The Design and Implementation of laffer1

Gentoo has gone down hill with its latest release. I was very excited about the new graphical installer. It only seems to work properly if you are using DHCP. Anyone using static ip addresses will find that it has serious problems. Picking any option will require at least 1 connection via emerge/portage and it will fail dns resolution. If you happen to use 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.1.12 for your dns on your internal network, it will work great. (hard coded by a gentoo developer) One solution is right before hitting the install button, go to /etc/resolv.conf in a terminal and put a known good dns server. I believe you will need to use sudo to do this. Also, expect to edit your net.eth0 config and init.d scripts upon installation and bootup.

Worse yet, gentoo handles multiple nics in a system very poorly. Expect problems if you have more than one network adapter that does not use dhcp AND/or you only have one pluggeed in and its not the first one!

I think they have a long way to go. I see why they avoided building an installer during 2004 and 2005.

Overall the conclusion is skip it. If you want gentoo, just use an older version and emerge like crazy!