Gentoo Linux

I recently installed Gentoo Linux on my new computer in August 2004. I have used Linux since June 2003, and this is the first time I have tried a new distro since I started with Slackware. I did a stage 1 install using an existing Slackware installation since the LiveCD didn't boot, and my system was running in a couple days. However, my system is an Athlon XP 2600+, an ASUS A7N8X-X Nforce2 mobo, 512MB of DDR333 RAM, a 120GB WD hard disk, and a NVIDIA GeForce FX-5200 128MB DDR2 graphics card. I have heard stories that it could take up to a month on stuff like Pentium Pro's. The neat thing about Gentoo is that it allows compiler optimization, so I compiled everything for the Athlon XP processor (meaning that the binaries on my system will ONLY work with Athlon XP) and with O3 optimization, where the binaries are larger but faster (since I do have a 120GB hard drive). The installation process is also very simple, there is a guide on the Gentoo site that took me through all the steps.

Once my system was installed, I had to install software, since Gentoo only installs the necessary system components, so that I can choose exactly what software I want. Installing software is very easy, though, just type emerge mozilla-firefox to get firefox, and firefox source and all the dependencies (if there are any that are not installed already) will be compiled and installed. Another great thing about Gentoo's software system is that it is updated very often. You can always get the latest software on your system by typing emerge sync which will update the list of possible downloadable packages, and then emerge -u world to update all the software on your system for which there are newer packages. In my experience, this works very well, updates go smoothly, and it doesn't break my system as massive updates on other distro's may (which is why I haven't updated my Slackware server to 10.1). This way, you will always be able to have the latest version of Gentoo, no major reinstallation or upgrading to new versions is necessary; it is all incremental.

However, I would definitely not recommend gentoo for a server install, since the updating is still too unstable, and has the risk of breaking your system. I still use Slackware for my main server, since that is designed for stability. Gentoo also takes up a lot of disk space if you want to install a lot of software and have it updated often. I would recommend at least 10 or 15GB.