I just finished setting up my new laptop here at work.  I'm dual booting
Gentoo and XP.  XP has a cute-little-puppy animated search assistant.
Gentoo's installer application is "/bin/bash".  Aside from the piles of
compiling, I'm very happy with it.  The basic design (e.g. the portage
system, startup script management, etc.) seems to be very well
thought-out.

On Tue, 16 Apr 2002, Brian Densmore wrote:

> Well, my latest travails into the bowels of gentoo. Be forewarned, 
> if you do gentoo, you might want to consider using the generic
> installer.
> The 686 precompiled version seems to have several flaws.
> 
> 1. no zoneinfo directory, thus one cannot set the localtime
> 2. They did not compile a c++ compiler, so if you want some odd program
> like
> say KDE or gnome, you must go into something like
> /usr/[idontrecall]/portage/sys-devel and
> modify the gcc-2.95-something.ebuild file and add ",c++" to the
> --enable-languages
> option, and do emerge gcc to rebuild the gcc compiler. [sigh]
> 3. plus other minor bugs, relevant only to users who ignore their
> instructions, and try to do things they don't expect you to. ;')
> 
> On the bright side doing this command: emerge kde-utils
>  - goes out and finds all the dependencies like libpng, libjpeg, qt, X
> and builds them all. Also the basic build builds all the necessary tools
> [except for that little c++ bug],  to install all future programs. Now,
> all one would need to do to make this a truly useful-for-non-techies
> distro is to create compiled application packages. For those users who
> want instant gratification.
> 
> Brian
> 
>  "Three OS's from corporate-kings in their towers of glass, 
> Seven from valley-lords where orchards used to grow, 
> Nine from dotcoms doomed to die, 
> one from the dark lord Gates on his dark throne 
> In the Land of Redmond where the Shadows lie. 
> one OS to rule them all, one OS to find them, 
> one OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them, 
> In the Land of Redmond where the Shadows lie."    john thrum
> 
> 
>