This long awaited version of Gentoo Linux has finally come and, after a slow download, I was able to install it and test it.
Yes, a slow download: as I wrote few days ago this release was expected for the 15th of November and the schedule was respected, mirror servers were probably overloaded and not all of them were providing 2004.3 disk images yesterday. I downloaded a universal install LiveCD for PPC, the G4 optmized one. The test machine is an Apple PowerMac G4 QuickSilver, 867 Mhz, nVidia Geforce II graphics, 640 MB RAM.

Installing

Installing Gentoo is easy for someone, difficult for someone else. My opinion is that if you follow to the word the instructions of the handbook you find on the LiveCD the installation will be succesfull and can be considered "easy". I say "easy" because for an expert Linux user it is easy to follow the steps, understend them and tweak the installation to customize it where needed/wanted; for the beginner it will be easy to follow those steps too, but will probably be a mere paste of what's on the well-done handbook. Well, it is to mention that all the installaton process could be a good start point for the novice who is willing to understand some common mechanisms and commands of Linux distributions.

What you get with this LiveCD is a full working environment: do not expect a graphic environment, it is just not there. A pure and complete shell environment that you can test and then use to install the distribution on your hdd. X-enabled LiveCD will come, but were not a priority.

I used the LiveCD for the installation process, these were the steps:
- I opened the html-formatted handbook using links :)
- Configured the network with net-setup, this is just temporary configuration
- Partitioned my disk and formatted (mac-fdisk and parted included)
- Base install files: installed stage 3 files from the LiveCD
- Install portage system
- Made /etc/make.conf modifications
- Chose a few USE flags I want/need
- Configured and compiled a kernel (2.6.7-gentoo-r14 one)
- Configured fstab, network configurations and other essential things
- Set root password and created an everyday account
- Installed the yaboot loader
- Rebooted

Some notes, maybe interesting, maybe not.

First install tentative: I chose XFS for my boot partition. That resulted in an unbootable system. Yaboot failed to boot with a "read error" output. I re-installed everything using ext3 and that was the solution.

There is something wrong with yabootconfig: running it as suggested in the handbook did not work for me (running it chrooted on the target root partition). I had to exit the chroot and run it as yabootconfig --chroot /mnt/<target> to get a working bootloader. A not working bootloader could be very stressing for beginners.

Booting the LiveCD appending video=ofonly was the only way for me to boot it. I am not surprised at all as this nVidia graphic card is still the most problematic component of the whole machine.
The handbook contains good alternative steps for Old World Apple machines and for Genesi's Pegasos boards.

The first boot

The first boot presented me with a bad problem: as soon as I typed my username at the login prompt and pressed return I got a PAM authentication failure. Was not able to get the password: prompt neither. Tried to understand what was wrong rebooting with the LiveCD. To solve this, the only way was to add the pam keyword to the USE flag in /etc/make.conf and then doing an emerge shadow.
Rebooted, logged, ready to go.

I have never used Gentoo that much before, so first step was to get familiar with the emerge build system: man emerge is absolutely essential. You will learn a good base of what can be done using emerge and understand what masked packages are, how to use the --pretend (essential) option, how to search for packages. Anyway, after this read, I am ready to go to sleep: it is time to launch an overnight emerge gnome.

In the morning I just found a working Gnome desktop: few minutes to configure the X.org server using xorgconfig and I get an usable desktop. Mozilla and other important applications are there. Few things are not there and I install those via emerge.

Clearly compiling the whole Gnome on a slow machine can be just crazy. The counterpart is that you get it optimized.

Optimize it or not

Well, I will not enter this debate: decide by your personal benchmarks. As a desktop user I am not the kind of person that stays in front of the computer with a chronometer to see how many seconds I save doing things. The optimization debate is more interesting as seen on the developer's perspective. And it get fairly complex debate I will not adventure myself into.
If you have time to test and compile with Gentoo just test it and decide if it works well for you. In the next days I will use it for some scientific applications I tested on other systems before: it seems to me this could be a good test bench.


Few hours of use let me say that this is a nice distribution, it works quite well on this ppc box and i am really curious to see it at work on an Old World machine or a Pegasos board: in the distribution changelog (we gave a look to it in this article) it is mentioned that particular car was given to Old World Apple machines and Pegasos (as Genesi is one of the Gentoo sponsor since few days). G5 support for liquid cooling thermal system is included in the LiveCD kernel (you can use genkernel to get the same generic kernel the LiveCD sports).

Some screenshots, more to come tomorrow.