Lone Coder: VirtualBox on Vista with a Gentoo Guest

[waltdnes-SLHPyeZ9y/tg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org]

On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 08:42:35AM -0400, Ken Burtch wrote

> 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.

  Huh ???  It took me a few days the first time, way back when, in the
days of stage 1 installs (the hard way), on a 400 mhz PII, whilst asking
questions, and waiting for replies on the Gentoo mailing list.  With
stage 3 installs being the preferred method, no way does it take a week.
I don't understand what is so hard about it.  And why were you looking
up commands on Google when the Gentoo installation docs walk you through
the process?

  Gentoo (actually the current version of xorg-server) does *NOT*
require an xorg.conf.  It's only required for weird setups.  And the
dependancy resolving features of portage allow you to emerge any GUI app
(mozilla-firefox, gimp, gnumeric, etc) on a console-only machine, and
portage will build a functional X with TWM.  You can add
GNOME/KDE/whatever later.  I prefer Blackbox, because I don't run
desktops, I run applications.

  As for the Java crud... write once and run anywhere... that Java
1.2.3.4.5 is installed.  Not 1.2.3.4.4 or 1.2.3.4.6 but it absolutely
*MUST* be 1.2.3.4.5.  I do not have Java on my machine.  Ditto for
OpenOffice and GNOME and KDE.  If you're a Java developer, I can see
Java being necessary for you, but for end-users, forget it.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes-SLHPyeZ9y/tg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org>
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