Do I really need isos to install?

**nentuaby** · 11-07-2003

Before I start, I'm a low-intermediate user- I'm familiar with Linux as an "end user" but don't know much at all about the nuts and bolts. I'm a hobbyist, though, so the nuts and bolts are exactly what I want to learn. Okay, my question:

I've noticed that in addition to the ISOs available for most distros (and NOT available for Mandrake 9.2... grr) the ftps also have a folder with what looks to be all of the files that would be on the cd. I've also noticed that pretty commonly these are more up to date than the currently available ISOs (again, mandrake 9.2), or the ISO is simply difficult to find (slackware).

What I'm wondering is, how can I use them to either homebrew my own CDs or install the distro without burning any cds? If there's a detailed how-to somebody could point me to, that would be great, but just a general outline would be helpful.

**lordnothing** · 11-07-2003

Gentoo, my friend.. Gentoo...
http://www.gentoo.org
it d/l's and compiles everything on demand.. no bloat, no dependency problems... and you configure almost *everything* by hand (i.e. with a text editor and your knowledge of the manual/software/linux resources on the web)... their forums are a *great* place for support... and you will learn much, *much* more installing and configuring linux with gentoo than with any other distro other than building an LFS system... and you only need 1 ISO for Gentoo's install...

**nentuaby** · 11-07-2003

Checking out Gentoo's site, it does look pretty cool. Thanks.

However, it still doesn't really answer my original Q...

**lordnothing** · 11-07-2003

with gentoo, if you keep your portage tree up to date and run emerge -Uu world often, your system will stay current... all of their ebuilds that aren't masked are the most current *stable* versions of the programs.. and you only need the boot CD.. Gentoo has detailed install instructions on their site.. and all the information you are wondering about is on their site.. otherwise, if you aren't interested in gentoo, to get the answers you want about other distros, you would have to read their install guides..

**linux_rules** · 11-07-2003

I know how you can do it with Lycoris.. gotta find that tutorial....

http://lycoris.org/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=36found it!

It's probably a bit different for every distro though..

and for Suse you can use a boot floppy and then install via ftp :-/

**Gnux** · 11-07-2003

Hi
If I correctly understood ur question u want to install a distro so that u understand the internals of linux.
Slackware (u could install it without any iso) is a good choice not Gentoo (IMHO)
Try Sourcemage :www.sourcemage.org
U download the 187Mo iso and instead of burning it u use:
http://wiki.sourcemage.org/index.php...root+and+rsync
It's really ****in' great and much more interesting than Gentoo I think.
No use and so on u're free to choose simply for each package what u want

(u could do that under slack as well).

**kriss** · 11-07-2003

Those files on the FTP sites are for FTP-installs, like computers with no cdrom but nic's and floppy's or if you don't have a cdburner avalible.. So, no, you don't need a cdrom/iso to install, but it makes everything a whole lot easyer

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