Comment Gentoo is not a bad choice (Score 1) 239
I guess it takes different philosophies. But Gentoo is not unfriendly as far as how to get it running is concerned. In my experience of working with various distros Gentoo has been very usefully documented, organized, and communicative. In general Fedora and Ubuntu are topnotch Windows alternatives. If you want your system to work out of the box with minimal intervention than YDL and Ubuntu are amazing. If, however you want to learn and use Unix you cannot go too wrong with Gentoo or even Debian.
Back in '94 when the idea of user friendly was Sun's patch system I turned to FreeBSD's port system. The port system brought me face-to-face with the compiler and kernel. I never stopped learning. And it was not more difficult than resolving a missing dependency under RedHat, and it was leaps and bounds ahead of Slackware. After the hubbub of Linux started growing I moved to Redhat and Debian full time. I have always been dissatisfied with both distros as far as being able to communicate with me and offering options to resolve issues. In 2001 I moved to Gentoo and it was a marriage of love. Whenever anything goes wrong with a Gentoo ebuild the solution usually is within my grasp to fix. Compile times of 12 hours (yes only 12 hours!) is a small price to pay for the initial install.
With the decline in the quality or existence of man pages, Gentoo has the best documentation I have come across. I even read sometimes about other people using Gentoo documentation to help them when they are using other distros. While that's not amazing, it is, at least, a sign of respect.
Now, install Gentoo on the PS3??? Are you crazy, out of your mind? I think absolutely not. If you are installing Linux on the PS3 you are doing it for 3 reasons:
1) You can, so why not?
2) You want to develop something, like games (not until Sony releases more patches and tools); like finding twinned primes (sure, but you still don't have a paddle)
3) You are an acne-scarred chess club runt who wants to see what they can do, you have the computer, you have the ability, let's get grokkin'.
Now, the crazies out there who are using their PS3 as a desktop replacement should go back and huddle in their voyeuristic holes and play with their Mindstorm controlled webcams. If you want to learn Linux, you do not want something that will do everything for you and pat you on the back congratulating you on your amazing clairvoyance. You should be bogged down doing menial things such as fdisk, setting up your timezone by using the file system, and reading about how X is configured (oh my).
As for the OP, he is a fanboy. Gentoo will not make your PII perform like an modern processor. The PS3 is SLOW to use, to install, and to boot between OSes. It's a hobbyist's project and anyone else will have their time better served by using Knoppix on their current computer system.
---
Gentoo FanMan
Back in '94 when the idea of user friendly was Sun's patch system I turned to FreeBSD's port system. The port system brought me face-to-face with the compiler and kernel. I never stopped learning. And it was not more difficult than resolving a missing dependency under RedHat, and it was leaps and bounds ahead of Slackware. After the hubbub of Linux started growing I moved to Redhat and Debian full time. I have always been dissatisfied with both distros as far as being able to communicate with me and offering options to resolve issues. In 2001 I moved to Gentoo and it was a marriage of love. Whenever anything goes wrong with a Gentoo ebuild the solution usually is within my grasp to fix. Compile times of 12 hours (yes only 12 hours!) is a small price to pay for the initial install.
With the decline in the quality or existence of man pages, Gentoo has the best documentation I have come across. I even read sometimes about other people using Gentoo documentation to help them when they are using other distros. While that's not amazing, it is, at least, a sign of respect.
Now, install Gentoo on the PS3??? Are you crazy, out of your mind? I think absolutely not. If you are installing Linux on the PS3 you are doing it for 3 reasons:
1) You can, so why not?
2) You want to develop something, like games (not until Sony releases more patches and tools); like finding twinned primes (sure, but you still don't have a paddle)
3) You are an acne-scarred chess club runt who wants to see what they can do, you have the computer, you have the ability, let's get grokkin'.
Now, the crazies out there who are using their PS3 as a desktop replacement should go back and huddle in their voyeuristic holes and play with their Mindstorm controlled webcams. If you want to learn Linux, you do not want something that will do everything for you and pat you on the back congratulating you on your amazing clairvoyance. You should be bogged down doing menial things such as fdisk, setting up your timezone by using the file system, and reading about how X is configured (oh my).
As for the OP, he is a fanboy. Gentoo will not make your PII perform like an modern processor. The PS3 is SLOW to use, to install, and to boot between OSes. It's a hobbyist's project and anyone else will have their time better served by using Knoppix on their current computer system.
---
Gentoo FanMan
