There has been quite some time since the last Fedora port to the Alpha architecture with a working Gnome environment was published, and the next iteration is still in the works. So I figured it was time to give Gentoo a try, a distribution I didn’t touch for years.
For those of you totally unfamiliar with Gentoo, you basically:
- Start on a minimal installation CD
- Transfer a basic file system on a hard drive
- Compile your kernel
- Install the software you want from source packages, via a netinstall, using a tool called “emerge”
The installation from source packages is still a scary but fun concept to me. On the positive side, it lets you compile every software to take advantage of your CPU’s specificity. On the downside, it took 36h on a 667MHz EV67 CPU (I’m not joking) to compile a working Gnome environment. It’s looooooooong, especially with a noisy machine like the XP1000.
Note that Gentoo’s documentation is REALLY nice and well written, and I also got some support on the #alpha IRC channel, where the Fedora on alpha guys also live (thanks for your nice work, Oliver and Jay).
Gnome 2.22 running on an Alpha, Gentoo 2008.0
Oh, and Merry Christmas for all you Christians out there 