Once again I'm auditioning Gentoo Linux as my primary desktop. These are my notes, musings, etc.
I'm about to throw the switch and start using Gentoo as my daily driver on my Dell XPS 720 at work. I've been using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (hard disk transferred from the old GX280). Today I booted into Gentoo shortly after I arrived and only booted back into Hardy a few minutes before I left. Everything worked as expected, including email and printing.
I'll leave Gentoo running when I leave next Tuesday so that in case there's a problem that shows up under remote access it will only be a couple of days until I'm back in the office to take care of it. In fact, I'll leave the default boot option set to Ubuntu Hardy so I can theoretically reboot remotely into a known working environment.
2.6.31-gentoo-r10
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda7 16G 5.6G 9.4G 38% /
/dev/sda6 16G 6.8G 8.3G 46% /home/pann/working
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/home/pann/working/swapfile file 1048568 0 -1
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160000000000 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2989 24009111 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 2990 5543 20515005 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 5544 7535 16000740 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 7536 19452 95723302+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 7536 9527 16000708+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 9528 11616 16777216+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 11616 13704 16774473 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 15029 16037 8104761 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 16038 17022 7911981 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 17023 19452 19518943+ 83 Linuxsda8 is Debian lenny. sda9 is Ubuntu karmic (LXDE?). sda10 is currently unused.
OK, I've been using Gentoo as my "daily driver" desktop for several days. I have some disk space issues to work out (see my GX280 blog), but other than that it seems to be a done deal.
I've just burned a Knoppix CD with xcdroast. I have yet to burn a DVD, although I can play them with vlc. mutt is working and I can view and print my cycling club newsletters with acroread. I haven't yet checked on Firefox display of PDF files. Yep, sure enough, PDF files are displayed in Acrobat Reader when the URL is clicked in Firefox.
For what it's worth I still have the occasional "lock up" problem with the IdeaPad, even under Gentoo. Guess it's not a Karmic Koala problem but something with my wireless network. Perhaps I need to see if there's a newer version of DD-WRT available for my wireless routers. Oh, wait, it never happens with my Crunchbang jaunty instatllation. So it must be something with newer OpenSSH clients.
Interestingly enough I just had the "lock up" problem. No response to the keyboard in the terminal, and no response to a mouse click in jpilot. Then I opened another ssh session in another terminal, and everything started working. I did a quick google search and without much analysis added these lines to my /etc/ssh/ssh_config file (which showed common default values, all commented out):
ServerAliveInterval 60
ServerAliveCountMax 5Now isn't this interesting:
pann@ideapad:~/public_html/blog$ Timeout, server not responding.(and the session was killed).
I seem to have cleared up the X font issues (although I'm not sure just how). The openssh client throws a warning about X forwarding, but it is, in fact, working -- I can have the IdeaPad instance of jpilot on my Gentoo desktop.
The Firefox/Java situation is a little odd. If I use Sun's web browser java tester, java throws this error:
java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException: String index out of range: 8
at java.lang.String.substring(String.java:1946)
at testvm2.Main.init(Main.java:92)
at sun.applet.AppletPanel.run(AppletPanel.java:436)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:636)However, if I use the similar test at javatester.org, I'm told my Java plugin is working fine. Guess I'll just have to see how things go in the "real world."
The final hurdle to have a fully functional basic Gentoo desktop is sound. I'll do some reading on the web. I'm guessing that I'll have to add at least the alsa USE flag. Who knows how many packages I'll have to rebuild after doing that.
Sound was a piece of cake. Added the alsa USE flag, rebuilt what came naturally, and Bob's your uncle!
One thing is very clear after getting this far: USE flags are incredibly important. I've read a lot about them on the web, but still haven't stumbled upon a cogent explanation that tells me everything I want to know. And I'm still sufficiently in the dark that formulating sensible google queries is often beyond me.
The basic installation went well. I know I did most of it chroot'ed. I think I was chroot'ed from a System Rescue CD. Subsequent to that initial installation I've chroot'ed from my current daily driver desktop, CrunchBang 9.04, when I haven't wanted to reboot.
Currently the Gentoo installation is far enough along that I can use it. I still have font issues under X, and there is a problem with X forwarding and the ssh client. I need to get sound working and install enough Java to make Firefox fully functional. At that point I can start adding applications to make Gentoo my daily driver desktop.