Yay, first comment. It's nice to read a new post before going to bed. I feel like I've been waiting all day!

Very cool!

Once you've learnt the wonders of gentoo's build system you'll never want to go back to an rpm distro. No more rpm hell! Just type "emerge program_name" and it will download compile and install including the required versions of all libraries - sweet!

Hey Wil,

Two things:

1. close your italics tag after your book titles....

2. your uptime is actually 11:05; 23:05 is the time.

your uptime is actually 11:05; 23:05 is the time.

Well, we just answered the geekpoints question, didn't we? I'm turning in my pocket protector now.:)

I :heart: Wil Wheaton.
That is all I have to say.

ack! i am blinded by the geekiness!

there's nothing better than a day spent geeking out ... woohoo! and you can keep ALL your nerd points. there's a BIG difference between a 'search and fix' geekout and a 'happy feet geekout' :)

Write more late at night so I can read it when I switch my machine on and get nearer to the first comment.
Also AUDIOBLOG !!!!!! please

Wow

I recognize all of your post as English...but fuck me running if I know what any of it means.

Bowing to a bigger geek

Sean

I totally HEART Gentoo. I started using it for hardware troubleshooting - if I couldn't boot a WinX install I'd boot from a Gentoo CD, and if it'd boot from that I could safely assume it was an OS issue and not hardware. The one time it wouldn't boot from a Gentoo iso it was a failed hard drive. Stupid hard drive.

Anyway, after doing that a few times I fell in love, and never looked back. Of course I have to use other distros on occasion for specific reasons, which are far too nerdy to go into here, but yeah. Try Gentoo. You'll want to make out with it.

Still got to cross out the "23 Hours" at the borrom

Mmm. Knoppix.

(Useless comment of the day, but I heart Knoppix and debian.)

"Borrom" ??? - BOTTOM

Getting lost in thinking about ways to totally rebuild (figuratively or literally) it bigger, better, or faster rather than just fixing it scores high in geek points. It is also how a lot of good things happen. You can't be bothered to put a bunch of work into just getting back to where you were.

That’s better, you’ll get the hang of these computer thingy’s soon!.
AUDOIBLOG !!!!

"All I know right now is that my /home partition is safe, as are all the Just A Geek and Dancing Barefoot files within said partition."

Should be a moot point considering it is all backed up all over the place... RIGHT??

"...or do I lose 5d12+10 nerd points for not spending the last 23 11 hours tracking down the problem and fixing it?"

Nah, keep your nerd points. But once you go through the very-well-documented Gentoo install, you'll know so much about the inner workings of the distro that it won't take that long to track down the problem and fix it.

I gave Gentoo a try because of the optimized-system thing, but I learned a ton along the way. And man-oh-man do I ::heart:: emerge.

The *real* geek question is - did you fire up the KBinaryClock applet in kde 3.2 before you got locked out?

The barcode clock screensaver is pretty neat, too.

And forget gdm. Real nerds run startx... ;)

I'm a BSD geek!!! I've never used gentoo or "emerge" - but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to as FreeBSD's "ports" system sends anything similar to /dev/null. It currently includes over 9000 applications! YES - 9000!!!

hey wil,

i too saw all that as english, but didn't have a clue what it was going on about! tee hee....i still like reading about it, so when one of my geeky friends says something, i can say..."yeah, i know that...Wil Wheaton uses that!!!!" YEY!

take care wil
rach

Firstly, you will lose a few geek points (as we prefer to call them this side of the pond), but maybe not 5e12+10 (unless the d thing is too geeky for me to understand, in which case you can have them all back, and then some) if you don't sort it yourself.
Having said that, I'm using gentoo atm, and it really seems rather good. BUT be warned - kde takes an age to compile, and 3.2 doesn't seem to be in their portage yet.

Oh my god, when you said the thing about the pocket protecter and being a geek, I was thinking of Revenge of The Nerds. Hee hee hee.
You know you could of been in that movie as wormser?
Ok I could find a picture of a nerd and take off their head and put your head on there. hee hee hee.
Ok sorry, got lost in the image.
I think you need to fix the problem dude.
I myself I'm grateful for a brother who knows everything there is to know about computers.
Because of him I still have my computer.
Enough said.
Good to see things are going great for you.

Man, judging by the post titles, you have been on a serious OK Computer burn for a couple of days - if you haven't checked out Airbag/How's My Driving yet, you really should - it's pretty much side 3 of OKC. And don't mind the high price, you should be able to find it cheaper on eBay.

Wil - also such a fan of OK Computer...might I recommend "Pilate"- they're a Toronto band, and quite good...check them out at pilate.com (sorry, I lack the necessary geek skills to make this into a hyperlink...). Enjoy - and keep writing...I heart Wil Wheaton's writing!

"But you can have my polyhedral dice when you pry them from my cold, dead hands . . . provided I fail my saving throw..."

*laughs* Wil!! You just made my day!! I love you man!!

Monica

Knoppix rocks! My employer recently decided to "lock down" all PC's in the company. But they didn't do anything from preventing me from booting with a CD....mwahahaha!!!

I take back what I said earlier, it's in the portage, but you need to arse around, or something.

Hi,

[paranoia]
RUN! Do not walk, to the cupboard, and grab out a blank CD.

RUN! Do not walk, back to your PC, and burn a copy of your home directory (or at least your DB and JAG files, and any other files you can't live without).
[/paranoia]

This is, of course, assuming you don't already have multiple backups stored /everywhere/.

I have my stuff backed up nightly onto 3 machines here in the office and across the road, and the ultra important stuff is backed up onto 2 separate servers on the other side of the planet every night.

'Paranoia is Good.
Paranoia is Right.
Paranoia Works.
Paranoia cuts through, clarifies and captures the essence of the sysadmin spirit'

rgds

Alan

Wil,

Be wary of the call of the Gentoo, it may prove your undoing.

I've made the installation attempt approximately one hojillion times and only on the last attempt did it succeed and it was really nothing spectacular. Anticlimactic one might say. Running a Gentoo system is more about being a huge geek than actually having a nice stable Linux system. IMHO, of course.

Besides, everything compiles from source, so even with a speedy new machine you're looking at a 8-12 hour install.

Tim

Because I'm running Knoppix out of RAM, it's moving at transwarp speed.

Dude, transwarp was just a fad. And, as you know, PETA stopped them from building those engines, because instead of running on antimatter, they ran on baby harp seals. Just chuck a few of those soulful-eyed bad-boys in the intermix chamber, and voom!

Just Say No.

CU

I don't know how emerge compares to apt-get, but I :heart: apt-get. Especially with synaptic. I can wander around in synaptic seeing what's available, what's new etc and Debian is like a rock. Two of my machines are approaching 100 day uptimes (not bad for P75's built of spare parts) and my "unstable" desktop machine went has only gone down to hardware or power failures. KDE 3.2 isn't into unstable yet though. Oh well.

Wil, give FreeBSD a try. It's designed more for server use than for desktops, but it's much more bulletproof than the various Linux distros for that exact reason. XFree86 runs great. The ports system is so much easier to use than RPMs, and why mess with Gentoo when they copied the portage concept from the BSDs? IMHO, the various Linux distros are fine for messing around, but if you're serious about using a Unix-like OS, go with FreeBSD.

And besides, a demon can kick a penguin's ass any day.

Just my thoughts on the gentoo thing, and really I don't mean to be a troll...

With Gentoo, you'll spend more time compiling apps than using them, and they won't really be much more optimized than any other distro. Plus, gentoo is so quick to toss the latest and greatest version of every app into the distro that QA must be a dirty word to them. Unless you actually know how to optimize an application for your architecture, then aren't you just trusting the gentoo team to get it right for you? In which case, why not use a precompiled, tested, STABLE package from a distro with an actual QA process?

Wil, if you want to take the advice of the people here who are trying to steer you away from Gentoo, may I suggest running Debian-unstable? It's darn near as bleeding-edge as Gentoo in many respects, but you don't have to spend all that time compiling stuff...just "apt-get update," "apt-get dist-upgrade," and Bob's your aunt's third husband with the weird hair. :-)

Oh...you did remember to yank out that Radiohead disc, insert a blank, and back up those DB and JAG files, right? Otherwise, that WOULD lose you some major geek points, and I don't have any Potions of Geek Healing handy...

I love Knoppix. I first used it about a year ago. The thing that most impressed me was that I first used it on my laptop. It autodetected everything correctly, including my wireless card and touchpad. I can't even get my touchpad to work half the time in the regular linux distros I use.
Mostly, now, I use knoppix at work when I want to do something in linux.

Gentoo is a very nice video game, but I would not wish it upon anyone. Say goodbye to stability, usability, and peace of mind. I would suggest Debian instead. As it has been previously pointed out, apt-get is just as useful and easy as portage but relies upon solid builds.

And just to prove my street creds, I am a SysAdmin that supports Windows of all types, Gentoo, Debian, Mandrake, RedHat, FreeBSD and OpenBSD.

I don't know about Gentoo... is it better than LFS? I spent a week getting up a linux from scratch distribution, only to realize I was sick of compiling any new updates for my system.

You might see from the email addy that I'm not entirely impartial, but you might want to look at lunar linux. The install process tends to go easier . Lots of help available in #lunar on irc.freenode.net

I myself have tried several live cd's. Knoppix is by leaps and bounds the most stable, usable, and reliable one. Totally amazing for a single cd install. When I last used it KDE hadn't touched my machine in a long time, it made me realize that it's come quite a long way.

With that kind of talk, you should feel lucky that you're a married man, Wil. The only thing polyhedral dice ever saved me from was getting a date on Friday night. ;)

Eric B

Feel free to give me a shout if you need help installing gentoo. I run gentoo (have been for over a year now) and WM, firebird, openoffice etc etc.

Also have a few ebuilds in portage with my name on ;P

Henti Smith

As a secondary note.

Feel free to play with varios distributions, BSD's and other free operating systems, and then decide for yourself. Each one has it's merits and drawbacks. Find what is right for you. bigots be damned :)

Henti Smith

OOPS!!!

How did that trend of putting actions in those star things start? Why can't you just describe your actions in the old fashioned way?

Hey Mr Wil,

Just a quick note, since you were interested in Gentoo, I may be able to help you if you decide to switch to it. If you need any advice or anything of the sort, just hit me up by email or whatnot.

I have a copy of it running on one of my spare machines, and it's pretty nice. Makes RH look like Windows.... *snicker*

Good luck!

Sorry, Wil. I have no idea what you are talking about.

You have achieved a state beyond geekdom.

Wil, I -so- wish I lived next door to you. 90% of our lives are mirrored -- theatre/computer geeks unite!

I've got gentoo on my UltraSparc2 at work, and I love it. I've also got it running on a couple of the computers at home, although my current main computer is still running mandrake 9.2 (my new computer has an SATA-Raid card that isn't quite supported yet.. Grr!)

And i'm looking at a new laptop here, so I can get rid of some old clunkers -- and it's going to be gentoo all the way. It's just so much cleaner than nearly any other install.

ciao!

Wil, you really are Just A Geek. Gotta love it.

Wil, my dear, I understood about 2 out of every 10 words, but that post still turned me on. Anne is a lucky woman.

(And I probably need professional help.)

I'm with WIntellect and Mike Jackson, I use FreeBSD almost exclusively now. It has a vast ports collection, its easy to update the OS and the ports using cvsup, you can recompile the system for your computer and install just the apps that you want similar to gentoo. I will have it on my laptop at Penguicon if I run into you I'll show it off. I think there is a live CD of it running around here somewhere too.

Best Regards,
FreeBSD Knight ;-)

I was once a gentoo fan but after a while the time it took to compile apps lost it's charm. I'd definetly recommend installing it at least once just for the experience. The speed increase isn't that noticable. As a matter of fact I find Slackware to be speadier than an i686 gentoo install and Slackware is targeted to i386! Try Slackware if you get a chance... by far the best Linux distro IMHO :)

By the way, Knoppix can be installed on your HD if you so desire. It comes with a script to install it I believe...look it up.

At the end of the day though I always go back to my tried and true companion, my ibook. Nothing beats it... nothing.

Cheers!

Wil,

I don't have a clue of what you are talking about, but you always put a smile on my face.
Keep it up.

Amanda

Gentoo is cool, but be forewarned. You will have to dedicate at least one full day to get the base system compiled. Tack on at least another day to get X and KDE working. It is cool, but you will have to wait.

The learning curve is not that steep, but waiting for EVERYTHING to compile from source takes a looooong time.

?????????????????????????????????????????????!!!(cue "Lost In Translation" music)

Gentoo offers a lot of pre-compiled packages and a stage 3 install to get you up and running quickly. As far as it bieng unstable, I run various servers, desktop, and laptops with it and don't have problems. Besides, as other posters have said, try various distros out... I have and kept coming back to Gentoo because it lets you have firm control over what you run. Nothing says you have to upgrade your apps every day, but it sure makes it easy to keep on top of security patches..

Dan

Nope, you are not a geek for using your Knoppix disk all day long to just fart around.

I use a Mini-knoppix 180 mini CD in my computers at work when I get the chance to boot it during class (I am a middle school teacher) so that I can get away from Windows from time to time. At least the eighth graders are interested!

Scott

Wil, I am new at this computer stuff and did not
understand a word you said but I love reading your comments. I am thrilled to be able to talk to a movie star.

Have you ever been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans?
You and Anne and the kids would LOVE it. This year it is Feb. 24; in 2005 it is Feb. 8. Mark your calendar.

Live long and prosper! ! !

Freeman.

gentoo doesn't become truly cool until you have about 10 fast machines on a network running distcc like we do at work - distcc farms out the compile jobs across the network, reducing builds to actually waiting for network latency.

translation: if you thought watching code fly past was cool before, you ain't seen nuthin

Google News Alert coughed up the following:

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17810

I think we should help Annalee get a grip.

Hmm. Funny you should go on about Gentoo. I've always been a Mandrake fan. I decided to give it (Gentoo) a try on Monday, but I decided to try for uber-geekiness, and do a stage one install. DAMN. On a P3 500, the bootstrap took something like 5 hours (or thereabouts, I wasn't watching it all the time).
I'm going to start building 'system' soon.
Should hopefully have this sucker running sometime next week. *grin*
One day at a time...

I am new to UNIX/LINUX stuffies, but in my UNIX class we are running Knoppix 3.3. It is pretty nifty. My only complaint is that my damn HP goes all wonky when I try to get online with Knoppix. I have to open the shell & make it recommunicate with the network. Every freakin' time! It's uber dumb.

I know it's been said before, but to add to it, oh man, gentoo is AWESOME, I love emerge!

gVeloper

"or do I lose 5d12+10 nerd points for not spending the last 11 hours tracking down the problem and fixing it?"

The mere fact that you worry about it keeps you all nice and nerdy.

Glen

Wil,
Maybe you should start your own country or language. I did not know you and your computer were that tight. Be careful or you may make the rose and the kids jealous.

FG

Wil, you wrote that you thought that KDE messed up your ability to log in; that should not be the case. It may have messed-up graphical login, but you can always login from a tty (or, if you use devfs, a vc) and run startx. Anyway, root should be able to restart gdm or whatever that service is called. I don't use it: I'm an LFS geek who prefers the command line whenever practicable, so if you'd like LFS help, please feel free to contact me... (I'm assuming that you can read the personal info that I enter even if no one else can.)

Not to be overly-picky, but there is one slight problem with your transwarp analogy: while your OS might be very fast, there is still the minor problem that the speed of calculations is limited by the speed at which electrons can oscillate, which is less than c, so full impulse power would be more appropriate.

wow. i have no idea what that entire post was about. except the ok computer bit. that i did get.

and i thought i was a geek. i got all excited when i heard star wars was being released on dvd. then i heard it was the spec ed only, so that made me sad.

wil, my wife thanks you ...

Dude, Wil, IMHO, avoid Gentoo. It takes a hella long time to install. Why not just install Knoppix from the CD?

http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/HdInstallHowTo

You'll pretty much have Debian unstable, and the joys of apt-get, including:

su -c "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade"

Oh and one more thing: Backup, backup, backup before you do anything else!

Wil,
knoppix is the greatest .. I give it away to everyone who has a hint of Linux interest.

Might I suggest a try of SuSE Pro 9? it's wonderful .. and the people are nice.

I won't try Gentoo JUST becuase the guys I met from Gentoo last year at Linux World were the rudest people there I had met. If you weren't one of their little group of fanboys then they really didnt want to talk to you.

Mandrake 10 final will be out in less than 10 days. With KDE 3.2 final and 2.6.2 Linux Kernel.

Take a look!

Ay, Senor Wil!! Siempre cuando hablas de las computadores me dejas confuso. When you habla about computers you confuse me! Why do you talk about computers with such a passion that should only be reserved for the lovely muchachas?! You should be spending more time with your senorita than fooling around all day on the computer. Gentoo,Knoppix-ay caramaba! When will the madness end? Vaya con Dios,Senor Wil! Buena Suerte in your search for whatever it is your trying to explain in today's post.

WIL! Go with Gentoo!! If you need any help you can hit me up for it. I am a huge Gentoo user. Gentoo smacks up other distros.

Dave, I met those same people at Linux World, and I found them to be friendly and approachable.. Maybe you caught them at a bad time. All I know is that their little booth was *Mobbed*. And really, at a trade show, everybody's tempers can get frayed. It is a really rough place to gauge people.

Dan

Wil,
Long time reader, first time poster. I have been using Gentoo for almost two years now. I will never go to any other distro. As far as some of the other people said about spending more time updating than using...Rubbish...If you want to be on the bleeding, bleeding then yes there are a lot of updates. I have a server I update every six months, aside from misc. security updates. And I have never had a problem with it. I saw go for it dude...As others have offered help I offer it to. The Gentoo community is unlike any other. People are nice, helpful and knowledgable. Good luck..

Jake

*looks at Wil with wide eyes*

I have no idea what you just said.

Like .... all of it.

And I thought I was quite a computer nerd.

Oh hey, I'll just quickly blame it on the language barrier to make me feel smart again *holds up the "I'm German" sign*.

XXX

You don't lose 5d12+10 geek points for not fixing the problem, just for using an iBook. :-P

/Never did like Apple :-P

Debian is da bomb! I have been using it for ages, apt-get is a godsend. Love it! They are working on a new installer if you can't stomach the current one.

Though any system with real package management and dependency handling is a treat. :)

-steve

I really don't understand why everyone raves about apt-get when Mandrake's urpmi is just as good. All Mandrake's GUI does is run urpmi in the background. I haven't had an rpm problem for a very long time, and even used urpmi to update from 9.1 to 9.2 without any problems.

Wow, random google on gentoo leads to your page, Wil. Surprisingly... appropriate. Very nice, congrats on the site and surviving the beating it sounds like you took over a few lines given to you in your TNG role. (?)

As for opening the door to platform wars (living dangerously, eh?), I agree that if you can stick with gentoo for a few weeks (actual build not livecd) you'll probably love its flexibility and top-notch community. Any problem you encounter is usually already dealt with reasonably and competently in the forums. They're great at teaching you how to fish (i.e. you could probably come up to speed on fixing gdm -- or emerging wdm for 'thematic consistency' -- within an hour easy). Guaranteed to reduce lost nerd points in two weeks or your money back! (hmm... is that a perm +4 WIS bonus to AC? Or a 'Tomb of Exceptional Linux Sysadmin' level 9? Ooo, or maybe... uh, sorry. nm.)

Besides, I've noticed a strange correlation between people that love the simplicity and speed of WindowMaker also loving gentoo. Myself included of course, but I'll try the knoppix livecd as suggested.

After all, if we weren't interested in at least a little geeky exploration underneath the windows and desktop, we'd all run OS X and live a stable, stress-free, drag-and-drop existence, right?

Cough -- hack Argh! BTW, no worries on lost nerd points ever (you owe me a non-coffee spewed keyboard, tho). Just noticed http://www.williamfuckingshatner.com indeed... For some reason THAT is damned funny!

Wil,

Give Gentoo a try!

It can be a little tricky (and time consuming) to install but once you are up and running it is the easiest linux distro to maintain and update, not to mention the speed boost you get from building software with all the optimizations for your systems specific architecture.
Plus you feel a great sense of accomplishment after you install Gentoo for the first time (bonus geek points)!

I was a freebsd geek before i discovered Gentoo - i've stuck with Gentoo for nigh on two years.
No OSS/free software package system is updated faster!

Also, the Gentoo community forums are second to none for linux/OSS/free software related assistance.

Let me know how it goes!

- Mark.

I use Gentoo, it's great. Just be careful uninstalling packages, as the dependency checking for unemerging things is shaky (although it does good dependency checking when you emerge).

Hey . . . check out the uptime now:

knoppix@ttyp0[tmp]$ uptime
19:38:00 up 6 days, 5:20, 0 users, load average: 1.01, 0.74, 0.36

Regarding the problem with your login: did you have your OS execute a Yeager Loop? Just wondering.

Read the Da Vinci Code, incredible!

Gentoo rocks. No, wait... GENTOO ROCKS! ;)

Although, it's still less cool than Slackware, but that's how it goes. Wheras Gentoo can be fast, once optimized and configured right, Slack just is fast. It works. It's good stuff, man.

And as for fixing the problem....well, lose those nerd points, yo. Keep that up and you'll be non-geeky in no time, for shame.

---FF7---

Sup

Was searching for something and
followed a Google link to here out of curiousity.
Gentoo rox.. this is an older blog post, not sure if you managed to get it installed.
It's well worth the effort. You learn more of tux with gentoo than any other distro.
I am running it on a couple boxen. Portage is the best thing since sliced-bread.
I am not a fan of KDE or Gnome, so I am running fluxbox
wm. Lean and mean.
There are multiple resources for gentoo, including the irc channel I hang in ( we've managed to convert quite a few to gentoo) irc.freenode.net #linuxforums.
Anyway, back to my Googling.
L8r

If you haven't already tried Gentoo by now - kill two birds with one stone... get the latest (and first reliable) release of CoLinux from http://www.colinux.org/ which is a Gentoo system that runs as a Windows process - *no* emulation or virtualization overhead. Takes 10 seconds to boot to a command line, uses only 10Mb of ram to get there, and the Windows task manager shows 99% idle. It's basically the same technology as uml (user mode linux - http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/ ) but hosted under Windows. This is a better option than a Live CD because you can run the two OSes at the same time, pretty much as equals. It beats vmware or virtual PC because it isn't hogging the CPU when the linux system is idle. (Microsoft hacked that problem in Virtual PC by adding proprietary extensions - but only to windows systems - run a lunux under VPC and it takes a considerable number of cycles away from the host...)

It'll test your geek skills getting it online though, it isn't packaged yet for a trivial installation. I wouldn't start on it until a Friday evening if I were you :-)

I haven't tried Gentoo, but from what I've seen 'emerge' builds all packages from source code, which can make installing a large package very slow.

I love Debian's package manager - just type 'apt-get install packagename'.

I'm running Debian on my new PC, which I bought specifically as a Linux server for my Mac network.