Gentoo

[nopycckn]

I'm using Gentoo now. I haven't had any problems, really, except earlier it acted sort of funny. I was in the process of installing Java, and it was like I lost my connection, but still had it. Then everything was opening very slowly and not very responsive for a while. Then it went away. I'm getting the same errors showing up in my log file as I did when I used Fedora, but not as many. For some reason ACPI doesn't like my computer. I posted a question about it in Misc. It was pretty easy, but took me quite a while, then I installed Gnome, not gnome-lite or a lighter desktop and it took from morning till afternoon to get everything finished. This isn't really a thread asking for help, I'm just mentioning what's happened. My volume control in the top right is also giving me messages. No volume control GStreamer plugins and/or devices found. I'm having little troubles here and there, but it's basically fine.

[Rubberman]

The thing with Gentoo is that usually you can resolve these issues over time. You just keep emerging bits and pieces until they seem to fall into place. Since you are getting gstreamer-related error messages, you should be able to install the plugins and codecs simply enough. You should find and install the Gentoo equivalent to the following packages for gstreamer:

1. gstreamer-plugins-base
2. gstreamer-plugins-good
3. gstreamer-plugins-bad
4. gstreamer-plugins-ugly
5. gstreamer-tools

You might also want to re-emerge gstreamer and gstreamer-tools.

Finally, install ffmpeg and related stuff:

1. ffmpeg
2. ffmpeg-libpostproc
3. gstreamer-ffmpeg

That should pretty much deal with all the audio cruft you need, though you probably want to verify the audio driver(s) you installed with the system. Find the documentation and figure out what the exact chip set is that it uses.

[gruven]

Since you installed Gnome and are having problems with sound, you will want to make sure and enable the "pulseaudio" and "gstreamer" use flags. Also, when you enable those use flags, you may still have to emerge gst-plugins-pulse.

Some other common use flags related to gnome are:

USE="avahi gnome gtk nautilus totem libnotify startup-notification cairo guile glitz pulseaudio gstreamer

You don't have to use any of those if you don't want to, but it will make for a nicer experience.

If you want ffmpeg related things, just enable the ffmpeg use flag.

That is the great thing about gentoo. You can enable things you want, and disable things you don't want by simply editing the use flags.

[nopycckn]

This is helpful, but I'm going to wait a while on Gentoo. I did reinstall it once last night, with Xfce instead of Gnome, but it will take a while to learn everything about it, plus I'm kind of in the middle of reading and learning about some other stuff. It's just a little time-consuming right now. I did try looking it up, but couldn't really find anything on it. I didn't change the USE variable, but did emerge gstreamer. I wasn't too worried about it, because I usually don't use the speakers anyways. I'm reading about C/C++ now though, and don't feel like spending too much time right now on it ... so I switched back to Ubuntu for the time being.

[Jonathan183]

I found the key thing for me was finding the right USE flag combination so started this thread ... don't use gnome so can't really help but there are some example USE flag combinations that work for others.

If you have not reviewed it ... then it maybe worth a quick look next time you install Gentoo ...

[Rubberman]

I found the key thing for me was finding the right USE flag combination so started this thread ... don't use gnome so can't really help but there are some example USE flag combinations that work for others.

If you have not reviewed it ... then it maybe worth a quick look next time you install Gentoo ...

I used to run a Gentoo system - my first Linux installation, and indeed the USE parameters were the hardest to get "right". Most of the emerge packages have their own appropriate set of USE settings, but having an incorrect base set can be a real PITA. I'm not running Gentoo on anything now, but I am considering a trial installation of the latest offering on my dual quad-core workstation. I have a removable system drive and spare disc/carrier for just such experimentation. I can do that and not affect my CentOS production system at all.

[nopycckn]

emerge ubuntu

[jmadero]

I've never had the time or patience for Gentoo It seems quite handy to have but...it is time consuming from what I've seen. I started with Fedora, moved to a few others like Suse, have been a buntu (all of them basically) for quite awhile now just because it's pretty easy, I've been able to remove a lot of the bloated stuff in it and it is functional for work, school and play

[nopycckn]

I like Fedora a lot, but haven't tried OpenSuSE yet. I was almost done downloading it to burn it, and changed my mind. I went through a lot of the FreeBSD installation, too, but decided to stick with Linux. I thought the FreeBSD livefs.iso was not the Live CD installation - but wasn't sure. I burned it. I went to install it, it said I didn't have all kinds of things. I was thinking about trying PCBSD or something in the future, but I like Linux a lot - and right now it doesn't seem like a worthwhile thing for me to do. Gentoo takes so long, and when I've tinkered with it too much, I've seemed to run into little problems. I know I could install it properly now, but I would rather try maybe Arch for the time being, OpenSuSE seems good. BLAG seems good. All the distributions I've paid attention to seem to be good. I read some of the Slackware documentation years ago, but didn't really know much about what I was doing.

[nopycckn]

The first distribution I installed successfully and got any use out of was Ubuntu using Wubi, because I still had Windows XP installed and was using it for some things. Then I burnt it and installed it fully. Then I installed Fedora. Then Gentoo. Got Gentoo working, but had little problems. Fixed a few. I kept tinkering with things, to see. Just so time-consuming, and I'm in the middle of learning about things right now. Even Arch I don't want to try yet. I'm learning much more about C, now.