[gentoo-dev] min RAM to get Gentoo working

[gentoo-dev] min RAM to get Gentoo working

[Árni Þorvarðarson]

Hi there

I heard about you at linux.org and used the link to your web site.  

I have lookt at the installation instructions but it is not mentiond what is
the absolout minimum amount of RAM.  The reasone for my question is beacause
I have some old systems (486 dx2 with only 16mb of RAM) and I would like to
try Gentoo.  I have tried out RedHat and Slackware so I have some knowled in
Linux, but regarding Gentoo, then i like the idea of your package system
better, and that is somthing I find that could be better in Linux.  My idea
is that it should be a standard package system that works on all distros.

p.s.  Do Gentoo support icelandic in consol like RedHat?

Best regards from Iceland : )

Arni

Re: [gentoo-dev] min RAM to get Gentoo working

[Einar Karttunen]

On 20.02.02 13:59 -0000(+0000), Árni Þorvarðarson wrote:
> Hi there
> 
> I heard about you at linux.org and used the link to your web site.  
> 
> I have lookt at the installation instructions but it is not mentiond what is
> the absolout minimum amount of RAM.  The reasone for my question is beacause
> I have some old systems (486 dx2 with only 16mb of RAM) and I would like to
> try Gentoo.  I have tried out RedHat and Slackware so I have some knowled in
> Linux, but regarding Gentoo, then i like the idea of your package system
> better, and that is somthing I find that could be better in Linux.  My idea
> is that it should be a standard package system that works on all distros.

The minimum amount of ram varies by what you use. I think gentoo should
fit in 16mb but provide enough swap. The limitations come from the different
applications. The problem is that you will have to compile everything for
yourself, which will take insane amounts of time on a 486. Another problem
will be that there are no boot floppies, just a boot cd.

A distribution like debian might be easier for a 486, but if you
want please try gentoo out, but remember to have some other machine
ready for compiles.


> p.s.  Do Gentoo support icelandic in consol like RedHat?

It support's at least finnish in the console.

- Einar Karttunen

Re: [gentoo-dev] min RAM to get Gentoo working

[Stefan Boresch]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2002 at 04:12:02PM +0200, Einar Karttunen wrote:
> On 20.02.02 13:59 -0000(+0000), Árni Þorvarðarson wrote:

> > I have lookt at the installation instructions but it is not mentiond what is
> > the absolout minimum amount of RAM.  The reasone for my question is beacause
> > I have some old systems (486 dx2 with only 16mb of RAM) and I would like to
> > try Gentoo.  I have tried out RedHat and Slackware so I have some knowled in

> A distribution like debian might be easier for a 486, but if you
> want please try gentoo out, but remember to have some other machine
> ready for compiles.

I second this. Don't even think about building on this machine. I
recently had the bootstrap step die on me (machine just froze) on a
Celeron(!) with 32MB Ram and 80 MB swap.  (Compiling glibc seems to do
"awful" things).  I eventually installed the machine by copying a
diskimage;  now it runs great.  Of course it's a long way
from a 486 to a Celeron...

Stefan

-- 
Stefan Boresch
Institute for Theoretical Chemistry and Structural Molecular Biology
University of Vienna, Waehringerstr. 17       A-1090 Vienna, Austria
Phone: -43-1-427752715                        Fax:   -43-1-427752790

Re: [gentoo-dev] min RAM to get Gentoo working

[Tod M. Neidt]

On Wed, 2002-02-20 at 07:59, Árni Þorvarðarson wrote:
> Hi there
> 
> I heard about you at linux.org and used the link to your web site.  
> 
> I have lookt at the installation instructions but it is not mentiond what is
> the absolout minimum amount of RAM.  The reasone for my question is beacause
> I have some old systems (486 dx2 with only 16mb of RAM) and I would like to
> try Gentoo.  

Hi!

I have Gentoo running on an old Micron Transport Pentium laptop w/ 16 Mb
of ram. Note: I was generous when allocating swap space on the hard disk
:).  This laptop runs better than ever, optimizing for PI makes a huge
difference (anecdotal, my perception no numbers to back that up :)  And
Yes!, I can fire up a gnome session when I want although I normally work
from the command-line on this machine.

Probably the bigger issue is not the amount of ram, but how much hard
disk space you have. This laptop has a 2 Gb harddrive.  I have to be
diligent in my monitoring of free disk space (cleaning up
/var/tmp/portage and such ) because builds will fail if you run out,
glibc in all its internationalized glory is a hog when compiling for
example.

If possible, I would suggest building packages on a faster machine with
more resources and transfering rather than try and compile everything on
the old machines.

Regards,

tod