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Did my Gentoo install on my Laptop last week. It's sweet. Upgraded the the 2.6 kernel with no issues. I am having some issues with Kate. I think it's because I compilied everything with "march=pentium4", which I was warned against. Started recompiling kde-libs and kde-net with "pentium3" before I left for the weekend, so we'll see if everything works right when I get back.

Actually, as I was writing this, I realized I was having the same issue on my other box, which leads me to believe that it's a imap issue, not a kate issue. Bummer, back to the drawing board.

--BiggJ

Gentoo --

Well, I have Gentoo installed on two different desktop machines and running well. The next step is to get it setup on my laptop. Which I am not sure when I am going to be able to do. As it's my main box, I really can't go without it for several days. That being said, I could do a Stage 3 install, which is the base system from binary, but that kind of defeats the purpose. Oh, well, whatever I do, I am going to have to do it soon.

TiVo --

I finally got shell access on my tivo, however, it broke the recording mechanism and caused the box to randomly crash. So, I decided to revert to a backup and leave the hacking for normal computers.

--Josh

Worked on installing Gentoo (all weekend), which meant a lot of hunching in front of monitors, very little sleep and way too much coke (the drink) and cig's.

However, it was well worth it. It's wicked fast!

My Gentoo Forum profile:

http://forums.gentoo.org/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=34571

--J

The good:

I set up fetchmail with dropmail and IMAP to do all my email. It's pretty cool. Fetchmail grabs my mail, dropmail filters it in to the correct folders and then I connect to the IMAP server running on my local box to check mail. It's great. This way, it's really easy to backup my mail filters and emails. The worst part about having to start over with a new install or mail client is having to redo the filters.

The bad:

My main box is a pretty rock'en laptop (P4 2.4GHz w/ 1G RAM). So I have been trying to get APM working so that I can suspend it and have it drop into power saving mode while transporting it. By default, it kills the display when shutting, which isn't bad, but it would be nice if it acted like a laptop is suppose to. I'd like to be able to close it, drop it in the case, take it home, and bang, all works as it should. Without having to go through the 5 minute shutdown and boot up.

So in the process of trying to get APM working, I found that I was going to need to recompile my kernel, which is a new thing to me. I downloaded 2.4.22 (was running 2.4.20-something which comes with RH9). With a lot of help of a co-worker of mine, I recompile it, APM support on and Unsynced TSC support on. Which is apparently what is needed for APM to work correctly. I then modified my grub boot line with "notsc" and rebooted.

On start-up it hung. I found out that I needed to install an i386 version of glibc to boot with notsc because the i686 version requires it.

The Ugly:

So I went and downloaded a i386 glibc rpm, and installed it (had to use the --force flag because it barfed saying that version was already installed). Right after installing it, I started getting seg fault errors. Reboot, hang, reboot single user mode, hang ... ummmm ... reinstall. :(

The Next Day:

I am pretty much back up now, not having to format my home partition was a huge help. But after all that, I am still in the same position, APM don't work.

The Quandary:

Now I am starting to think about maybe switching to a Mac ti-Book. You can pretty much do everything with OS X that you can do in Linux, including the fetchmail->maildrop->IMAP thing I am doing. You can run X and more open source apps. But I know that I would miss being able to hack my GUI, and as much as it can drive me nuts, I love the learning that goes into using Linux. Either way, it isn't like I can snap my fingers and a $2500 ti-Book will drop in my lap. So for now, it's Linux, but come time for a new laptop, it will be a hard choice. As for desktops, my Linux box at home works great, although I am thinking about switching from Redhat to Gentoo, but I am not sure if I am quite ready for that.

More to come...

I ran across this and found this quote that was too cool (to me) not to pass on.

"Contrary to popular myth, you don't have to be a nerd to be a hacker. It does help, however, and many hackers are in fact nerds. Being a social outcast helps you stay concentrated on the really important things, like thinking and hacking."

I found this in a white paper that was written about how to be a "hacker". He defines "hacker" as:

"... a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers ... if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker.

There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get a kick out of breaking into computers and phreaking the phone system. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word `hacker' to describe [them]; this irritates real hackers no end."

Found at: http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html