[ale] Gentoo install on PII master node

[Dow Hurst]

I've gotten an up to date install of Gentoo done for a basic system on
the PII master node I'll use for testing the cluster we worked on.  I've
learned a couple of things and have a question.

First, I've learned that mixing emerge and emerge --usepkg is a no no if
the LiveCD is pretty old versus the latest portage.  I had some part of
the xfree-drm package that couldn't be found.  So I tried updating the
base system and then the emerge of xfree-drm worked just fine.

Second, it can take a long time to get a Gentoo install done.  I imagine
that if you could download a LiveCD with the latest packages precompiled
then you could work faster.  I still don't quite understand the download
site structure as to what is a "release" versus what is the "current
state" to what is "experimental" or "unstable".

Thirdly, if you could learn and deploy ccache and distcc on any machines
you had *before* you got started installing, then as soon as you had the
chance to use distcc you would greatly decrease your compile and install
times.  Having a local up to date portage and a distcc farm available
would be really cool.

My question is: if I only want a simple X environment so that my shell
is a bit easier to use, what would be the simplest set of USE flags for
emerging XFCE?  I wanted a fast simple window manager so chose XFCE, but
my USE flags are copied from Matthew Macumber's.  He has USE flags setup
for a full blown desktop and not tuned to a simpler setup, which is
understandable.  I think stripping out some of the following would be
useful:
USE="aalib acl alsa apache2 apm arts avi berkdb cdr crypt cups dvd
encode flash gif gpm java jikes jpg kde kerbos libwww mmx mozilla mpeg
mysql ncurses oggvorbis opengl oss pam pdf perl plotutils png prebuilt
python qt quicktime readline samba sdl slang spell ssl tcpd tetex tiff
truetype X xv zlib"

But, which would be most useful to discard?  I would guess that gnome
bindings in XFCE might be useful to discard but doesn't that keep me
from using any gnome based apps?  Thanks for your thoughts,
Dow