[TAG] udev hosed

[Benjamin A. Okopnik]

On Tue, Oct 25, 2005 at 06:02:33PM +0100, Thomas Adam wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 25, 2005 at 12:47:18PM -0500, Benjamin A. Okopnik wrote:
> > First round of comments: the base kit that Gentoo installs *sucks*.
> > There's no 'vi' (I've grown to *hate* 'nano'), no 'lynx' (or even
> > 'links'), no decent 'lspci', no Midnight Commander... at least there's
> 
> But Ben, even the Debian base installation lacks 'mc', 'lynx', 'links'.
> (It does have BSD's version of vi --- nvi, though.)

Right, but with Debian, I can easily install those things from a floppy,
a CD, NFS mount, etc. With Gentoo, I've got a CD full of stuff that I
can't get to or use without having a networked computer at hand (and if
I have one of those, why the hell do I need to use the CD in the first
place?) It's rather frustrating, particularly since several of the tools
they discuss in the installation handbook either don't work as described
(tab completion in GRUB) or don't work at all ('genkernel' requires a
working network - which I'm trying to get running by *using*
'genkernel'. Round and round we go...)

I find that a second machine - one that works and is connected to the
net - is an absolute necessity for this installation, whether as a NAT
router or for simply combing the Gentoo site for answers. I've _never_
run into a distro that needs so much "outside" help during installation,
and I've installed many different ones in the past.


* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://linuxgazette.net *