[gentoo-user] Re: cflags for atom

[James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com>]

Adam Carter <adamcarter3 <at> gmail.com> writes:



> The i686 and -Os ideas are interesting. 

SMALL is better. I've run numerous embedded and minimized gentoo systems
over the years. 

Here is the make.conf from a i586:
CHOST="i486-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-Os -march=i586 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
PORTAGE_NICENESS="1"

MAKEOPTS="-j2"
USE="-* -nls mmx hardened  ncurses ssl crypt berkdb tcpd pam perl pcre \
python readline zlib bzip2 nptl nptlonly syslog"

MINIMIZE your efforts!


> Also - try diffing the kernel .configs - maybe you missed something
> important on the slow system. 

I spent days  building several kernels; keep at least 2 so when you minimize
yourself into oblivion, you can recover with the known, working
kernel. Days and Days of  minimize-test-reboot (rinse and repeat)
before I got a minimized hardened kernel, that worked well. SMALL is
superior to OPTIMIZED, ihmo.

That said, if you are trying to make it a graphically minimized
portable workstation, experiment with only what you need.
HTOP is the best app to watch along with IOtop, as you use the
system. Published benchmarks will be mostly irrelevant, imho.

Here is a busy, i586 


Load average:   0.00   0.00   0.00
mem  9/248 MB
CPU  2.0%

[1] www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/embedded/handbook/



ymmv,
James