Note: This would be the first of hopefully many Gentoo HOWTOs that I intend to share. For seasoned veterans, this may sound a bit too easy. This is intended for those who are new to Linux and is having a hard time on finding where to get the Gentoo install disk, or which one they should be getting. This would be divided to three parts so as to make the post short and sweet. I myself hate long boring postings.
Introduction: To start of with your Gentoo adventure, the first step that you would need to do is first secure a copy of the Gentoo installation media. There are various ways of installing Gentoo and also different installation media that you could use and all of them are different in some ways. Ready? Lets go Filemon!
System Requirements: Alright, first determine if your computer will be able to support Gentoo. I know, I know, Linux supports almost all systems and it will install even the Pentium 100 that you’ve had for a decade but this is just making sure that we are on the same page. To succeed in Gentoo, you have to know your computer very well, so well that you would want to even go to bed with it, if you are not doing that by now. As with most softwares in the world, it has recommended hardware requirements to make things work as expected in the installation process. Anything less would mean that there could be problems, and you are on your own. Seriously! Anything more, well, the more the merrier!
Here is Gentoo’s system requirements for installing Gentoo on your system. If you intend to use the Gentoo Minimal CD, you would need to have:
- an Intel 486 (or compatible) or later.
- 64MB of memory
- 1.5GB of hard disk space for the system
- and at least 256MB of swap space
You could use the LiveCD to install Gentoo. Yes Filemon, Gentoo has a LiveCD just like the one from Ubuntu. If you intend to use that, make sure your computer meets the following requirements:
- and Intel 686 compatible computer or later
- 256MB of memory
- 1.5GB of hard disk space for the system
- and at least 256MB of swap space
Now Filemon, if the above specs closely fits your current system, you really need to get a new computer. You are decades behind already and needs an upgrade. If you have other reasons why you have a system like that still running, more power to you. Some older computers, even the crusty old 486s could still be given a new life maybe as router or some kind of special function computer. We have enough lead already in our soil.
Alright, this is enough for now Filemon, this will be continued on Act 2.
Since I have decided to get back into Gentoo a couple of months back, even challenging myself to keep it for at least 3 months, things has been running slow but steady. Slow, not because of lack of motivation to keep up with the Gentoo challenge, but because of the lack of time that I can allot to work on it. Work has been getting a lot of my time and a new hobby (or sport) has been keeping me away from computer when I get home. Anyway, just an update. I still have the Gentoo desktop at home which is kind of a vanilla flavored. Now, I have a Gentoo@home setup that will be the basis of long term experiment. Hopefully, in the next couple of days I will posting Gentoo how-tos from installation to the nitty-gritty. I have done this before but took it down with my old website. Maybe if I can find those documentations, I could just update them. The home setup is working great and I still need to add more features to consider it a great desktop setup comparable to other distros. Unlike Ubuntu where after installation, everything just works out of the box, Gentoo installation will need to be tweak to your liking. That’s the fun part!
Thats the update for now.
I am not sure if I have mentioned this but a couple of months back, I finally became a full-pledged US of A citizen. This after years of paperworks, fees and waiting. Do not get me wrong, I am still a proud Filipino by heart but I have also started loving this new country of mine. Last week, great change has come to America, and I am proud to be a part of it. I have tried to avoid posting anything partisan here but I have come to realized, that partisanship is part of what is nice of the American way of life. People make stands on issues, and they stick to it, and makes sure that their voices are heard. And after each election, people forget their party and starts fresh again, each supporting each other no matter how the other person voted. I realized that people here votes on issues that are important to them and not on the person itself. Unlike Philippines, where people votes on people because they are popular even though they are running an election based on nothing at all.
And so I have become a part of history, voting for the first Black American president. But even with this election, the pinoy stereotype of African Americans will always be the same. Too much colonialism in our blood maybe? I am ashamed to admit it but we have ingrained to ourselves that the paler the skin, the better they are. I know a lot pinoys would still prefer to have white neighbors instead of blacks, but does that really matter?
Just my thoughts…
I have not logged on to my website since last week. When I logged on today, I got the message that there’s a new version of WordPress now available. I realized that this would be the perfect situation to test out one of the plugins I have installed on WordPress -WordPress Automatic Upgrade. The plugin works perfectly. It took me step by step what I should do and did everything automatically. All I had to do was click “next” and download the backups of my old WordPress install and database. It even downloaded the latest version of WordPress by itself. I am just not used to all of this coming from Drupal 
.
I also added a new plugin to my WordPress install (yes, this website). If you have PDA or handheld device, I added WordPress PDA & IPhone plugin. You gotta check it out!
One of the nice things about Linux is that you have a lot of choices in making the perfect system just for you. You could make it fast, fancy or both if you want it. You could also have it the easy way (Ubuntu), the “okay” way (openSuse), the hard way (Debian) or the “suicide” way (LFS). I have been through a lot of distros that requires various levels of skills and patience. One of the distros I have tried that really tested my patience was LFS or Linux From Scratch. I have started it but it ended nowhere, and I have said to myself that I would never try it again 
. The other “hard” distro I have tried is Gentoo. My experience with that distro is more or less fun and adventurous but my patience has taken over me. I just got tired with all the stuff I have to do just to make things work or install a software. On the other hand, it was one of the most flexible and fastest distro I have ever had. I just have to give it up when I started working on my current job and have to go back to school. Now that I am fully adjusted with work and school’s out for now for me, I have decided to re-explore Gentoo again.
To make things exciting with my return to Gentoo, I have decided to make this sort of a bet with my friends from #support-ph. Here is the rules of my Gentoo challenge:
- I would NOT install any other OS or distro on my computer after the initial install until the end of the challenge.
- I would have to keep Gentoo running from September 6, 2008 until March 25, 2009, midnight (thats 200 days).
- After my initial install with Gentoo, I would not be able to reformat the system and reinstall Gentoo. If something is wrong, I have to fix it and recover the system.
- If I fail I would have to give the #support-ph people I have contracted (two people so far) this bet each a USB storage device. If I win, they would have to feed me when I come over for vacation in the Philippines (I’ll do anything for a “tapsilog” )
So that is it for my Gentoo comeback. I still have a couple more days before I dive headfirst on this challenge. For now, it is fun and easy times.
Tags: Linux, open-source, Projects
Google released yesterday the beta of their new product which I was totally unaware that they were even working on, Chrome. Chrome is a new browser that is totally very “google” - minimalist and sophisticated both at the same time. It is easy to use and doesn’t clutter the browser with toolbars and icons that are useless anyway. The introduction for the new browser also came in in a very innovative way, a comic strip format, showing the people who worked on the browser the features and stuff that will be on the product. You have to check the whole comics out to see what you can expect on the new browser. After browsing and spending some time browsing around looking for the download, I finally found the working one here. I guess this would give Mozilla Firefox some pretty good competition now. I wouldn’t even talk about Microsoft’s IE here even though they have just released their updated browser last week. One of most talked about feature of this new browser is the “incognito” feature which enables the user to surf only anonymously without storing cookies or leaving a trace in the history. Good one for the pr0n surfers! I am not sure if the browser would have plugins working in the future but I sure do hope that someone could make stumbleupon browsing working on this new browser. :) Too bad that there is no Linux version yet available…
Tags: browsers, software, Technology
Now I know that this site is supposed to be a week or two behind but I am doing my best to keep up with what is going on with me. This past weekend, we went back to OC, not Orange County, CA, but Ocean City, MD during the weekend. This would be the second time for this summer. The drive was beautiful and just perfect. We took the other route going there, which would be going north in I-95 and then hitting Delaware and back down again to Maryland. We were supposed to be with our neighbors but they backed out during the week. It turned out to be a perfect time for “family time”. We spent the night at my wife’s co-worker’s vacation house which is a short drive from the OC boardwalk. We were all geared up to go the beach Sunday morning but as I came out to start putting our stuff to the car, I found out that my passenger side front tire had a flat tire during the night. I had to replace it with the spare and bring it to Walmart to have it replaced. That’s some unforeseen cost and a lost of beach time. On the other hand, my car got one new tire .
After a short lunch, we headed to the beach. The kids love playing the sand as we sat there taking pictures and just enjoying the scenery (I sure was enjoying it). After a couple of hours of sand and sun, we headed home to start preparing the 4 hour drive back to Balt’more. This time I took the scenic route which took us to some of known beaches in Delaware and Maryland, namely Ocean City, Fenwick Island, Dewey Beach and Reboboth Beach. Wish we had more time to stop and discover this place. Maybe next summer…
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Ocean City Take Two
I have finally taken the dive into a whole new sport (or hobby?). I have always been interested with airsoft even when I was still in Cebu. Back when I was still there, maybe around 7 years ago, airsoft was just starting up. Most of the people who played it were rich people who have a load of cash to spare which was wasn’t me back then. I guess that would still be true now but I was able to save up some cash to buy my first AEG or airsoft electric gun.
I have decided to buy JG’s M4 S-System AEG as my first AEG. I am not making a review here so don’t expect me to give you the technical specs of this gun. This AEG fires up to 360 FPS but it has been rumored to go up to 400FPS. For noobs like me, that is already way too good. It uses .20BBs which I still need to order online when I get the budget. I primarily choose this AEG because I love the look of M4s and that it was way on my budget. I already have a list of stuff I want to buy to make this M4 look rad. I hopefully will get this AEG late next week and be able to join my first airsoft game next month, if schedules work out fine.
I am so frigging excited.
Less than a month into this new reincarnation of my website and I have to upgrade it again. WordPress was pretty good on reminding me to upgrade my site. And so, like any other geek who always wants the newest and latest, I upgraded my website. Even if I have to risk losing the data that I have accumulated since starting in WordPress again. As you might have know, I don’t back up and most of the time, I (almost always) mess up the upgrade.
And so I was just glad everything turned out fine. There was at some point that the website was down for a couple of hours. I just had to sleep it off and after some sleep, was able to fix everything. Now I am on the latest version of WordPress, and I guess this version fixed a lot of issues I was having. Permalinks and URL rewrites works now. My friend Jucato reports that RSS works too. If there’s something not working, you gotta let me know.