Re: [gentoo-dev] odds and ends

[Thomas Flavel <thomasfl@cogs.susx.ac.uk>]

On Wed, Jan 24, 2001 at 04:08:51PM -0700, drobbins@gentoo.org wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 24, 2001 at 10:43:53PM +0000, Thomas Flavel wrote:
> > > 1.0_rc4-pre2 is fully compatible with all modern Intel and Intel-compatible
> > > processors, from the i486 on up.  While 1.0_rc4-pre2 is optimized for the
> > > 486, Achim plans to build several different versions of 1.0_rc4 optimized for
> > > various processors.  1.0_rc4-pre2 has been tested on K6 systems and works
> > 
> > I don't understand why not a 386? I kind of expected the distcd to be 386
> > binaries, and then to compile and install optimised to whatever my processor
> > happens to be? What am I mis-understanding? ;)
> > 
> > How would gentoo be installed on a 386?
> 
> Very slowly.  386's and bzip2-compressed packages don't exactly get along :)

:) Is it feasible to have two alternate install routes; one compiling from scratch
and the other pre-compiled?

> If there's a need, we can create a 386-compatible build.

I'm just thinking along the lines of a minimum binary system where absolutley
needed, and compiling specifically everywhere else? I realise this would be
slow to install on slower systems, but, since we're all power users... ;)

Seriously though, I do think this would be a nice feature, unless there's some
practicality reason I'm missing.

> > Excellent. Roughly what size is minimum now?
> 
> Do you mean the minimum HD space needed for installation?  I'd guess about 400Mb
> of HD space.  We haven't specifically attempted to "squeeze" the base install
> into a minimum of space.  If we did, we could probably get it to live in around
> 250Mb, maybe less.  If we started recompiling packages and linking them to a tiny
> libc, we might be able to get this down to <100Mb :)  But, since we're all power
> users, this isn't something that we're focusing on right now.

Ok

- Tom