Re: [gentoo-user] Anyone running a Netbook satisfactorily on Gentoo?

[Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com>]

>> I've installed and updated Gentoo on my girlfriend's Acer Aspire One
>> netbook and it's just so slow.  The only things I can think of to
>> speed it up would be to upgrade the RAM from 1GB (not sure if that's
>> possible) and/or swap out the SSD for a HD.  Anyone running a netbook
>> not excruciatingly slow?
>>
>> - Grant
>>
>
> I've got an Acer One for my father. I don't know the exact type; it is
> the one with the 8GB SSD.
>
> I found it quiet usable, installed Gentoo with a minimal KDE3 on it.
> Compiled with -Os, of course. RAM usage is below 256MB most of the time.
> The only things I didn't get to work are 3D acceleration and the SSD
> card slots but I haven't invested much time into it.
>
> The slowest part of the system is the SSD. It really slows things done
> when they are loaded for the first time (for example the HTML part of
> Konqueror takes 3s to load AFTER Konqueror itself came up).
>
> The rest of the system is pretty fast for my expectations.I compiled
> most things in a chroot on my Celeron notebook (2 or 3 times the speed)
> before moving it over but I really found compiling not _that_ slow. Its
> usable for most regular updates and even kernels and such alike. For
> larger packages, I mount an NFS share on /var/tmp/portage because I
> don't want to wear down the SSD.
>
> Other tips:
> Use ext2 FS. You don't want the journalling to cost you even more
> performance and wear down the SSD.
>
> I wouldn't use laptop-mode. You don't want it to bog down the system
> when it decides to flush its write cache.
>
> No syslog, it will only wear down the disk with many small write cycles.
>
> Use the noop IO scheduler (boot parameter elevator=noop). There is no
> need for a scheduler on an SSD.
>
> ArchLinux also recommends deactivating DRI ('Option "DRI" "0"' in
> xorg.conf) to free up 32MB of memory.
>
> Hope this helps.

Thanks guys, these are the kinds of tips I need.  I really want this
thing to work out so I can switch over to one.  Lemme see if I've got
this:

1. run xfce4 (already do)
2. compile with -Os (I was using -O2)
3. use ext2 (I was using ext3)
4. don't use laptop-mode (I didn't know it existed)
5. no syslog (does this mean don't even emerge a system logger like metalog?)
6. use elevator=noop at boot
7. deactivate DRI
8. upgrade RAM to the max

Sound about right?

- Grant