Gentoo Defeated Me

You know it's bad when you start thinking about finishing your own operating system, rather than wrestling with getting an existing one to work...

My old laptop has Ubuntu 10.4 (which expired June 1).  Lots of stuff has started breaking, I've known I needed to update the OS for a long time.

I hate 12.4 (which was the natural upgrade), so I figured I would try Gentoo.  I'd be able to build any software I need.

I've been trying to build Gentoo on two machines since December.  Neither works.  They have different processors and graphics, but, ironically, they both fail in the same place (X server fails to load KMS module).

I just pulled the Gentoo live DVD, and it looks good.  X starts up (although my wireless isn't recognized...).  I looked for a "Install this!" button, but alas, no such thing.

I searched for "Install Gentoo from live dvd".  I found a forum post which pointed to a wiki page.  The wiki page wouldn't load, so I had to go through the Google cache, only to discover the page was deleted - due to incompatible license.  Wonderful.