I'm currently running Gentoo. I chose it for the same reasons you
mention. My network card isn't supported by any accessible Debian
installer.
It takes a while to install. I spent the afternoon reading the Gentoo
handbook with lynx in one console and following it's instructions in
another. When the handbook tells you to type a comman and go watch a
movie or read a book, they aren't kidding. I installed it on a 1.5G AMD
with 512 meg ram. It still takes it a while to upgrade things like
Mozilla. I like the fact I could install my DECtalk software and Sun's
JDK early in the install. This meant I had DECtalk available for
Gnopernicus the first time. Gentoo has an accessibility flag that
causes programs built to enable any accessibility features. I still
like Debian better, but my Gentoo box works fine as my personal work
station. If you want to use a Gentoo kernel source instead of official
kernel.org sources, gentoo-dev-sources has speakup already patched in
the source. Speechd-up is a Gentoo package, so getting speakup working
with software speech wasn't difficult.
Hope this helps.
Kenny
On Wed, Aug 25, 2004 at 07:13:44PM -0500, Cheryl Homiak wrote:
> Is anybody on this list currently running gentoo? I want to re-install on
> my desktop because I no longer really need my DOS partition (well, I still
> have a little problem with transfers to and from the braillelite but I
> plan to solve that). My preference would probably be to re-install debian,
> but having to either use an older installer cd or having to mess with
> floppies which don't always seem to work for me don't seem like really
> wonderful alternatives. besides this, unless one runs unstable (which is
> what I usually do), things aren't current. so gentoo sounds kind of
> appealing to me. but I'd like to know: if anybody has either run it
> recently or is running it, did you have issues with installation and what
> were your impressions of it once you got it installed? I have looked at
> some of the archive issues (I think there were some here and in blinux)
> with this but would like any current opinions. I know that people's likes
> and dislikes re: distributions are often a fairly subjective matter, so
> not trying to start a dist war, but just am trying to decide whether I
> want to try this. A while back I tried fedora on my laptop and really
> didn't find it to be what i wanted, but that doesn't mean I'm never going
> to try anything different again.
> Thanks.
>
>
>
> --
> Cheryl
>
> "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
