Lone Coder: VirtualBox on Vista with a Gentoo Guest

[Ken Burtch]

On Sat, 2009-10-17 at 20:55 -0400, Rajinder Yadav wrote:
> Ken Burtch wrote:
> > My latest Lone Coder column, very long and technical:
> > 
> > "Regardless if you think Gentoo is genius or madness, a manual install
> > represents the ultimate challenge to boot Linux on VirtualBox.
> > 
> > This document assumes you have a basic understanding of setting up a
> > Linux computer, such as how to build a kernel and how to format a disk
> > partition. "Host" refers to the operating system running VirtualBox, in
> > this case, Windows Vista. "Guest" refers to the operating system running
> > within VirtualBox, in this case, Gentoo Linux. I use "gentoo #" as a
> > root Gentoo prompt but your actual prompt may be a different one...."
> > 
> > http://www.pegasoft.ca/coder/coder_october_2009.html
> > 
> 
> Hi Ken,
> 
> this is a well written article, excellent work.
> 
> Question, about when you say "manual install represents the ultimate challenge 
> to boot Linux on VirtualBox."Is it really that challenging?

As I wrote at the end of the article, it took an hour to install Fedora
and OpenSolaris.  And it took a week to install Gentoo, looking up the
right commands and settings through Google,  So, on that basis, the
Gentoo install was 35 times longer and more complicated, and 35 times
the cost.

> I've used VMWare and installed many distro on my WinXP, with custom partition, 
> the process was relative effortless and quick.
> 
> So is it Gentoo that's involved to install or does VirtualBox makes it so, or do 
> you just like to command line it like a guru =) ... I compared the steps to 
> install Ubuntu and Debain, and I never had to drop into the shell to type stuff 
> to install Linux, ever, not even with Slackware.

Because of its nature, Gentoo has no installer or setup program.
There's no alternative except to use the shell and to use commands like
"fdisk" that I haven't otherwise needed to use in years.

Ken B.

-- 
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Ken O. Burtch                                    Phone/Fax: 905-562-0848
  "Linux Shell Scripting with Bash"              Email: ken-8VyUGRzHQ8IsA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org
  "Perl Phrasebook"              Blog: http://www.pegasoft.ca/coder.html
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