.. title: Gentoo on my laptop
.. slug: gentoo1
.. date: 2002-11-11 21:31:54
.. tags: gentoo, computers

<p>
  I spent the greater portion of the last two weeks installing
  <a href="http://www.gentoo.org/">Gentoo</a> on my laptop.  I wanted
  to get more in depth with Linux internals and administration
  and additionally my laptop is somewhat underpowered and it
  benefitted greatly from doing a source install rather than a 
  binary install.  Things are much snappier under Gentoo than they
  were under Mandrake--which is the Linux distribution I used prior.
</p>
<p>
  I have ALSA, APM, Gnome (with Metacity), Xmms, GDM, vim, pure-ftpd,
  X, gcc 3.2, pcmcia with a wireless ethernet card (SMC 2632) and 
  a series of other things all installed and working happily with 
  everything else.  
</p>
<p>
  The Gentoo forums are great for help as is the mailing list.  I found
  I was able to fix all my problems without too much looking around.
</p>
<p>
  At some point I may post the various configurations involved in getting
  ALSA and the wireless pcmcia stuff working--that was probably the
  hardest part and required the most tinkering.  The rest was cake.
</p>