Life is Like Compiling a Linux Kernel
There’s no progress bar.
I’ve been sitting here for the past – I don’t know – 6 hours? installing gentoo on my old laptop (a Pentium II 366). I could have made the process faster, but I wanted everything built from the ground up, specific to my system. So I burned the minimal install CD, repartitioned everything, downloaded an immense package list, and bootstrapped into a base system (that’s right – as few binaries as possible for this install). More accurately, I should say “I’m bootstrapping into a base system” since I’me not now finished. Better yet, “attempting to bootstrap into a base system” since I don’t yet know the outcome. Checking just now, I see that I’m currently compiling glibc stuff. Glibc. Ugh, how many more packages must come after glibc?
Next up: the actual kernel.
