Distro switch
Started: Monday, July 12, 2004 19:31
Finished: Monday, July 12, 2004 20:10
Sunday, I spent the bulk of the afternoon installing Gentoo on Argo. By 22:00, I had completed a stage 1 install, had X running in a way superficially looked altogether too identical to my old setup (due to the fact /home had remained untouched), and left mozilla compiling. Though far from complete, this would at least leave me a minimal setup from which I could at least do something resembling "work" the next day, so I decided to call it good.
As of a few minutes ago, I got postgresql working. It was a little bit trickier, due to the fact that a simple "emerge postgresql" didn't quite do everything that was needed in order to get it into a run-able state, and I couldn't find any official gentoo documentation on what it wanted. When I went googling, I did find a page on another random site that listed the magical ebuild incantations required (slightly erroniously, but close enough for me to figure it out from there).
After that, getting it to take my dump was a fairly simple matter, and a cursory examination of my tables looked good. Installing the perl dbi libs was a snap, so here I am, once again typing away...
I still do not have apache installed at all, nor do I have exim configured (I did compile it though). I'll get to those soon enough.
Initial impressions: I absolutely love the fact that the install cd boots you directly into a root prompt, and from there, you can pretty much do the install in whatever manner you want. There is nothing that even resembles annoying "wizards". It's all command line. Yeah, baby.
Their step by step install and configuration guides (where provided) are very concise and well written. This made the install process very easy (most of my time was spent waiting for things to compile). Because of this, despite it being command-line driven, I'm almost tempted to say it's easy enough that "Any idiot could do it", provided they are able to follow simple, step by step instructions.
(I did use rygel with a web browser open to the install guide on a second monitor, which probably made it all the more convenient in my case.)
The documentation that exists for gentoo is excellent. The areas where documentation does not exist (so far, postgres and exim), for someone not quite familiar with the gentoo way of doing things, become a game of guess and google.
Their init scripts are somewhat confounding, due to the fact that they run from a shell all their own (#!/sbin/runscript, and no, it's not a script, but an elf binary) which apparently also provides environment variables, the origins of which I still haven't quite determined. It's a novel way of doing things. I suspect I might like it once I figure it out a little bit more.
Most favorite gentoo-ism so far: USE flags. Absolutely heavenly.
In other news, this morning I went to the Driver's License office, where I waited in a horrendously long line to update my address (yeah, I never bothered to do it, even though that was over a year and a half ago), and more importantly, my votor registration. As of today, I am now a member of the Democratic Party. Though it's far from perfect, I'd like to think that maybe if more people like me joined (and vote for Mike Miles in the Senate, plug plug), it might get a little better.
I was dismayed to find that the technological efficiency of the Colorado Driver's License program has been downgraded since a couple years ago. Back then, when I went to renew my license, they took my picture, did a little processing, and handed me a freshly printed license after a few short minutes. Now, they just give everybody a crappy little piece of paper to serve as a temporary license, and tell you that your real license will arrive in the mail in a few weeks. Lame.
Well, I'm dying to spend a little time outside before dark, so assuming this rambling syncs up without needing more babysitting, I shall be breathing in a little fresh air promptly.
by Zan Lynx (2004-07-13 08:40)
Welcome to the world of Gentoo goodness, Bitscape!