Gentoo Linux & MPlayer

I now have my Gentoo Linux setup almost completely functional. I’ve managed to get graphics, sound, and network sharing working. The only big tasks left are printing, and palm-pilot syncing.

*ADDITION:* “MPlayer”:http://www.mplayer.hq is quite possibly the best media player I have ever seen. Both it’s ability to play almost any variety of media file that gets thrown at it combined with the quality of playback has encouraged many a movie download.

I’ve found myself logging into my Gentoo box for almost everything. The iBook has increalingly been left only to Lisa. I also had Windows setup to dual-boot on this box, though I have discovered that I have not had to boot into it once, since I installed it on a seperate partition, and am strongly considering reclaiming that partition to use with my Gentoo install.

“Portage”:http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/portage-user.xml has made managing the programs that I use effortless, including installing, upgrading, and trying out new applications. Evolution has been an almost perfect email program for my needs, and I’ve been quite impressed with Galeon as a browser.

I have both “OpenOffice”:http://www.openoffice.org as well as Gnumeric and “Abiword”:http://www.abisource.com installed, and must say that while OpenOffice is more feature rich I feel that Abiword and Gnumeric are possibly more refined, and have more potential.

All in all, I’m quite happy with my Linux trial.