Gentoo Linux AMD64 Handbook

About the Gentoo Linux Installation
made. We will inform you when this happens, both when you make the decision, and right before the
optional step is described.
What are my Options
You can install Gentoo in many different ways. You can download and install from one of our
Installation CDs, from a distribution already installed, from a non-Gentoo bootable CD (such as
Knoppix), from a netbooted environment, from a rescue floppy, etc.
This document covers the installation using a Gentoo Installation CD or, in certain cases, netbooting.
This installation assumes that you want to install the latest available version of each package.
Note
Troubles
For help on the other installation approaches, including using non-Gentoo CDs, please read
our Alternative Installation Guide [/doc/en/altinstall.xml].
If you want to perform a networkless installation, you should read the Gentoo 2008.0 Handbooks [/
doc/en/handbook/2008.0/] which contain the installation instructions for a networkless environment.
Also note that, if you plan on using GRP (the Gentoo Reference Platform, a collection of prebuilt
packages meant for immediate use after a Gentoo installation), you must follow the instructions in the
Gentoo 2008.0 Handbooks [/doc/en/handbook/2008.0/].
We also provide a Gentoo Installation Tips & Tricks [/doc/en/gentoo-x86-tipsntricks.xml] document
that might be useful to read as well. If you are an experienced Gentoo user and just need a brief
installation checklist, feel free to use our Quick Installation Guide available from our Documentation
Resources [/doc/en/index.xml] if your architecture has such a document available.
You also have several possibilities: you can compile your entire system from scratch or use a prebuilt
environment to have your Gentoo environment up and running in no time. And of course you have
intermediate solutions in which you don't compile everything but start from a semi-ready system.
If you find a problem in the installation (or in the installation documentation), please visit our
bugtracking system [http://bugs.gentoo.org] and check if the bug is known. If not, please create a
bugreport for it so we can take care of it. Do not be afraid of the developers who are assigned to (your)
bugs -- they generally don't eat people.
Note though that, although the document you are now reading is architecture-specific, it will contain
references to other architectures as well. This is due to the fact that large parts of the Gentoo Handbook
use source code that is common for all architectures (to avoid duplication of efforts and starvation of
development resources). We will try to keep this to a minimum to avoid confusion.
If you are uncertain if the problem is a user-problem (some error you made despite having read
the documentation carefully) or a software-problem (some error we made despite having tested the
installation/documentation carefully) you are free to join #gentoo on irc.freenode.net. Of course, you
are welcome otherwise too as our chat channel covers the broad Gentoo spectrum :)
Speaking of which, if you have a question regarding Gentoo, check out our Frequently Asked
Questions [/doc/en/faq.xml], available from the Gentoo Documentation [/doc/en/]. You can also view
the FAQs [http://forums.gentoo.org/viewforum.phpf=40] on our forums [http://forums.gentoo.org].
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