First of all, I should say, “although my English is not very good, but I am working on it”. Maybe sometimes somewhere, you can read a lot of Chinglish, but I promise, the mistake will be reduced day by day. By the way, we are always focusing on the real technology but not the simple grammar, aren’t we? So, this is written for my first article outside of the school, and the next will be the real-tech.
Before I do the work, I have thought about several questions:
- Mac OS use Time Machine to backup all his data, if I install Gentoo Linux instead, how can I make a backup. Obviously, on a Linux platform, “tar” is more powerful and a little manual.
- During the installation, connected network is necessary. Does my wireless driver supported by Gentoo or other Linux release? For me, the answer is no. But I find a USB wireless adapter and is works fine on Ubuntu Linux. So you know now, I started the installation with an Ubuntu Linux live CD.
- How to create a bootable USB stick on Mac OS X? The Google will find you a website just like this http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-mac-osxI did what it told me, but I failed. After I tried three or four more times, I recognize the image that the website recommend to download does not work. Then I boot my Macbook into Ubuntu Linux environment with the new one.
- Usually, the retina display makes the font unreadable. Is there a way to improve this situation? You should say, hey, just increase the font size! But how? Then Google told me, I can do this by either reducing the resolution or increasing the DPI. You can find this later in this article or the Wiki for Gentoo Linux.
- The last one and the most important is synaptic touchpad. By using the default configuration, it works fine with a few bugs.
So, is it really worth doing this? For me, it is hard to say which one is better, Mac OS or Gentoo Linux? When I am writing, Mac OS is better. But high demand for memory makes me crazy. When I want to chat with someone, WebQQ for Linux is useless, but Wechat for Mac OS is easy to use. If there is a chance, there is always a choice.
Now, follow the steps on the Gentoo Wiki to finish the installation and you should look further down in this article to help save your time.
- If you have a Macbook just the same as mine, you should better find another USB network adapter supported by any of the Linux release for connecting to the Internet to download necessary files.
- After finished installing rEFInd, please notice “\” and “/” mentioned in Gentoo Wiki just the last rows showing in the picture that is commented by me when you are changing the configure file. If there is a problem booting with rEFInd, press “F2” key to access “command line mode” just like “C” key in Grub bootloader.
- After installing the kernel, REMEMBER to reinstall the broadcom sta package “net-wireless/Broadcom-sta”. Never compile the graphics drivers and filesystem (like ext3, ext4…) into modules in the kernel configuration.
- Install “acpid” and “laptop-mode-tools” to manage the power supply. And also “suspend” for suspending the computer to ram or disk. Or just run the command “echo ram >> /sys/power/state” instead of “s2ram” and insert this command to file “/etc/acpid/default.sh” behind the “xset” line.
- By adding “synclient TapButton1=1; synclient TapButton2=3” to “/etc/xdg/openbox/autostart”, you can use synaptic touchpad. One tap for left key and two for right.
- I keep using retina display though changing the DPI. But this solution makes some software unavailable. For the WPS-Office, icon is much smaller than the word and the word in the program “et” is pushed by each other. As the WPS official team said, the only thing you can do is just waiting.
- If you plan to use Logical Volume Manager, remember to mount “/boot” on a at list 200MB disk named “/dev/sda1” and “/” a 5GB disk named “/dev/sda2”. And then create Physical Volume, Logical Volume and mount to use. You need to change something configuring the kernel at the beginning.
Next time when I using Gentoo Linux, wish I could tell you more.