was temporarily on there and installed Gentoo. Actually, I installed and re-installed it four times, just to make sure I did everything right.

Installation
If you’re somewhat familiar with the basic steps of an install procedure, and know a little bit what the important building bricks of an operating system are, then installing Gentoo really isn’t all that difficult. If you follow the handbook’s instructions (read it through before starting) it should be very feasible. Its elaborate, a bit time consuming, but very doable.

It’s also pretty important to know your hardware, ao. because you’ll be compiling your own kernel during the installation.*

Is it fast?
Obviously, installing software isn’t. Since Portage compiles everything with your own MAKE flags and USE flags. Especially if you like to use a lot of “big” software packages (like a DE, Openoffice, etcetera) it will take quite some time to set it all up.

I kept it all pretty slim, with only a few lightweight apps, X of course, and both dwm and Openbox as window managers. But even I found it a little bit annoying to have to wait until everything was compiled and set up.**

Gentoo with dwm and thunar.

Both the boot time, and the overall feel of the system is fast though. I can’t really express how fast, since I don’t have any benchmarks to compare it with. But all I can say is that it certainly feels just as fast as e.g. Arch Linux does.

Do I like it?
Yes, I do.

I had a few problems/annoyances choosing which USE flags to … erm … use. But once I settled on a set of flags and re-emerged everything. I really liked how everything worked. Choosing your USE flags is a learning process by itself. At first, I wasn’t really sure what to pick, so I picked way too many. But after some time, I managed to weave out some of the useless ones, and I think I got it right after a while.

Portage is a very thorough and efficient, package manager. If you use the ~x86 keyword, you get about the same level of updated packages you’d get on Arch. I also liked that Portage doesn’t overwrite your config files (although running dispatch-conf just for some minor changes in the comments can be a bit ridiculous, it is really secure).

Stability-wise, I haven’t had any problems either. Even with unstable (~x86).

Is it here to stay?
No. Actually it’s already gone

I’ve used it for about a month, but now I’ve wiped it out and installed Debian Lenny over it. Just because I felt like it. But I’m certainly not saying I’ll never use it again in the future. I might put it back up there, or on another machine. It all depends on what I feel like using at that particular time.

In conclusion, if it weren’t for Arch and Debian, I think it’s fair to say I’d be a Gentoo user.

* You can use genkernel to automatically compile a kernel for you. It’s a safe option but it also means your kernel will include a lot of stuff you don’t really need (drivers etcetera).
** You can use precompiled binaries in Gentoo as well. So you don’t have to wait, if you really don’t want to. But I thought I’d go for “the real thing”.

[ReView] MSI PR200 – Crystal Edition.

I’ve been playing around with this laptop for about two weeks now. So as promised, I’ll do my best to cook up some kind of review.

Well, calling it a review might be overstating the case here. Since I don’t really have the required know-how to do any serious benchmarking with it.
Also, I’ve always loved the look and concept of MSI’s small 12.1” notebooks ever since the s2xx series. And if ever I was to buy a new laptop, it was most likely going to be one of these. So I might not always be all that objective.
And finally, I don’t really have a lot of “laptop-experience”. The only other notebooks I can compare it with, are my very old Dell Inspiron 4000, my mother’s Dell Latitude 510 and my father’s HP Compaq NX7000.

So let’s call it an elaborate “user’s opinion” instead .

If you are looking for a more technical and objective review, I’ve added a few links to some reviews on more reputable websites at the bottom of this post.