[gentoo-user] Would a Thinkpad X200 be too much trouble too run gentoo on?

[gentoo-user] Would a Thinkpad X200 be too much trouble too run gentoo on?

[Dex Conner]

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Hi everyone,

So I've found a Thinkpad X200 online and I'm thinking of buying it for
libreboot purposes. Do you think the P8600 cpu can handle all the
compiling on gentoo? For the record, I don't have any of the "big stuff"
like KDE, GNOME, Firefox (all I have is Tor Browser [which I don't
compile], dwl and some terminal programs like neomutt and profanity).
Surely, I wouldn't be spending 5 hours to do small upgrades,
right?..right?

Thank you
--
Dex

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Re: [gentoo-user] Would a Thinkpad X200 be too much trouble too run gentoo on?

[Michael Orlitzky]

On Thu, 2022-04-21 at 15:49 +0300, Dex Conner wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> So I've found a Thinkpad X200 online and I'm thinking of buying it for
> libreboot purposes. Do you think the P8600 cpu can handle all the
> compiling on gentoo? For the record, I don't have any of the "big stuff"
> like KDE, GNOME, Firefox (all I have is Tor Browser [which I don't
> compile], dwl and some terminal programs like neomutt and profanity).
> Surely, I wouldn't be spending 5 hours to do small upgrades,
> right?..right?
> 
> 

It's getting harder and harder. There's always GCC, which is going to
take you most of the day to build and will probably require -j1 to keep
you from running out of memory. But aside from that, the big ones are

  * dev-lang/rust: pulled in by anything that needs SVG support unless 
    you unmask an old insecure version of librsvg or can tolerate half-
    broken SVG support. This takes over 24h, requires -j1, and gets
    worse every day because it bundles all of its (growing list of) 
    dependencies.

  * LLVM: needed by rust, some video cards, and certain picky packages.
    This one is at least _legitimately_ large but has annoying point 
    releases every once in a while that trigger a rebuild for little 
    benefit. Again, expect ~24h.

  * net-libs/webkit-gtk: if you're avoiding firefox (which is huge, 
    and requires rust, which is huge), then this is your best bet for 
    a browser engine. Even if you don't use it directly, other apps
    like evolution (mail client) can pull it in. It too is huge, just
    not as bad as the others. This one finishes in something like 18h 
    for me.

Everything else that's packaged well and uses a sane programming
language shouldn't give you much trouble.

Re: [gentoo-user] Would a Thinkpad X200 be too much trouble too run gentoo on?

[Matt Connell (Gmail)]

On Thu, 2022-04-21 at 09:09 -0400, Michael Orlitzky wrote:
> dev-lang/rust

There is rust-bin, though.  I use rust-bin on even brand new machines
and even though I try to use source builds whenever because I just
can't be bothered with the compilation problems and time.

> net-libs/webkit-gtk

OP isn't using evolution so they may be able to dodge this one.

Re: [gentoo-user] Would a Thinkpad X200 be too much trouble too run gentoo on?

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Thu, 21 Apr 2022 09:09:16 -0400, Michael Orlitzky wrote:

> It's getting harder and harder. There's always GCC, which is going to
> take you most of the day to build and will probably require -j1 to keep
> you from running out of memory. But aside from that, the big ones are
> 
>   * dev-lang/rust: pulled in by anything that needs SVG support unless 
>     you unmask an old insecure version of librsvg or can tolerate half-
>     broken SVG support. This takes over 24h, requires -j1, and gets
>     worse every day because it bundles all of its (growing list of) 
>     dependencies.
> 
>   * LLVM: needed by rust, some video cards, and certain picky packages.
>     This one is at least _legitimately_ large but has annoying point 
>     releases every once in a while that trigger a rebuild for little 
>     benefit. Again, expect ~24h.
> 
>   * net-libs/webkit-gtk: if you're avoiding firefox (which is huge, 
>     and requires rust, which is huge), then this is your best bet for 
>     a browser engine. Even if you don't use it directly, other apps
>     like evolution (mail client) can pull it in. It too is huge, just
>     not as bad as the others. This one finishes in something like 18h 
>     for me.

Firefox and Rust have -bin packages - not so lucky with LLVM and
webkit-gtk.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle: The location of all objects cannot be
known simultaneously. Corollary: If a lost thing is found, something else
will disappear.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Would a Thinkpad X200 be too much trouble too run gentoo on?

[Michael Orlitzky]

On Thu, 2022-04-21 at 14:31 +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> 
> Firefox and Rust have -bin packages - not so lucky with LLVM and
> webkit-gtk.
> 

Everything has a -bin package if you're willing to trade the security,
configurability, and performance that you get from a source build:

https://gentoo.osuosl.org/experimental/amd64/binpkg/default/linux/17.1/x86-64/

FWIW I dodge the librsvg (and therefore rust) dependency by using a
binpkg for my desktop icons. There's no (security, configurability, or
performance) issues with using pre-built icons, and only a few tiny
things are left a little bit broken. So, a normal day in Gentoo.

Re: [gentoo-user] Would a Thinkpad X200 be too much trouble too run gentoo on?

[Matt Connell (Gmail)]

On Thu, 2022-04-21 at 09:41 -0400, Michael Orlitzky wrote:
> FWIW I dodge the librsvg (and therefore rust) dependency by using a
> binpkg for my desktop icons.

Clever.  Unfortunately for me I still need gimp and evince and a few
others that depend on it, otherwise I'd be tempted to try to replicate
that.

Re: [gentoo-user] Would a Thinkpad X200 be too much trouble too run gentoo on?

[Peter Humphrey]

On Thursday, 21 April 2022 14:10:13 -00 Matt Connell (Gmail) wrote:
> On Thu, 2022-04-21 at 09:41 -0400, Michael Orlitzky wrote:
> > FWIW I dodge the librsvg (and therefore rust) dependency by using a
> > binpkg for my desktop icons.
> 
> Clever.  Unfortunately for me I still need gimp and evince and a few
> others that depend on it, otherwise I'd be tempted to try to replicate
> that.

Clever indeed, but here:

  gnome-base/librsvg-2.52.6 pulled in by:
    app-text/djvu-3.5.28-r1 requires gnome-base/librsvg
    media-gfx/gimp-2.10.30 requires >=gnome-base/librsvg-2.40.6:2
    media-gfx/imagemagick-7.1.0.13 requires gnome-base/librsvg
    media-libs/gegl-0.4.34 requires >=gnome-base/librsvg-2.40.6:2
    media-video/ffmpeg-4.4.1-r5 requires gnome-base/librsvg:
2/2=[abi_x86_64(-)], gnome-base/librsvg:2=[abi_x86_64(-)]
    x11-libs/gtk+-2.24.33 requires gnome-base/librsvg[abi_x86_64(-)]
    x11-libs/gtk+-3.24.31 requires gnome-base/librsvg[abi_x86_64(-)]
    x11-themes/adwaita-icon-theme-41.0 requires >=gnome-base/librsvg-2.48:2

Not many icon packages in there.

-- 
Regards,
Peter.

Re: [gentoo-user] Would a Thinkpad X200 be too much trouble too run gentoo on?

[Michael Orlitzky]

On Thu, 2022-04-21 at 15:41 +0000, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> 
> Clever indeed, but here:
> 
>   gnome-base/librsvg-2.52.6 pulled in by:
>     app-text/djvu-3.5.28-r1 requires gnome-base/librsvg
>     media-gfx/gimp-2.10.30 requires >=gnome-base/librsvg-2.40.6:2
>     media-gfx/imagemagick-7.1.0.13 requires gnome-base/librsvg
>     media-libs/gegl-0.4.34 requires >=gnome-base/librsvg-2.40.6:2
>     media-video/ffmpeg-4.4.1-r5 requires gnome-base/librsvg:
> 2/2=[abi_x86_64(-)], gnome-base/librsvg:2=[abi_x86_64(-)]
>     x11-libs/gtk+-2.24.33 requires gnome-base/librsvg[abi_x86_64(-)]
>     x11-libs/gtk+-3.24.31 requires gnome-base/librsvg[abi_x86_64(-)]
>     x11-themes/adwaita-icon-theme-41.0 requires >=gnome-base/librsvg-2.48:2
> 
> 

GTK itself doesn't *really* need it. You'll just get warnings (and no
image) if it tries to render an SVG for some reason. ffmpeg and
imagemagick only need it to convert SVGs, which you can do with
inkscape instead. I'm not sure about djvu but I'd guess it's the same.

GIMP is annoying. It doesn't actually need librsvg for anything but
importing SVGs, and it used to be completely optional. The maintainers
have removed the option however, and don't want to put it back. In
theory it would be trivial to patch out (their words), but I haven't
bothered to try it.

Re: [gentoo-user] Would a Thinkpad X200 be too much trouble too run gentoo on?

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Thu, 21 Apr 2022 09:41:55 -0400, Michael Orlitzky wrote:

> > Firefox and Rust have -bin packages - not so lucky with LLVM and
> > webkit-gtk.
> 
> Everything has a -bin package if you're willing to trade the security,
> configurability, and performance that you get from a source build:


> https://gentoo.osuosl.org/experimental/amd64/binpkg/default/linux/17.1/x86-64/

I was referring to the upstream-provided packages. Everything is
available as a binary package if you have someone to build it for you ;-)
 
> FWIW I dodge the librsvg (and therefore rust) dependency by using a
> binpkg for my desktop icons. There's no (security, configurability, or
> performance) issues with using pre-built icons, and only a few tiny
> things are left a little bit broken. So, a normal day in Gentoo.

dev-python/cryptography now depends on rust, so it's getting harder to
avoid :(


-- 
Neil Bothwick

I believe the technical term is "Oops!"

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Re: [gentoo-user] Would a Thinkpad X200 be too much trouble too run gentoo on?

[Dex Conner]

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On 22/04/21 09:09AM, Michael Orlitzky wrote:
> On Thu, 2022-04-21 at 15:49 +0300, Dex Conner wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> > 
> > So I've found a Thinkpad X200 online and I'm thinking of buying it for
> > libreboot purposes. Do you think the P8600 cpu can handle all the
> > compiling on gentoo? For the record, I don't have any of the "big stuff"
> > like KDE, GNOME, Firefox (all I have is Tor Browser [which I don't
> > compile], dwl and some terminal programs like neomutt and profanity).
> > Surely, I wouldn't be spending 5 hours to do small upgrades,
> > right?..right?
> > 
> > 
> 
> It's getting harder and harder. There's always GCC, which is going to
> take you most of the day to build and will probably require -j1 to keep
> you from running out of memory. But aside from that, the big ones are
> 
>   * dev-lang/rust: pulled in by anything that needs SVG support unless 
>     you unmask an old insecure version of librsvg or can tolerate half-
>     broken SVG support. This takes over 24h, requires -j1, and gets
>     worse every day because it bundles all of its (growing list of) 
>     dependencies.
> 
>   * LLVM: needed by rust, some video cards, and certain picky packages.
>     This one is at least _legitimately_ large but has annoying point 
>     releases every once in a while that trigger a rebuild for little 
>     benefit. Again, expect ~24h.
> 
>   * net-libs/webkit-gtk: if you're avoiding firefox (which is huge, 
>     and requires rust, which is huge), then this is your best bet for 
>     a browser engine. Even if you don't use it directly, other apps
>     like evolution (mail client) can pull it in. It too is huge, just
>     not as bad as the others. This one finishes in something like 18h 
>     for me.
> 
> Everything else that's packaged well and uses a sane programming
> language shouldn't give you much trouble.

LLVM is annoying even on my current machine but I already avoid rust
with rust-bin and I don't have webkit-gtk. I'm wondering much of a remedy 
using a T400 with quad core mod would be to that 24h compile time. Not sure 
if it would be worth the 50-70 bucks, though. That's more than what the 
computer costs!

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Re: [gentoo-user] Would a Thinkpad X200 be too much trouble too run gentoo on?

[cal]

On 4/21/22 08:02, Dex Conner wrote:
> On 22/04/21 09:09AM, Michael Orlitzky wrote:
>> On Thu, 2022-04-21 at 15:49 +0300, Dex Conner wrote:
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> So I've found a Thinkpad X200 online and I'm thinking of buying it for
>>> libreboot purposes. Do you think the P8600 cpu can handle all the
>>> compiling on gentoo? For the record, I don't have any of the "big stuff"
>>> like KDE, GNOME, Firefox (all I have is Tor Browser [which I don't
>>> compile], dwl and some terminal programs like neomutt and profanity).
>>> Surely, I wouldn't be spending 5 hours to do small upgrades,
>>> right?..right?
>>>
>>>
>>
>> It's getting harder and harder. There's always GCC, which is going to
>> take you most of the day to build and will probably require -j1 to keep
>> you from running out of memory. But aside from that, the big ones are
>>
>>   * dev-lang/rust: pulled in by anything that needs SVG support unless 
>>     you unmask an old insecure version of librsvg or can tolerate half-
>>     broken SVG support. This takes over 24h, requires -j1, and gets
>>     worse every day because it bundles all of its (growing list of) 
>>     dependencies.
>>
>>   * LLVM: needed by rust, some video cards, and certain picky packages.
>>     This one is at least _legitimately_ large but has annoying point 
>>     releases every once in a while that trigger a rebuild for little 
>>     benefit. Again, expect ~24h.
>>
>>   * net-libs/webkit-gtk: if you're avoiding firefox (which is huge, 
>>     and requires rust, which is huge), then this is your best bet for 
>>     a browser engine. Even if you don't use it directly, other apps
>>     like evolution (mail client) can pull it in. It too is huge, just
>>     not as bad as the others. This one finishes in something like 18h 
>>     for me.
>>
>> Everything else that's packaged well and uses a sane programming
>> language shouldn't give you much trouble.
> 
> LLVM is annoying even on my current machine but I already avoid rust
> with rust-bin and I don't have webkit-gtk. I'm wondering much of a remedy 
> using a T400 with quad core mod would be to that 24h compile time. Not sure 
> if it would be worth the 50-70 bucks, though. That's more than what the 
> computer costs!
Do you have any other (more powerful) machines at home that you could
set up as a distcc cluster?  I've run Gentoo on a T420 and X220 (so two
generations newer than your X200), using my home desktop [i7-6700K] as a
distcc host for updates.  It's livable, but definitely the kind of thing
where I'd kick off an emerge --update and leave it running for several
hours while I'm doing something else.  I've also upgraded mine to 8GB
RAM which helps with certain builds.

In addition to the usual problem packages others have called out, the
main problem I ran into was heat dissipation: the X220 chassis is so
small that railing the CPU at 100% for hours on compiles was pushing the
temperature over 90 degrees celsius.  I disassembled the laptop and
applied new high quality thermal paste to the CPU/heatsink and it seems
to be doing a little better now.

cal

Re: [gentoo-user] Would a Thinkpad X200 be too much trouble too run gentoo on?

[Michael Orlitzky]

On Thu, 2022-04-21 at 08:24 -0700, cal wrote:
> 
> Do you have any other (more powerful) machines at home that you could
> set up as a distcc cluster?

My desktop is only slightly more powerful. I don't really mind the
webkit-gtk build time since it's shared between epiphany and evolution.
I just run that (and/or gcc) overnight when I need to.


> 
> In addition to the usual problem packages others have called out, the
> main problem I ran into was heat dissipation

I leave it on top of a giant fan or near an open window, weather
permitting.

Re: [gentoo-user] Would a Thinkpad X200 be too much trouble too run gentoo on?

[Michael]

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On Thursday, 21 April 2022 17:00:04 BST Michael Orlitzky wrote:
> On Thu, 2022-04-21 at 08:24 -0700, cal wrote:
> > Do you have any other (more powerful) machines at home that you could
> > set up as a distcc cluster?
> 
> My desktop is only slightly more powerful. I don't really mind the
> webkit-gtk build time since it's shared between epiphany and evolution.
> I just run that (and/or gcc) overnight when I need to.

I have an old Acer laptop with a Core 2 Duo P7550  @2.26GHz CPU and only 4G 
RAM.  It will compile everything, even rust and qtwebengine, although it may 
take more than a day to achieve this.  Hence I use a more modern PC to build 
binaries which I then transfer and emerge on the laptop in minutes.


> > In addition to the usual problem packages others have called out, the
> > main problem I ran into was heat dissipation
> 
> I leave it on top of a giant fan or near an open window, weather
> permitting.

Or, use some blocks/books to suspend it off the desk.  A couple of inches may 
be enough.  Alternatively, you can buy a cooling pad.  Some come with USB 
powered fans too, which help drop the CPU temperature by another couple of 
degrees.

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[gentoo-user] Re: Would a Thinkpad X200 be too much trouble too run gentoo on?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2022-04-21, Michael Orlitzky <mjo@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 2022-04-21 at 15:49 +0300, Dex Conner wrote:
>
>> So I've found a Thinkpad X200 online and I'm thinking of buying it for
>> libreboot purposes. Do you think the P8600 cpu can handle all the
>> compiling on gentoo? For the record, I don't have any of the "big stuff"
>> like KDE, GNOME, Firefox (all I have is Tor Browser [which I don't
>> compile], dwl and some terminal programs like neomutt and profanity).
>> Surely, I wouldn't be spending 5 hours to do small upgrades,
>> right?..right?
>
> It's getting harder and harder. There's always GCC, which is going to
> take you most of the day to build and will probably require -j1 to keep
> you from running out of memory. But aside from that, the big ones are
>
>   * dev-lang/rust: pulled in by anything that needs SVG support unless 
>     you unmask an old insecure version of librsvg or can tolerate half-
>     broken SVG support. This takes over 24h, requires -j1, and gets
>     worse every day because it bundles all of its (growing list of) 
>     dependencies.

Have you tried using dev-lang/rust-bin?

I switched all my machines to rust-bin a while back, and never noticed any problem.

>
>   * LLVM: needed by rust, some video cards, and certain picky packages.
>     This one is at least _legitimately_ large but has annoying point 
>     releases every once in a while that trigger a rebuild for little 
>     benefit. Again, expect ~24h.

Yea, building LLVM is brutal, and pretty much unavoidable these days.

--
Grant

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Would a Thinkpad X200 be too much trouble too run gentoo on?

[Michael Orlitzky]

On Thu, 2022-04-21 at 15:39 +0000, Grant Edwards wrote:
> 
> Have you tried using dev-lang/rust-bin?
> 

No, I avoid rust mainly for the security problems. The compilation time
saved is just a bonus.

Re: [gentoo-user] Would a Thinkpad X200 be too much trouble too run gentoo on?

[spareproject776]

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On Thu, Apr 21, 2022 at 03:49:24PM +0300, Dex Conner wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> So I've found a Thinkpad X200 online and I'm thinking of buying it for
> libreboot purposes. Do you think the P8600 cpu can handle all the
> compiling on gentoo? For the record, I don't have any of the "big stuff"
> like KDE, GNOME, Firefox (all I have is Tor Browser [which I don't
> compile], dwl and some terminal programs like neomutt and profanity).
> Surely, I wouldn't be spending 5 hours to do small upgrades,
> right?..right?
> 
> Thank you
> --
> Dex

libreboot cant microcode updates, pretty much all dead now

ie cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/*

entire things DOA

-- 

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Re: [gentoo-user] Would a Thinkpad X200 be too much trouble too run gentoo on?

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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Am Thu, Apr 21, 2022 at 01:10:46PM +0000 schrieb spareproject776:
> On Thu, Apr 21, 2022 at 03:49:24PM +0300, Dex Conner wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> > 
> > So I've found a Thinkpad X200 online and I'm thinking of buying it for
> > libreboot purposes. Do you think the P8600 cpu can handle all the
> > compiling on gentoo? For the record, I don't have any of the "big stuff"
> > like KDE, GNOME, Firefox (all I have is Tor Browser [which I don't
> > compile], dwl and some terminal programs like neomutt and profanity).
> > Surely, I wouldn't be spending 5 hours to do small upgrades,
> > right?..right?
> > 
> > Thank you
> > --
> > Dex
> 
> libreboot cant microcode updates, pretty much all dead now
> 
> ie cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/*

I actually disable all the mitigations on my machines. Those issues are
mostly relevant for shared hosters and cloud providers which require tight
isolation of their processes. For a personal machine at home, those
scenarios are mostly irrelevant, unless you click on every link you
encounter. I prefer performance. Besides, could it be possible that the
P8600 isn’t even vulnerable to Spectre & co, being so old?

@Topic: I‘ve been migrating my X250 (Broadwell i5, 2/4 threads) away from
Gentoo because build times kept creeping up. If you want to play and
experiment and do upgrades only once in a while, go for it. But I’d also
recommend binary packages and/or using distcc. Back in the day I had Gentoo
running on a puny netbook with Atom N450 (1/2 threads, with a quarter of the
P8600’s single-thread performance) and 2 Gigs of RAM, so packages were
usually built on a beefier machine. I even built firefox on it once just for
giggles, it took a day to build. But didn’t start any faster. I’ve been
using bin packages whenever possible anyway, as I didn’t see any advantage
over the effort.

-- 
Grüße | Greetings | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

Why don’t shepherds fall asleep during inventory-taking?

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Re: [gentoo-user] Would a Thinkpad X200 be too much trouble too run gentoo on?

[Alexander Puchmayr]

Am Donnerstag, 21. April 2022, 14:49:24 CEST schrieb Dex Conner:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> So I've found a Thinkpad X200 online and I'm thinking of buying it for
> libreboot purposes. Do you think the P8600 cpu can handle all the
> compiling on gentoo? For the record, I don't have any of the "big stuff"
> like KDE, GNOME, Firefox (all I have is Tor Browser [which I don't
> compile], dwl and some terminal programs like neomutt and profanity).
> Surely, I wouldn't be spending 5 hours to do small upgrades,
> right?..right?
> 

Do you have some more powerful machine in the background? If yes, you can 
either create binary packages on this machine and only install them on your 
laptop, or use distcc for moving the big compilation tasks to this other 
machine. 
Using binary packages, I can still use a Lenovo SL510, which seems to have 
similar properties regarding CPU and RAM than the X200, with all desktop 
programs, including full KDE/plasma, Firefox, libreoffice, etc. 

Alex