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

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

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Dienstag 20 Januar 2009, 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).

if you don't need any special features, kde+koffice needs less ram than 
xfce+openoffice.

And installing ooo from source is unsupport. The build breaks all the time and 
you don't get anything from it. All it does is starting a second faster. It 
does not need less ram nor does it run faster.

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

[Paul Hartman]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann
<volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Dienstag 20 Januar 2009, 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).
>
> if you don't need any special features, kde+koffice needs less ram than
> xfce+openoffice.
>
> And installing ooo from source is unsupport. The build breaks all the time and
> you don't get anything from it. All it does is starting a second faster. It
> does not need less ram nor does it run faster.

OOo from source uses the Go-Oo.org patch set, the binary does not (AFAIK)

but, yes, watching compile die after an hour (or 20) is no fun :P

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

[Alejandro]

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2009/1/20 Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com>

> On Dienstag 20 Januar 2009, 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).
>
> if you don't need any special features, kde+koffice needs less ram than
> xfce+openoffice.
>
> And installing ooo from source is unsupport. The build breaks all the time
> and
> you don't get anything from it. All it does is starting a second faster. It
> does not need less ram nor does it run faster.
>
>
>
"installing ooo from source is unsupport" How is this? Maybe you
missundertand i think he run emerge openoffice and not openoffice-bin

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

[Nick Cunningham]

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2009/1/20 Alejandro <elcorreodeale@gmail.com>

>
>
> 2009/1/20 Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com>
>
>> On Dienstag 20 Januar 2009, 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).
>>
>> if you don't need any special features, kde+koffice needs less ram than
>> xfce+openoffice.
>>
>> And installing ooo from source is unsupport. The build breaks all the time
>> and
>> you don't get anything from it. All it does is starting a second faster.
>> It
>> does not need less ram nor does it run faster.
>>
>>
>>
> "installing ooo from source is unsupport" How is this? Maybe you
> missundertand i think he run emerge openoffice and not openoffice-bin
>

I believe he means that generally speaking, trying to build OO from source
on a low-end (and especially low RAM) machine is ill-advised and can often
be the cause of build failures as OO is well known to require a lot of RAM
and hdd space while it compiles.

- Nick

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

[Paul Hartman]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 11:22 AM, Nick Cunningham <nick@monkeydust.net> wrote:
>
>
> 2009/1/20 Alejandro <elcorreodeale@gmail.com>
>>
>>
>> 2009/1/20 Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com>
>>>
>>> On Dienstag 20 Januar 2009, 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).
>>>
>>> if you don't need any special features, kde+koffice needs less ram than
>>> xfce+openoffice.
>>>
>>> And installing ooo from source is unsupport. The build breaks all the
>>> time and
>>> you don't get anything from it. All it does is starting a second faster.
>>> It
>>> does not need less ram nor does it run faster.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> "installing ooo from source is unsupport" How is this? Maybe you
>> missundertand i think he run emerge openoffice and not openoffice-bin
>
> I believe he means that generally speaking, trying to build OO from source
> on a low-end (and especially low RAM) machine is ill-advised and can often
> be the cause of build failures as OO is well known to require a lot of RAM
> and hdd space while it compiles.
>
> - Nick
>

I know it needs 5gb+ of tmpdir space, but compiling it with 256mb may
be futile :)

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

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Tue, 20 Jan 2009 11:32:02 -0600, Paul Hartman wrote:

> I know it needs 5gb+ of tmpdir space, but compiling it with 256mb may
> be futile :)

Not if he's got plenty of swap, it'll just run even slower. Expect a new
Debian release before OOo finishes building :)


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today.

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

[Dirk Heinrichs]

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Am Dienstag, 20. Januar 2009 19:42:47 schrieb Neil Bothwick:

> Not if he's got plenty of swap, it'll just run even slower. Expect a new
> Debian release before OOo finishes building :)

LOL, can't imagine that it compiles _that_ slow ;-)

Bye...

	Dirk

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

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-01-20, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Jan 2009 11:32:02 -0600, Paul Hartman wrote:
>
>> I know it needs 5gb+ of tmpdir space, but compiling it with
>> 256mb may be futile :)
>
> Not if he's got plenty of swap, it'll just run even slower.
> Expect a new Debian release before OOo finishes building :)

I've got 256MB of RAM plus 1GB of swap space.  I'm sort of
torturing the poor machine -- in addition to the OOo build, I'm
emerging some other miscellaneous stuff (sdl-mixer at the
moment).

With the two emerge jobs running, there is 32MB of swap is
in-use (unchanged for several minutes).  That's not bad
considering that the OOo build's cc1plus process RSS climbs up
to 100+ MB at times.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! On the road, ZIPPY
                                  at               is a pinhead without a
                               visi.com            purpose, but never without
                                                   a POINT.

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

[Daniel Troeder]

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Am Dienstag, den 20.01.2009, 19:37 +0000 schrieb Grant Edwards:
> On 2009-01-20, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> > On Tue, 20 Jan 2009 11:32:02 -0600, Paul Hartman wrote:
> >
> >> I know it needs 5gb+ of tmpdir space, but compiling it with
> >> 256mb may be futile :)
> >
> > Not if he's got plenty of swap, it'll just run even slower.
> > Expect a new Debian release before OOo finishes building :)
> 
> I've got 256MB of RAM plus 1GB of swap space.  I'm sort of
> torturing the poor machine -- in addition to the OOo build, I'm
> emerging some other miscellaneous stuff (sdl-mixer at the
> moment).
> 
> With the two emerge jobs running, there is 32MB of swap is
> in-use (unchanged for several minutes).  That's not bad
> considering that the OOo build's cc1plus process RSS climbs up
> to 100+ MB at times.
I once got OOos binaries to be _a_bit_ smaller by manually patching the
ebuild to allow "-Os". But it turned out, that it wasn't worth it,
because the next update I had to recompile the hole thing for hours and
hours again, and what I had won was to little to be worth the hassle.

If "-Os" worked depended on both the OOo version and the GCC version...
and there goes another compile for hours and hours...

Was an interesting experience, but not worth it in the long run.

Bye,
Daniel

 
-- 
PGP key @ http://pgpkeys.pca.dfn.de/pks/lookup?search=0xBB9D4887&op=get
# gpg --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://subkeys.pgp.net 0xBB9D4887


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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:

>> I believe he means that generally speaking, trying to build OO from source
>> on a low-end (and especially low RAM) machine is ill-advised and can often
>> be the cause of build failures as OO is well known to require a lot of RAM
>> and hdd space while it compiles.
>
> I know it needs 5gb+ of tmpdir space, but compiling it with 256mb may
> be futile :)

It's been chugging away for about 30 hours now, so we'll see. :)

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! Are we laid back yet?
                                  at               
                               visi.com            

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

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-01-20, Grant Edwards <grante@visi.com> wrote:
> On 2009-01-20, Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> I believe he means that generally speaking, trying to build OO from source
>>> on a low-end (and especially low RAM) machine is ill-advised and can often
>>> be the cause of build failures as OO is well known to require a lot of RAM
>>> and hdd space while it compiles.
>>
>> I know it needs 5gb+ of tmpdir space, but compiling it with 256mb may
>> be futile :)
>
> It's been chugging away for about 30 hours now, so we'll see. :)

For the morbidly curious, he OOo emerge finished succesfully
after 34.77 hours.  The machine has 256MB of RAM (PC133 SDRAM)
with 1GB of swap:

   pavilion log # cat /proc/cpuinfo                            
   processor       : 0
   vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
   cpu family      : 6
   model           : 6
   model name      : Celeron (Mendocino)
   stepping        : 5
   cpu MHz         : 434.314
   cache size      : 128 KB
   fdiv_bug        : no
   hlt_bug         : no
   f00f_bug        : no
   coma_bug        : no
   fpu             : yes
   fpu_exception   : yes
   cpuid level     : 2
   wp              : yes
   flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr
   bogomips        : 868.62
   clflush size    : 32
   power management:

I don't yet know if OOo actually works (the machine is headless
and keyboardless at the moment).  


-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! This MUST be a good
                                  at               party -- My RIB CAGE is
                               visi.com            being painfully pressed up
                                                   against someone's MARTINI!!

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

[Steven Lembark]

> I believe he means that generally speaking, trying to build OO from
> source on a low-end (and especially low RAM) machine is ill-advised and
> can often be the cause of build failures as OO is well known to require
> a lot of RAM and hdd space while it compiles.

He has plenty of disk. It may use a lot of
virtual memory, but with sufficient swap it
will [eventually] get done.

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

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

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Dienstag 20 Januar 2009, Alejandro wrote:
> 2009/1/20 Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com>
>
> > On Dienstag 20 Januar 2009, 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).
> >
> > if you don't need any special features, kde+koffice needs less ram than
> > xfce+openoffice.
> >
> > And installing ooo from source is unsupport. The build breaks all the
> > time and
> > you don't get anything from it. All it does is starting a second faster.
> > It does not need less ram nor does it run faster.
>
> "installing ooo from source is unsupport" How is this? Maybe you
> missundertand i think he run emerge openoffice and not openoffice-bin

http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=123104511608102&w=2

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

[Paul Hartman]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 11:27 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann
<volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Dienstag 20 Januar 2009, Alejandro wrote:
>> 2009/1/20 Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com>
>>
>> > On Dienstag 20 Januar 2009, 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).
>> >
>> > if you don't need any special features, kde+koffice needs less ram than
>> > xfce+openoffice.
>> >
>> > And installing ooo from source is unsupport. The build breaks all the
>> > time and
>> > you don't get anything from it. All it does is starting a second faster.
>> > It does not need less ram nor does it run faster.
>>
>> "installing ooo from source is unsupport" How is this? Maybe you
>> missundertand i think he run emerge openoffice and not openoffice-bin
>
> http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=123104511608102&w=2
>
>
>
>

I think that (old) mask quoted in that person's message is because
OpenOffice before 2.0.4 did not support 64-bit compiling at all.

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

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Dienstag 20 Januar 2009, Paul Hartman wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 11:27 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann
>
> <volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > On Dienstag 20 Januar 2009, Alejandro wrote:
> >> 2009/1/20 Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com>
> >>
> >> > On Dienstag 20 Januar 2009, 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).
> >> >
> >> > if you don't need any special features, kde+koffice needs less ram
> >> > than xfce+openoffice.
> >> >
> >> > And installing ooo from source is unsupport. The build breaks all the
> >> > time and
> >> > you don't get anything from it. All it does is starting a second
> >> > faster. It does not need less ram nor does it run faster.
> >>
> >> "installing ooo from source is unsupport" How is this? Maybe you
> >> missundertand i think he run emerge openoffice and not openoffice-bin
> >
> > http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=123104511608102&w=2
>
> I think that (old) mask quoted in that person's message is because
> OpenOffice before 2.0.4 did not support 64-bit compiling at all.

openoffice 3 isn't better.. yeah, it compiles in 64bit - sometimes.

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

[s3b4sm4gr1]

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2009/1/21 Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com>

> On Dienstag 20 Januar 2009, Paul Hartman wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 11:27 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann
> >
> > <volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > > On Dienstag 20 Januar 2009, Alejandro wrote:
> > >> 2009/1/20 Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com>
> > >>
> > >> > On Dienstag 20 Januar 2009, 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).
> > >> >
> > >> > if you don't need any special features, kde+koffice needs less ram
> > >> > than xfce+openoffice.
> > >> >
> > >> > And installing ooo from source is unsupport. The build breaks all
> the
> > >> > time and
> > >> > you don't get anything from it. All it does is starting a second
> > >> > faster. It does not need less ram nor does it run faster.
> > >>
> > >> "installing ooo from source is unsupport" How is this? Maybe you
> > >> missundertand i think he run emerge openoffice and not openoffice-bin
> > >
> > > http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=123104511608102&w=2
> >
> > I think that (old) mask quoted in that person's message is because
> > OpenOffice before 2.0.4 did not support 64-bit compiling at all.
>
> openoffice 3 isn't better.. yeah, it compiles in 64bit - sometimes.
>
>
>
You should consider using LXDE as DE, which is designed for low memory and
CPU usage...

I'm currently using it on a Celeron Coppermine @ 600Mhz with 256 of PC133
RAM and it goes fine, among with abiword, gnumeric and claws-mail for the
office work, consonance for music playing, and pidgin and conspire for
Instant Messaging...

Regards...


-- 
En el pasado creímos que se nos acababa
el petróleo, pero en realidad lo que se nos
acababan eran las IDEAS.
http://www.lacomunidadpetrolera.com
Gentoo/* (Linux #455615) www.gentoove.org
53:04:4e:b5:f9:7e:4a:fb:66:a2:19:12:da:d5:97:f8
8A3A C955 715D D88A 87CD  E21F F827 ADD7 F589 B4A4
Sebastian Magrí (sebasmagri) <sebasmagri_at_gmail_dot_com>

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

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-01-20, s3b4sm4gr1 <sebasmagri@gmail.com> wrote:

> You should consider using LXDE as DE, which is designed for low memory and
> CPU usage...

I'll take alook at LXDE.  I use XFCE on all my other machines,
so I was hoping to get by with in on this machine (which is
primarily for use by somebody else).

> I'm currently using it on a Celeron Coppermine @ 600Mhz with
> 256 of PC133 RAM and it goes fine, among with abiword,
> gnumeric and claws-mail for the office work, consonance for
> music playing,

I'll have to take a look at consonance as well.  I generally
just use mplayer running in a small terminal window, but that's
probably not going to pass muster for anybody else.

> and pidgin and conspire for Instant Messaging...

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! I don't understand
                                  at               the HUMOUR of the THREE
                               visi.com            STOOGES!!

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

[Dale]

s3b4sm4gr1 wrote:
>
>
>
> You should consider using LXDE as DE, which is designed for low memory
> and CPU usage...
>
> I'm currently using it on a Celeron Coppermine @ 600Mhz with 256 of
> PC133 RAM and it goes fine, among with abiword, gnumeric and
> claws-mail for the office work, consonance for music playing, and
> pidgin and conspire for Instant Messaging...
>
> Regards...
>
>
> -- 
> En el pasado creímos que se nos acababa
> el petróleo, pero en realidad lo que se nos
> acababan eran las IDEAS.
> http://www.lacomunidadpetrolera.com
> Gentoo/* (Linux #455615) www.gentoove.org <http://www.gentoove.org>
> 53:04:4e:b5:f9:7e:4a:fb:66:a2:19:12:da:d5:97:f8
> 8A3A C955 715D D88A 87CD  E21F F827 ADD7 F589 B4A4
> Sebastian Magrí (sebasmagri) <sebasmagri_at_gmail_dot_com>
>


OK folks, all have a seat please.  I ran a full blown KDE on a 133Mhz
machine with 256Mbs of ram.  A friend if mine played Solitaire on it and
it worked well.  It even had sound on it. 

Yea, it took a while to boot but I told him this is Linux, just leave it
running 24/7.  Worked until the house burned down.

Close your mouths, you are catching flies.  LOL

Dale

:-)  :-) 

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

[Steven Lembark]

> OK folks, all have a seat please.  I ran a full blown KDE on a 133Mhz
> machine with 256Mbs of ram.  A friend if mine played Solitaire on it and
> it worked well.  It even had sound on it. 

I started running fvwm on a 486 w/ 16MB of core and
a pair of 20MB disk drives (one RLL one MFM). Face
it: we've all become addicted to amounts of RAM that
didn't even exist on the planet 25 years ago, let
alone disk :-)

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

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

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-01-24, Steven Lembark <lembark@wrkhors.com> wrote:
>
>> OK folks, all have a seat please.  I ran a full blown KDE on a 133Mhz
>> machine with 256Mbs of ram.  A friend if mine played Solitaire on it and
>> it worked well.  It even had sound on it. 
>
> I started running fvwm on a 486 w/ 16MB of core and
> a pair of 20MB disk drives (one RLL one MFM).

:)

That sounds like my first linux setup, except I started with
8MB of RAM and both of the 20MB drives were MFM ST506-style
drives. RLL was leading edge back then.  I remember running
SunOS and X on 68000 machines with 4MB of RAM.

> Face it: we've all become addicted to amounts of RAM that
> didn't even exist on the planet 25 years ago, let alone disk

Yup.  When I first started running Linux The only people who
talked about a gigbyte of RAM worked at places like DEC setting
up large clusters of machines that had resources a mere mortal
couldn't even dream of.

-- 
Grant

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

[Dale]

Steven Lembark wrote:
>> OK folks, all have a seat please.  I ran a full blown KDE on a 133Mhz
>> machine with 256Mbs of ram.  A friend if mine played Solitaire on it and
>> it worked well.  It even had sound on it. 
>>     
>
> I started running fvwm on a 486 w/ 16MB of core and
> a pair of 20MB disk drives (one RLL one MFM). Face
> it: we've all become addicted to amounts of RAM that
> didn't even exist on the planet 25 years ago, let
> alone disk :-)
>
>   

But when was this?  Mine was about a year ago or so.

Dale

:-)  :-)

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

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-01-20, Alejandro <elcorreodeale@gmail.com> wrote:

> "installing ooo from source is unsupport" How is this? Maybe
> you missundertand i think he run emerge openoffice and not
> openoffice-bin

Yes, that's what I meant.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! Am I in Milwaukee?
                                  at               
                               visi.com            

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

[Dale]

Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> On Dienstag 20 Januar 2009, 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).
>>     
>
> if you don't need any special features, kde+koffice needs less ram than 
> xfce+openoffice.
>
> And installing ooo from source is unsupport. The build breaks all the time and 
> you don't get anything from it. All it does is starting a second faster. It 
> does not need less ram nor does it run faster.
>
>
>
>   

It's funny, I have read a lot of people complain that the binary is the
same way but compiling from source works.  Interesting.  The reason I
was told I should compile my own is because it was more stable than the
binary. 

How do you figure that OOo from source is not supported?  Almost
everything in Gentoo is from source.  That's what Gentoo is, Linux From
Scratch with a neat package manager. Very neat I might add.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

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

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-01-21, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:

> It's funny, I have read a lot of people complain that the binary is the
> same way but compiling from source works.  Interesting.  The reason I
> was told I should compile my own is because it was more stable than the
> binary. 

The first time I tried installing OOo, I did the binary
install. It wouldn't run, so since then I've always built it.

> How do you figure that OOo from source is not supported?

I've been wondering that as well. I checked the package
database and the OOo ebuild is marked as stable for x86.  In my
book, that's "supported".  Of course that's not be the same
thing as "practical" for some machines (I believe my OOo emerge
just passed hour 31).  It would be interesting to know how much
further it's go to go, but as long as it's done in a week or so
that'll be good enough.  I remember building binutils, gcc,
X11, emacs, and so on from sources on a 25MHz 68000 with 4MB of
RAM -- that took some patience as well. 

-- 
Grant

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

[Paul Hartman]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 8:18 PM, Grant Edwards <grante@visi.com> wrote:
> On 2009-01-21, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It's funny, I have read a lot of people complain that the binary is the
>> same way but compiling from source works.  Interesting.  The reason I
>> was told I should compile my own is because it was more stable than the
>> binary.
>
> The first time I tried installing OOo, I did the binary
> install. It wouldn't run, so since then I've always built it.
>
>> How do you figure that OOo from source is not supported?
>
> I've been wondering that as well. I checked the package
> database and the OOo ebuild is marked as stable for x86.  In my
> book, that's "supported".  Of course that's not be the same
> thing as "practical" for some machines (I believe my OOo emerge
> just passed hour 31).  It would be interesting to know how much
> further it's go to go, but as long as it's done in a week or so
> that'll be good enough.  I remember building binutils, gcc,
> X11, emacs, and so on from sources on a 25MHz 68000 with 4MB of
> RAM -- that took some patience as well.

Latest OOo 3.0 source compile for me took 1hr 34 minutes on my
dual-core E6600 overclocked to 3ghz with 8 gigs of RAM :P

i don't know what that translates to in your machine speed. I have
6000 bogomips for each core according to /proc/cpuinfo (I know it's
not a benchmark)

Paul

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

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-01-21, Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:

>> (I believe my OOo emerge
>> just passed hour 31).  It would be interesting to know how much
>> further it's got to go
>
> Latest OOo 3.0 source compile for me took 1hr 34 minutes on my
> dual-core E6600 overclocked to 3ghz with 8 gigs of RAM :P

I'm not sure I can extrapolate based on that. :) I do remember
that OOo 2 used to build overnight on a 650MHz laptop I had, so
I'm guessing it should be done soon (in the next 10-20 hours).

-- 
Grant

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

[Paul Hartman]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 9:49 PM, Grant Edwards <grante@visi.com> wrote:
> On 2009-01-21, Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> (I believe my OOo emerge
>>> just passed hour 31).  It would be interesting to know how much
>>> further it's got to go
>>
>> Latest OOo 3.0 source compile for me took 1hr 34 minutes on my
>> dual-core E6600 overclocked to 3ghz with 8 gigs of RAM :P
>
> I'm not sure I can extrapolate based on that. :) I do remember
> that OOo 2 used to build overnight on a 650MHz laptop I had, so
> I'm guessing it should be done soon (in the next 10-20 hours).

Well the good news is that OOo 3 takes MUCH less time to compile than 2.x

My last compile of OOo 2.4.1 on this same box took 2 hours 43
minutes... 75% slower than OOo 3.0.

Let us know when it is done :) It can be used as a benchmark to
determine how long other packages may take on that machine.

Paul

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

[Shawn Haggett]

On Wed, 21 Jan 2009 12:48:00 pm Grant Edwards wrote:
> <snip> Of course that's not be the same
> thing as "practical" for some machines (I believe my OOo emerge
> just passed hour 31).  It would be interesting to know how much
> further it's go to go, but as long as it's done in a week or so
> that'll be good enough.  I remember building binutils, gcc,
> X11, emacs, and so on from sources on a 25MHz 68000 with 4MB of
> RAM -- that took some patience as well.

Have a look at the 'genlop' package.

[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

[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?

[Dirk Heinrichs]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1683 bytes --]

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

[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part. --]
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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