Anyone know of a place to download Gentoo Linux?

[hans030390]

I've tried downloading the latest Gentoo Linux, and I find it always stops the download at around 300mb. I've tried mutliple mirrors too. Does anyone know of a good place to download the iso? Preferably the live cd OR a full installation cd (for a computer that has no internet yet)...

 

[drag]

Use Bittorrent. It's what it was originally designed for. (actually ya it was created for distributing Linux cdroms, among other things)

http://torrents.gentoo.org/

For a machine that doesn't have internet access it's a bit pointless to run Gentoo isn't it, though? You can't download applications or anything using Portage.

Of course if they plan on getting a cable internet line or DSL or something fairly soon then that would be fine, I suppose.

Otherwise you can do things like buy a entire Debian cdrom/dvd set with all the software they support. You can get it in either cdrom form (14 cdroms) or in DVD form (2 dvds for binaries, 3 for source), I beleive. I don't think anybody makes a full cdrom set for Gentoo.

 

[hans030390]

Yeah, I forgot about the torrent. I tried it, and it was really slow, so I tried a direct download...then forgot about the torrent.

I'm planning on getting wireless internet on it, have the guides and all that. I wouldn't be installing Gentoo on a machine without an internet connection.

 

[drag]

Torrents generally start off slow then it goes quick.

Also for good speed you need to setup port forwarding through your firewall.

 

[hans030390]

Yeah, I think it was going slow because we had connection problems earlier, but they seemed to go away. I'm getting great speeds now.

Althought it really as nothing to do with this thread, is there a guide to setup port forwarding?

 

[Nothinman]

Althought it really as nothing to do with this thread, is there a guide to setup port forwarding?

It's gonna be different for each router.

 

[Kibbo86]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Althought it really as nothing to do with this thread, is there a guide to setup port forwarding?

It's gonna be different for each router.

Most routers designed for home networking have pretty simple HTML interfaces. Poke around in yours.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

PortForward.com might help you setup port forwarding for your specific router.

 

[nweaver]

got Ubuntu?

more out of box functionality, unless you are a power linux user who knows exactly what you want/need (there is a very small corner case for using gentoo...besides watching pretty text scroll up your terminal all day instead of working on your machine)

 

[hans030390]

I have Ubuntu, but I couldnt figure out how to install any additional software, and I found portage really nice to use.

I downloaded the Gentoo Live CD, but my old computer can't handle it, and it always freezes during the install. Is there a download for Gentoo linux that is just an install cd, and not too difficult to use? Remember, I have no internet connection, so it'd have to come with stuff.

 

[nweaver]

ubuntu comes with lots of software (base gentoo install doesn't, you need internet)

ubuntu has Synaptic (GUI for the apt program)

Time to install a program on an old system is going to be hugely different. Couple minutes for ubuntu, couple hours/days for Gentoo (Open Office took my P3 500 laptop 3 days)

apt smacks portage like the redheaded stepchild it is

 

[imported_shader]

i would just like to point out here that the reason many people choose to use gentoo is because of portage (which i agree is great, and imo better than other distribution systems). but it comes at the signifigant cost of having to compile the files on your computer (it downloads the source & makefiles and then compiles), whereas other package management systems just download precompiled binary files. this is why you would have noticed a huge difference in "install" time with apt vs portage.

 

[Nothinman]

(which i agree is great, and imo better than other distribution systems)

Yea, who cares if something breaks because 'emerge -e' doesn't do any dependency checking?

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: shader
i would just like to point out here that the reason many people choose to use gentoo is because of portage (which i agree is great, and imo better than other distribution systems). but it comes at the signifigant cost of having to compile the files on your computer (it downloads the source & makefiles and then compiles), whereas other package management systems just download precompiled binary files. this is why you would have noticed a huge difference in "install" time with apt vs portage.

I have done multiple stage1 installs (including one on a P2 400 w/256 MB ram) so I am very familar with Gentoo. The weakenss isn't package management, it works well 80% of the time (I had a few times when i had to hack around to get it to update). The difference is that the same package lists (pretty much) exist in contrib and non-free trees of debian (universe and multivers for Ubuntu) but the machine is usable in a much shorter period of times. The .001% speed increase from the "tweaks" just isn't worth the time wasted. I run linux to get work done, I don't run gentoo because I need my computer to get work done