…not as I expected though. As mentioned here I wanted to do a nice new and clean install of Gentoo linux. So I got myself the livecd (2004.2) and started to install away. I gotta say the installation “manual” is really good and if you take the time to follow it through it will make it easy for you, even if you don’t have much (or any) experience with linux installation [nontheless it might not be the ideal distribution for complete newbies, but that’s another story].

So I got the system installed and all (basic system without X etc), but when I tried to install X and a desktop manager (KDE) the system kept freezing during the build process. I tried it over and over with all sorts of settings. It would build and build and build (as it’s an Athlon 1100MHz it’s quite clear that extreme compilation like this will take some time) and just freeze somewhere in the middle or near the end of completion. So now I was reall fed up and thought: There are two possibilities now, either try and try and try again or give up altogether. I chose to go with the later as I had already spend some good two days in total and had nothing on my hands [I was slowly starting to think that the pc might have a hardware problem, but memory tests and all came up with nothing].

So I downloaded Suse 9.1 personal yesterday (go ahead and call me cheap ;-) ) and ran the installation – one things for sure: the setup process is at least as good as the windows setup, it let’s you configure everything using their “YAST” install-tool. And after a little under one hour the system was up and running. Now I’m just downloading system updates and new nvidia drivers and I’m set – finally.