[gentoo-user] Tips/Tricks for Gentoo on low-spec computer?

[gentoo-user] Tips/Tricks for Gentoo on low-spec computer?

[Grant Edwards]

I'm in the process of installing Gentoo on a rather old
machine. It's an old HP Pavilion with a 450MHz Celeron
Mendocino and 256MB of PC133 SDRAM.  I'm using an nVidia PCI
FX6200 video board instead of the i810 on-board chip, and it's
got a decent hard drive (160GB).

I was wondering if there were any particular tips/tricks for
getting the best performance out of such a machine.  It's to be
used for basic word processing and a few games.  Hopefully the
nVidia 6200 will allow OpenGL to run fast enough for something
like TuxRacer.

I chose XFCE for the desktop along with both Abiword and
OpenOffice. I probably should have installed OOo from a binary
package, but I decided to build it just to see how long it
would take (so far it's at about 26 hours and counting).

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! I just remembered
                                  at               something about a TOAD!
                               visi.com            

Re: [gentoo-user] Tips/Tricks for Gentoo on low-spec computer?

[Paul Hartman]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Grant Edwards <grante@visi.com> wrote:
> I'm in the process of installing Gentoo on a rather old
> machine. It's an old HP Pavilion with a 450MHz Celeron
> Mendocino and 256MB of PC133 SDRAM.  I'm using an nVidia PCI
> FX6200 video board instead of the i810 on-board chip, and it's
> got a decent hard drive (160GB).
>
> I was wondering if there were any particular tips/tricks for
> getting the best performance out of such a machine.  It's to be
> used for basic word processing and a few games.  Hopefully the
> nVidia 6200 will allow OpenGL to run fast enough for something
> like TuxRacer.
>
> I chose XFCE for the desktop along with both Abiword and
> OpenOffice. I probably should have installed OOo from a binary
> package, but I decided to build it just to see how long it
> would take (so far it's at about 26 hours and counting).

My biggest suggestion for a slow machine is: distcc

Re: [gentoo-user] Tips/Tricks for Gentoo on low-spec computer?

[Nick Cunningham]

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2009/1/20 Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com<paul.hartman%2Bgentoo@gmail.com>
>

> On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Grant Edwards <grante@visi.com> wrote:
> > I'm in the process of installing Gentoo on a rather old
> > machine. It's an old HP Pavilion with a 450MHz Celeron
> > Mendocino and 256MB of PC133 SDRAM.  I'm using an nVidia PCI
> > FX6200 video board instead of the i810 on-board chip, and it's
> > got a decent hard drive (160GB).
> >
> > I was wondering if there were any particular tips/tricks for
> > getting the best performance out of such a machine.  It's to be
> > used for basic word processing and a few games.  Hopefully the
> > nVidia 6200 will allow OpenGL to run fast enough for something
> > like TuxRacer.
> >
> > I chose XFCE for the desktop along with both Abiword and
> > OpenOffice. I probably should have installed OOo from a binary
> > package, but I decided to build it just to see how long it
> > would take (so far it's at about 26 hours and counting).
>
> My biggest suggestion for a slow machine is: distcc
>
>
For something that slow even distcc wont do that much good, there are a
number or packages that dont like distcc, and things like configure scripts
will still run on the slow pc. A better option would be to use a faster pc
to create binary packages and then point the slower pc to the binary repo,
that way to doesnt even have to try and compile anything (which imo is
crazy, im surprised OO hasnt crashed and run out of memory during its
compile!).

Do some digging, theres guides on the gentoo forums and the wiki i think for
setting up binpkg hosts.

- Nick

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[gentoo-user] Re: Tips/Tricks for Gentoo on low-spec computer?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-01-20, Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:

> My biggest suggestion for a slow machine is: distcc

I'm not too concerned about build times for large packages. The
machine isn't going to be connect to a network and once it's
in a "working" state won't be doing much emerging.

Secondly, I've never had much luck with distcc.  When I last
tried it (admittedly a couple years ago), I immediately started
tripping over packages that wouldn't build using distcc.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! Are you still an
                                  at               ALCOHOLIC?
                               visi.com            

Re: [gentoo-user] Tips/Tricks for Gentoo on low-spec computer?

[Mark Knecht]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 8:46 AM, Grant Edwards <grante@visi.com> wrote:
> I'm in the process of installing Gentoo on a rather old
> machine. It's an old HP Pavilion with a 450MHz Celeron
> Mendocino and 256MB of PC133 SDRAM.  I'm using an nVidia PCI
> FX6200 video board instead of the i810 on-board chip, and it's
> got a decent hard drive (160GB).
>
> I was wondering if there were any particular tips/tricks for
> getting the best performance out of such a machine.  It's to be
> used for basic word processing and a few games.  Hopefully the
> nVidia 6200 will allow OpenGL to run fast enough for something
> like TuxRacer.
>
> I chose XFCE for the desktop along with both Abiword and
> OpenOffice. I probably should have installed OOo from a binary
> package, but I decided to build it just to see how long it
> would take (so far it's at about 26 hours and counting).
>
> --
> Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! I just remembered
>                                  at               something about a TOAD!
>                               visi.com

Grant,
   We used to use a machine very similar to the one you discuss as a
Gentoo desktop machine. I built Gnome and it worked fine. I personally
like fluxbox which is a very light environment. Currently it's
operating as my main mythbackend server with two PVR cards in it.
Still going strong.

   The one thing I would respectfully suggest is that you carefully
build your own portage overlay. My experience with Gentoo over the
last few years is that there is a _anxiousness_ in the portage
maintainer area to move newer revisions of software into portage
quickly and then just as quickly to remove from portage what users are
currently using. This forces folks to build more often and on a
machine like you are talking about that can be fairly painful. There's
no harm in masking higher revisions of software. The only issue I've
run into is eix-test-obsolete telling me I have something installed
that's no longer in portage. However with your own portage overlay I
beleive you could get beyond this.

   I don't personally use the portage tools for building binary
backups of packages - and probably I should. You might look at that
also.

Good luck,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] Anxiousness? [was:Tips/Tricks for Gentoo on low-spec computer?]

[b.n.]

Mark Knecht ha scritto:

>    The one thing I would respectfully suggest is that you carefully
> build your own portage overlay. My experience with Gentoo over the
> last few years is that there is a _anxiousness_ in the portage
> maintainer area to move newer revisions of software into portage
> quickly and then just as quickly to remove from portage what users are
> currently using. 

Really?

I am usually a bit annoyed by the contrary. On an almost 1-year old
Kubuntu (8.04 Hardy Heron) I can find packages that are just barely x86
stable now on Gentoo.

A couple of examples I am aware of:
Firefox 3: stable just since one month on Gentoo x86, was included in KB8.04
Qtiplot: 0.9.x stable and working on KB8.04, all releases ~x86 (and a
hell to compile on a stable system -still didn't manage to do it) in Gentoo.

Python releases are often behind, and not mentioning KDE 4, which is
even default on 8.10 Kubuntu and on Gentoo was still hardmasked last
time I checked (but probably Gentoo is just right in this respect,
everyone keeps telling me to wait before digging into KDE 4).

I fully understand that there are good reasons for that, and that the
meta-distribution status of Gentoo makes harder to check packages (and
also that the Ubuntu folks wildly release unstable stuff... firefox 3 rc
in 8.04, for example). I just feel that (stable) Gentoo is actually a
bit *behind* the average Linux distribution in its revisions of software.

Most importantly, I also feel that that's something new: when I first
installed my system, more than 4 years ago, I felt it was *ahead*. I
wonder if it's due just to the sheer increase of work required to test
packages, or if there are decisions behind that (or if it's just me
having false memories).

m.

Re: [gentoo-user] Anxiousness? [was:Tips/Tricks for Gentoo on low-spec computer?]

[Paul Hartman]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 2:36 PM, b.n. <brullonulla@gmail.com> wrote:
> Mark Knecht ha scritto:
>
>>    The one thing I would respectfully suggest is that you carefully
>> build your own portage overlay. My experience with Gentoo over the
>> last few years is that there is a _anxiousness_ in the portage
>> maintainer area to move newer revisions of software into portage
>> quickly and then just as quickly to remove from portage what users are
>> currently using.
>
> Really?
>
> I am usually a bit annoyed by the contrary. On an almost 1-year old
> Kubuntu (8.04 Hardy Heron) I can find packages that are just barely x86
> stable now on Gentoo.
>
> A couple of examples I am aware of:
> Firefox 3: stable just since one month on Gentoo x86, was included in KB8.04
> Qtiplot: 0.9.x stable and working on KB8.04, all releases ~x86 (and a
> hell to compile on a stable system -still didn't manage to do it) in Gentoo.
>
> Python releases are often behind, and not mentioning KDE 4, which is
> even default on 8.10 Kubuntu and on Gentoo was still hardmasked last
> time I checked (but probably Gentoo is just right in this respect,
> everyone keeps telling me to wait before digging into KDE 4).
>
> I fully understand that there are good reasons for that, and that the
> meta-distribution status of Gentoo makes harder to check packages (and
> also that the Ubuntu folks wildly release unstable stuff... firefox 3 rc
> in 8.04, for example). I just feel that (stable) Gentoo is actually a
> bit *behind* the average Linux distribution in its revisions of software.
>
> Most importantly, I also feel that that's something new: when I first
> installed my system, more than 4 years ago, I felt it was *ahead*. I
> wonder if it's due just to the sheer increase of work required to test
> packages, or if there are decisions behind that (or if it's just me
> having false memories).

When I first installed Gentoo a few years ago, I think I switched from
x86 to ~x86 in the first 24 hours, for the very reason. I wanted to
use the newest versions and the "stable" stuff was so old... It seems
the majority of users are using ~arch these days.

Re: [gentoo-user] Anxiousness? [was:Tips/Tricks for Gentoo on low-spec computer?]

[Nick Cunningham]

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2009/1/20 Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com<paul.hartman%2Bgentoo@gmail.com>
>

> On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 2:36 PM, b.n. <brullonulla@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Mark Knecht ha scritto:
> >
> >>    The one thing I would respectfully suggest is that you carefully
> >> build your own portage overlay. My experience with Gentoo over the
> >> last few years is that there is a _anxiousness_ in the portage
> >> maintainer area to move newer revisions of software into portage
> >> quickly and then just as quickly to remove from portage what users are
> >> currently using.
> >
> > Really?
> >
> > I am usually a bit annoyed by the contrary. On an almost 1-year old
> > Kubuntu (8.04 Hardy Heron) I can find packages that are just barely x86
> > stable now on Gentoo.
> >
> > A couple of examples I am aware of:
> > Firefox 3: stable just since one month on Gentoo x86, was included in
> KB8.04
> > Qtiplot: 0.9.x stable and working on KB8.04, all releases ~x86 (and a
> > hell to compile on a stable system -still didn't manage to do it) in
> Gentoo.
> >
> > Python releases are often behind, and not mentioning KDE 4, which is
> > even default on 8.10 Kubuntu and on Gentoo was still hardmasked last
> > time I checked (but probably Gentoo is just right in this respect,
> > everyone keeps telling me to wait before digging into KDE 4).
> >
> > I fully understand that there are good reasons for that, and that the
> > meta-distribution status of Gentoo makes harder to check packages (and
> > also that the Ubuntu folks wildly release unstable stuff... firefox 3 rc
> > in 8.04, for example). I just feel that (stable) Gentoo is actually a
> > bit *behind* the average Linux distribution in its revisions of software.
> >
> > Most importantly, I also feel that that's something new: when I first
> > installed my system, more than 4 years ago, I felt it was *ahead*. I
> > wonder if it's due just to the sheer increase of work required to test
> > packages, or if there are decisions behind that (or if it's just me
> > having false memories).
>
> When I first installed Gentoo a few years ago, I think I switched from
> x86 to ~x86 in the first 24 hours, for the very reason. I wanted to
> use the newest versions and the "stable" stuff was so old... It seems
> the majority of users are using ~arch these days.
>
>
I see it as a good thing, a sign that Gentoo is maturing beyond just being a
'ricing' distro. Its now possible to have the best of both worlds, whether
you want the stability of well tested packages from ARCH, or the chance to
get newer packages, but with a chance of bugs and potential breakage by
using ~ARCH.

Im a happy ~ARCH user myself, and have been for a long time, however i do
stick to using plain ARCH on my little server just to keep it stable and
happy.

- Nick

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Re: [gentoo-user] Anxiousness? [was:Tips/Tricks for Gentoo on low-spec computer?]

[Saphirus Sage]

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I'm a total ~ARCH user, just because part of me really loves the joys  
of debugging. Honestly, on the rare occasion that something doesn't  
work, I've found a lesson is best learned when it is necessary. So in  
short, a bug is just a chance to learn to do something slightly  
differently.

Anyway, for a low-spec system, installing from binaries when possible  
would probably be a good idea. Other than that, just be specific in  
what you want with your USE flags.

On Jan 20, 2009, at 4:16 PM, Nick Cunningham <nick@monkeydust.net>  
wrote:

>
>
> 2009/1/20 Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com>
> On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 2:36 PM, b.n. <brullonulla@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Mark Knecht ha scritto:
> >
> >>    The one thing I would respectfully suggest is that you carefully
> >> build your own portage overlay. My experience with Gentoo over the
> >> last few years is that there is a _anxiousness_ in the portage
> >> maintainer area to move newer revisions of software into portage
> >> quickly and then just as quickly to remove from portage what  
> users are
> >> currently using.
> >
> > Really?
> >
> > I am usually a bit annoyed by the contrary. On an almost 1-year old
> > Kubuntu (8.04 Hardy Heron) I can find packages that are just  
> barely x86
> > stable now on Gentoo.
> >
> > A couple of examples I am aware of:
> > Firefox 3: stable just since one month on Gentoo x86, was included  
> in KB8.04
> > Qtiplot: 0.9.x stable and working on KB8.04, all releases ~x86  
> (and a
> > hell to compile on a stable system -still didn't manage to do it)  
> in Gentoo.
> >
> > Python releases are often behind, and not mentioning KDE 4, which is
> > even default on 8.10 Kubuntu and on Gentoo was still hardmasked last
> > time I checked (but probably Gentoo is just right in this respect,
> > everyone keeps telling me to wait before digging into KDE 4).
> >
> > I fully understand that there are good reasons for that, and that  
> the
> > meta-distribution status of Gentoo makes harder to check packages  
> (and
> > also that the Ubuntu folks wildly release unstable stuff...  
> firefox 3 rc
> > in 8.04, for example). I just feel that (stable) Gentoo is  
> actually a
> > bit *behind* the average Linux distribution in its revisions of  
> software.
> >
> > Most importantly, I also feel that that's something new: when I  
> first
> > installed my system, more than 4 years ago, I felt it was *ahead*. I
> > wonder if it's due just to the sheer increase of work required to  
> test
> > packages, or if there are decisions behind that (or if it's just me
> > having false memories).
>
> When I first installed Gentoo a few years ago, I think I switched from
> x86 to ~x86 in the first 24 hours, for the very reason. I wanted to
> use the newest versions and the "stable" stuff was so old... It seems
> the majority of users are using ~arch these days.
>
>
> I see it as a good thing, a sign that Gentoo is maturing beyond just  
> being a 'ricing' distro. Its now possible to have the best of both  
> worlds, whether you want the stability of well tested packages from  
> ARCH, or the chance to get newer packages, but with a chance of bugs  
> and potential breakage by using ~ARCH.
>
> Im a happy ~ARCH user myself, and have been for a long time, however  
> i do stick to using plain ARCH on my little server just to keep it  
> stable and happy.
>
> - Nick

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Re: [gentoo-user] Anxiousness? [was:Tips/Tricks for Gentoo on low-spec computer?]

[Peter Alfredsen]

On Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:36:58 +0100
"b.n." <brullonulla@gmail.com> wrote:

> Mark Knecht ha scritto:
> 
> >    The one thing I would respectfully suggest is that you carefully
> > build your own portage overlay. My experience with Gentoo over the
> > last few years is that there is a _anxiousness_ in the portage
> > maintainer area to move newer revisions of software into portage
> > quickly and then just as quickly to remove from portage what users
> > are currently using. 

@Mark
That's certainly true in the sense that we loathe maintaining
several revisions of the same software. Each Gentoo maintainer can
maintain anywhere from 1 to $BIG_NUM packages, so we strive to have in
general at most three versions in portage at any given time. We don't
really want bug reports about $old_stable if it's been fixed in a
$new_stable. We're not backport-monkeys, like Ubuntu. We do what we do
cause we like solving complex problems, interacting with the smart
people we call 'users'[1] and our fellow devs,  not because "svn diff"
is our BFF. :-)

> I am usually a bit annoyed by the contrary. On an almost 1-year old
> Kubuntu (8.04 Hardy Heron) I can find packages that are just barely
> x86 stable now on Gentoo.
>
> A couple of examples I am aware of:
> Firefox 3: stable just since one month on Gentoo x86, was included in
> KB8.04 Qtiplot: 0.9.x stable and working on KB8.04, all releases ~x86
> (and a hell to compile on a stable system -still didn't manage to do
> it) in Gentoo.

I don't know about qtiplot but Firefox-3 was blocked by the fact that
there were stability problems the first many months, compared to
firefox-2. I remember random crashes, etc. Then we had a mysterious bug
where it would segfault on first start if compiled with
USE="xulrunner", i.e. using the system libxul, but not if we used the
bundled one. Then we had some problems with hardened Gentoo, Sparc
getting bus errors, etc. If you remember firefox-2 when first it came
out, it also had the same kinds of problems. I think it wasn't before
2.0.0.11 that I migrated from 1.5.

Gentoo has many arches and the more popular a package is, the more
bugreports will come, the harder it will be to mark it stable. Firefox
is especially hard to maintain because users use it so very much.

> Python releases are often behind, and not mentioning KDE 4, which is
> even default on 8.10 Kubuntu and on Gentoo was still hardmasked last
> time I checked (but probably Gentoo is just right in this respect,
> everyone keeps telling me to wait before digging into KDE 4).

Python is a special case. Portage (emerge and friends) use it, so we
always try to have as few bugs as possible in the versions that are put
into the tree. Kde 4.1 is broken, compared to 3.5.9/10. I tried it and I
don't want it. The problem we have now is that 3.5.10 is starting to
bitrot, so we'll probably *have* to mark 4.2 stable.

> I fully understand that there are good reasons for that, and that the
> meta-distribution status of Gentoo makes harder to check packages (and
> also that the Ubuntu folks wildly release unstable stuff... firefox 3
> rc in 8.04, for example). I just feel that (stable) Gentoo is
> actually a bit *behind* the average Linux distribution in its
> revisions of software.

You asked for stable, you got it. We're usually faster than Debian
stable though.
 
> Most importantly, I also feel that that's something new: when I first
> installed my system, more than 4 years ago, I felt it was *ahead*.

I did too, but then I was coming from Windows, so that's hardly
surprising :-)

No, seriously it didn't take long for me to go ~x86. I think it was
ati-drivers (oh noez!) and keeping them in sync with xorg-server that
drove me to it.

> I wonder if it's due just to the sheer increase of work required to
> test packages, or if there are decisions behind that (or if it's just
> me having false memories).

The amount of work has something to do with it, you (users) can help
there by filing stable requests if you see a package that you feel has
been ~arch for too long. We do react to nudges. Most of us, anyway. 

/PA

[1] It wouldn't really be much fun being a dev for Gentoo if we didn't
have the bestest users evers. Srsly :-). If you look at how many bug
reports there are and how many are at least partially solved by users
before a dev gets to it, it's quite humbling. Sometimes I can spend
hours being a commit-monkey for users who've posted bugreports that
makes solving the bug a matter of fifteen minutes, tops.

Re: [gentoo-user] Tips/Tricks for Gentoo on low-spec computer?

[Dirk Heinrichs]

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Am Dienstag, 20. Januar 2009 17:46:06 schrieb Grant Edwards:

> I'm in the process of installing Gentoo on a rather old
> machine. It's an old HP Pavilion with a 450MHz Celeron
> Mendocino and 256MB of PC133 SDRAM.  I'm using an nVidia PCI
> FX6200 video board instead of the i810 on-board chip, and it's
> got a decent hard drive (160GB).
>
> I was wondering if there were any particular tips/tricks for
> getting the best performance out of such a machine.  It's to be
> used for basic word processing and a few games.  Hopefully the
> nVidia 6200 will allow OpenGL to run fast enough for something
> like TuxRacer.

Don't know if this is possible with portage, I switched to paludis a long time 
ago. However, with paludis, one can setup several environments, each with a 
different set of USE flags, CFLAGS, etc., where each will be installed into a 
different root directory. Inside this root directory, everything looks like a 
normal install.

So you could mount the complete filesystem tree of the slow machine on a 
faster one (via NFS), compile everything on the fast machine and let it 
install to /root_of_slow_box.

> I chose XFCE for the desktop along with both Abiword and
> OpenOffice. I probably should have installed OOo from a binary
> package, but I decided to build it just to see how long it
> would take (so far it's at about 26 hours and counting).

Hehe, I once did a "Linux from Scratch" install on my Amiga. Compiling GCC 
took ages to complete, didn't even dare to think about something like OOo.

I always use FVWM on low power machines. It's quite fast and, with the crystal 
theme, looks very nice.

HTH...

	Dirk

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[gentoo-user] Re: Tips/Tricks for Gentoo on low-spec computer?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-01-20, Dirk Heinrichs <dirk.heinrichs@online.de> wrote:

> Don't know if this is possible with portage, I switched to
> paludis a long time ago. However, with paludis, one can setup
> several environments, each with a different set of USE flags,
> CFLAGS, etc., where each will be installed into a different
> root directory. Inside this root directory, everything looks
> like a normal install.
>
> So you could mount the complete filesystem tree of the slow
> machine on a faster one (via NFS), compile everything on the
> fast machine and let it install to /root_of_slow_box.

Thanks, that's an interesting option.  Next time I go through
this exercise I'll give it a try.

>> I chose XFCE for the desktop along with both Abiword and
>> OpenOffice. I probably should have installed OOo from a binary
>> package, but I decided to build it just to see how long it
>> would take (so far it's at about 26 hours and counting).
>
> Hehe, I once did a "Linux from Scratch" install on my Amiga.
> Compiling GCC took ages to complete, didn't even dare to think
> about something like OOo.
>
> I always use FVWM on low power machines. It's quite fast and,
> with the crystal theme, looks very nice.

I used fvwm (and fvwm2) for many years (starting with a 25MHz
80486 with 8MB of RAM) before switching to XFCE 5-6 years ago.
About 10 years ago I configured a couple manufacturing test
stations with fvwm95 so that they would be comfortable for
people who normally used MS Windows.  I think a couple of the
users never even realized it was Linux.

There was something in particular that prompted my change from
fvwm2 to XFCE, but I can't remember what it was...

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! RHAPSODY in Glue!
                                  at               
                               visi.com            

Re: [gentoo-user] Tips/Tricks for Gentoo on low-spec computer?

[kashani]

Grant Edwards wrote:
> I'm in the process of installing Gentoo on a rather old
> machine. It's an old HP Pavilion with a 450MHz Celeron
> Mendocino and 256MB of PC133 SDRAM.  I'm using an nVidia PCI
> FX6200 video board instead of the i810 on-board chip, and it's
> got a decent hard drive (160GB).
> 
> I was wondering if there were any particular tips/tricks for
> getting the best performance out of such a machine.  It's to be
> used for basic word processing and a few games.  Hopefully the
> nVidia 6200 will allow OpenGL to run fast enough for something
> like TuxRacer.
> 
> I chose XFCE for the desktop along with both Abiword and
> OpenOffice. I probably should have installed OOo from a binary
> package, but I decided to build it just to see how long it
> would take (so far it's at about 26 hours and counting).
> 

I usually just pull the drive and put it in a faster computer. Build the 
OS with conservative CFLAGs and swap the drive back when done. I've 
rarely had issues with this.

kashani

Re: [gentoo-user] Tips/Tricks for Gentoo on low-spec computer?

[Dale]

Grant Edwards wrote:
> I'm in the process of installing Gentoo on a rather old
> machine. It's an old HP Pavilion with a 450MHz Celeron
> Mendocino and 256MB of PC133 SDRAM.  I'm using an nVidia PCI
> FX6200 video board instead of the i810 on-board chip, and it's
> got a decent hard drive (160GB).
>
> I was wondering if there were any particular tips/tricks for
> getting the best performance out of such a machine.  It's to be
> used for basic word processing and a few games.  Hopefully the
> nVidia 6200 will allow OpenGL to run fast enough for something
> like TuxRacer.
>
> I chose XFCE for the desktop along with both Abiword and
> OpenOffice. I probably should have installed OOo from a binary
> package, but I decided to build it just to see how long it
> would take (so far it's at about 26 hours and counting).
>
>   

I used to have several older puters here and what I always did was put
the hard drive in my main machine, chroot in and do my installs.  It has
worked for me so far.  I have also done my upgrades that way too. 

Note, this may not work if you are using a 64 bit and putting the drive
in a 32 bit system.  That part I have never done. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Tips/Tricks for Gentoo on low-spec computer?

[Steven Lembark]

> I'm in the process of installing Gentoo on a rather old
> machine. It's an old HP Pavilion with a 450MHz Celeron
> Mendocino and 256MB of PC133 SDRAM.  I'm using an nVidia PCI
> FX6200 video board instead of the i810 on-board chip, and it's
> got a decent hard drive (160GB).
> 
> I was wondering if there were any particular tips/tricks for
> getting the best performance out of such a machine.  It's to be
> used for basic word processing and a few games.  Hopefully the
> nVidia 6200 will allow OpenGL to run fast enough for something
> like TuxRacer.
> 
> I chose XFCE for the desktop along with both Abiword and
> OpenOffice. I probably should have installed OOo from a binary
> package, but I decided to build it just to see how long it
> would take (so far it's at about 26 hours and counting).

Fvwm is lightweight.

Make a point of compiling the kernel without anything
you don't need; if you might need something then make
it a module.

Don't run daemon's you don't really need. For example,
log into the command line and use "startx" or "xinit"
rather than having the thing boot into an X11 login.

Use a large amount of swap compared to ram (with your
drive maybe 2G) and avoid tmpfs for working storage.

If all you're using the thing for is surfing or basic
development then it should work fine. The old standard
for using X11 was a minimum 12MB of core and 40MB disk.
For a long time that was difficult, then IDE came along
and big disks got cheaper :-)

-- 
Steven Lembark                                            85-09 90th St.
Workhorse Computing                                 Woodhaven, NY, 11421
lembark@wrkhors.com                                      +1 888 359 3508