YAY I did it!

[curiousgirl]

I finally managed to install gentoo on my laptop! That took ages.

[Rubberman]

The first time I installed Gentoo on one of my systems it took me about 2 weeks before I got it to where I had a usefully functional system. I don't recommend it to the newbie... However, it is a great distribution for a lot of other reasons. Anyway, congratulations!

[curiousgirl]

Yeah I get the impending feeling the next bit is harder than that bit I just did...
But I'm still uber excited.

[MikeTbob]

In my opinion, Victories have half lives on Gentoo systems. Celebrate now, while you can!lol Wait until you get a blocked package or other portage error....you'll lose hair eventually.

Congrats on getting started though, I know it isn't easy.

[curiousgirl]

I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get openssh, but then I put -X and -gfk (why would I want those for openssh anyway?) and it worked.

And I am pretty chuffed that I can mount my usb drive without problems.

And I like the pretty colours in the terminal. LOL.

The first thing I got from emerge was vim, because the whole time installing I got so confused using nano.

I just think its amazing that two weeks ago I had never done anything like this before in my life. So yeah I think I will celebrate for now.

I'll probably break it when I try and install Xfce. I almost don't want to...

[ryokimball]

Backup? Or just watch your installation so you know how to undo whatever you do.

[Rubberman]

You might want to try nedit for an editor, at least with X running. In my opinion, the best text editor for Unix/Linux systems, bar none. It follows the KISS principal, yet has tons of options for syntax-sensitive editing (shell scripts, Makefiles, C/C++/Java/Python/Whatever language you want). I've been using it since the early-mid 90's on every system I have used - qnx, Windows (cygwin w/ any X server), Linux, Unix (every version known). The only downside is that it requires X-Windows - no console version available. A friend that used to work with my wife at Fermi Lab wrote it (our tax dollars at work). Now it is open source, hosted on SourceForge, and available in just about every package manager for Linux, including Gentoo. Just "emerge nedit".

[Cabhan]

Congratulations! I was using Gentoo for a while and really learned a lot about my computer and Linux by using it. I also gained a lot of proficiency with low-level tasks, and it feels great to accomplish things.

You may eventually leave Gentoo (it has a lot of package installation problems), but I hope you learn as much as you can and are proud of yourself for what you can do .

[Koshie]

Since sometimes I want a Gentoo too, but I hesitate between a Gentoo or a LFS to be installed on my external hard drive, I prefer to keep ArchLinux on my laptop without dual-boot, I don't like dual-boot...

Je l'aurai un jour, je l'aurai !

And congratulation too for you Gentoo, it does not easy.

[hazel]

Congrats, curiousgirl! I felt much the same when I did it. It took me a couple of weeks but that was because I did it in dribs and drabs, working out of Debian. You certainly learn more about Linux installing Gentoo than you do with any other distro (except LFS perhaps).

A word on USE flags: I learned from experience that only universal USE flags should go in make.conf. If you need to use a particular flag to install a particular package, don't modify make.conf, put it in /etc/portage/package.use instead