Gentoo not just from source

[Greg Hamilton]

>
> Using the packages collection as a source for Gentoo it's possible to
> install a complete Gentoo system without an Internet connection.

Cool, I didn't know that.

> Don't get me wrong I'm an avid user of YDL on my PM7500, and yes APT is
> a great tool, but it's by no means flawless. Where for example do you
> configure apt to access package collections and which is the best
> collection for the most current up-to-date RPM's? Freshrpms is my
> favorite but what do you do when apt can't find the tool your after? or
> you can't exactly remember what it's called?

apt-get on a YDL box is a dog's breakfast and the YDL web-site advises 
using yum instead.

On a Debian box you specify the repositories you want to use in 
/etc/apt/sources.list.
To search for packages use apt-cache.
I just tried 'apt-cache search astronomy'. One of the responses was 
'stars - A program that draws a map of the night sky' so obviously it's 
searching meta data associated with the package, not just the package 
name. Cool eh?

>
> The big question is where is YDL going to go now that RedHat Linux is
> Fedora, which by the way seem to be developing a PPC release of FC Core

I asked about the Fedora PPC RPMs awhile ago. The reply from Dan Burcaw 
at Terra Soft was

"Just recognize that the Fedora stuff isn't at all tested.. and not
intended for Mac machines. We'll be provided at some point soon
a development tree based on Fedora with YDL modifications and
Macintosh-specific improvements."

I upgraded binutils using an RPM from PPC Fedora in order to get 
wxPython to work. I tried to upgrade a few big apps like Evolution but 
the list of dependancies was so terrifyingly large I decided to give it 
a miss. Apparently it is possible to get a PPC Fedora system running 
but you have to start with minimal YDL install as PPC Fedora is 
currently missing things like an installer and a kernel.