Planned on taking a break, but this was just too important to pass up. Apologies again for being so close to the morning apertif; work constraints made posting earlier unavoidable. If you are new to Open Source, then some sources of information to bring you up to speed are here, here, here, here, and here. Also available are two tries to make sense of the importance of Open Source software in our lives I essayed are here and here.
Up until now, I've been restricted in my limited knowledge and technical abilities to looking at the easy installations of Open Source operating systems, ones that rely on a graphical interface to configure the system from start to finish; this is no departure in that respect, but the subject of today's diary is a significant one in the world of Open Source software and operating systems in that the previously most difficult to install operating system has come out with a liveCD.
One that allows you to 'try before you buy', running the system on your computer before you decide whether or not you want to install it; if you choose to do so, a nifty installer guides you through the process, directing you to input the pertinent information at each stage; if you don't like what you see, then you simply remove the liveCD from your CD drive bay during restart, and your system is not altered in any way.
Nothing new here (if you have been following along), with the exception that the operating system being discussed today is none other than Gentoo. This system is famed for being the leanest Linux operating system around; you build a system that matches your computer's needs exactly, thus wringing out every last bit of speed of the CPU, though with the downside of long compile times as you set things up, and fairly formidable knowledge of the command line and associated commands as a prerequisite.
With this latest development, that is no longer the case; one of the final three pillars of Linux inaccessibility has fallen, the lone two holdouts being Linux from Scratch and Slackware neither of which features a pretty graphical user interface to set up and install your system. Even setting up a Unix-like system like FreeBSD is easier than those two, though setting that up is not as simple as something like Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS. Very significant compile times are necessary there, though the availability of an ncurses ( a very basic GUI) installer makes things significantly easier.
FreeBSD uses a system of package management based on Ports; Gentoo offers something in many ways similar to the FreeBSD Ports package management in their Portage system--both systems offer installation through precompiled packages (in Gentoo called ebuilds) or compiling the software packages from source code.
PC-BSD and DesktopBSD have come out in recent times with a nice graphical front end for installing FreeBSD with a graphical menu; while PC-BSD is a much more elegant solution, both are significant developments in making FreeBSD available to the wider world. With this creation, Gentoo enters the 21st century of Open Source systems: easy to install and configure for even those with limited technical knowledge, yet featuring a robust undercarriage for those of a more technical bent who want to go nuts in the command line.
Indeed, the liveCD of Gentoo 2007.0 offers not only a liveCD, but both flavors of installer--the traditional command line installer, and a nifty new gtk+ graphical installer. Like all things Gentoo, the graphical installer is lean yet full featured, with the option to use a standard installation, a minimal installation and an advanced installation.
But first a few impressions of the liveCD environment; the system booted up nearly as fast as PuppyLinux or Damn Small Linux, and was quite fast in the GNOME desktop featured by default in the liveCD environment. All of the usual packages needed to get work done were there: the full Open Office Suite, Gaim for instant messaging, Thunderbird for email, software for ripping and burning CD/DVDs, media players, plus just about everything else you would see in a typical GNOME desktop. All of the apps that I tried worked well, but I was kept getting distracted by the shiny desktop icon that read 'Gentoo Graphical Installer (gtk+)', and so, without delay, began the install process.
This was done in vmware-server, using 512M of ram, and one of the first screens asked me for the root password, followed by timezone, country, and the like; I was then asked to choose a partitioning scheme, and this is something that is done brilliantly by the Gentoo installer--I could opt to do it manually, or allow the installer do it for me--and since this is just a test run in a virtual machine, I chose the installer driven option; it was done instantly, with portions for swap, boot, and / directories.
And just because I want the leanest, meanest vmware virtual machine, I chose in the next screen to compile the kernel from scratch, the other option being to install a pre-compiled kernel from the installer disk. Why I did this I have no idea, and I was unable to watch the process as I had to run to work right after I started it. It took longer than 10 minutes, and less than seven hours--though I will be able to say for sure exactly how long it took as I plan to do this on my main machine--Gentoo with a graphical installer! It's just too good not to try out for real.
After the kernel was downloaded and compiled, I was asked to add a user, configure my internet connection, and then add some packages--though this is a nice graphical front end, downloading and compiling the packages from scratch takes a bit of time, and as I write this, the last bits of things to add to the system, the desktop environment (the choices being GNOME, Xfce4, Enlightenment, IceWm, and Fluxbox), the apps, the security items, and the rest.
Oops! Prior to that last step (still in progress), I was asked to choose the cron package, the system logger, and where to install grub, all of which had to be downloaded and compiled, though done in fairly short order.
Will update with links, and further progress as it happens; I may document how it went (appended to a subsequent diary) on a real machine in the next day or two.
Update: Well, since the compile times will be the same, and it's insane to compile something on a virtual machine that I'm just going to toss out eventually(what was I thinking?), have 86'ed the vmware install and am going for the real machine. Way too lazy/tired to add links right now--maybe tomorrow. Burning ISO to disk.