Installing Gentoo into virtual box???

[eeezzzeee]

Hey guys-
I have been using mint as my main desktop since feb, it is by far my favorite distro, i cringe when i have to do things in windows now. I am finally getting to the point where i want to learn more about linux rather than just using linux. So in all infintie wisdom I have been kicking around the idea of trying to do a Gentoo install. Everything I have read says it takes a long time, and can be frustrating, but I also read that it is a great way to learn a lot about linux if you stick with it. I have some free time at work that I would like to use to work on this. I have a latop with XP and virtual box, I can't get rid of XP on the laptop yet, so i was wondering if an install in virtualbox would be the same as a harddrive install? Would installing into virtualbox create any special problems? I checked the virtualbox site, but i couldn't not find much information about it. I have recently read a few posts talking about some of you guys installing Gentoo so I figured I'd ask your opionions on if you thought that would be a doable route? My other option is to try it on my empty partition at home, but I would have less time to work on it than if I used my downtime at work. Any input would be appreciated.
Thanks.

[Acid_1]

Virtual machines generally don't do much to your pc whe installing other os's on the virtual hard drive. It just makes a .vhd or whatever and stores everything there. Files arn't allowed to leave it. However, I'd use the virtual machine's website to ask for help for this, or Gentoo's for something related to the install.

[eeezzzeee]

If I'm reading your post right I think I may have been unclear about what I was planning on doing. I want to install Gentoo in virtualbox, I know it wont mess with my host OS. My concern is that there will be problems above and beyond the normal problems I would have doing a Gentoo install because of the install being placed into a virtual environment. I did check the virtualbox page, but I didn't really find any posts that talk about installing Gentoo as a guest. It seems either it doesn't have special problems, or the people that did it had enough technical knowlage to get around the problems they had.

[eeezzzeee]

I found this page using google, so I guess I'll give it a shot and see how it goes. If anyone is interested later I'll post results from my experiment.

http://www.softerblue.com/?p=15

[Acid_1]

ahh. I get it. Well, what you should do is see if the version of Gentoo is compatable with the hardware that vmware emulates. Usually (I think) it uses rather generic hardware, so most OS's work fine under it, however, just double check. It's like looking to see what hardware you have, and seeing if it's compatable. Hope this helps

[eeezzzeee]

I tried to get started with it in virtual box the other night, but it gave me an error right after telling it to boot. I did a google search for the error it gave me but did not find any useful information. I am just going to give Gentoo a try on my open partition at home after I have the Elyssa installed and setup how I want. I'll just take it nice and slow and work on it when I have time. Thanks for the help though.

[Acid_1]

haha. no problem. booting any os is almost always better when done on real hardware rather than a vm:P