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jarhead70
n00b
Joined: 20 May 2012
Posts: 4
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 Posted: Sun May 20, 2012 5:20 am Post subject: Newbie: Gentoo considerations |
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Hi,
I dunno where else I can post my questions. I can't seem to post in the Chat forum.
I currently using Mint 11 LXDE for a while. While I like it, the boot and install process is flaky for my taste. I have nothing but trouble installing Mint 12 LXDE. So I'm considering Gentoo.
My questions are:
- Is Gentoo based on other distro (i.e. Debian)?
- Is Gentoo a Snapshot (have to re-install everytime there's a new version; like Ubuntu, Mint default) or a Rolling (can update existing version to the new version; like Mint LMDE) distro
- I'm planning on installing Gentoo on an old Toshiba A80 laptop with only 40GB HDD and less than 512MB RAM. Can it Handle Gentoo?
- What Desktop Environment is the Gentoo default? Can I switch the DE to LXDE easily?
- The 40GB HDD is currently split into 3 partitions, 8GB (ext4) for '/', 31GB (ext4) for '/home', and 1gb for swap. Can I use that configuration without change?
- Related to #4, can I retain the contents of my '/home' partition when installing Gentoo, without making backups to another HDD (yes/no only, I'll ask how if it's a "yes" on the installation forum)
- Is there a x64 version or have to use amd64 on intel machine for 64bit?
Thanks |
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yngwin
Retired Dev
Joined: 19 Dec 2002
Posts: 4572
Location: Suzhou, China
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| Posted: Sun May 20, 2012 6:26 am Post subject: Re: Newbie: Gentoo considerations |
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| jarhead70 wrote: | | [*] Is Gentoo based on other distro (i.e. Debian)? |
No
| Quote: | | [*] Is Gentoo a Snapshot (have to re-install everytime there's a new version; like Ubuntu, Mint default) or a Rolling (can update existing version to the new version; like Mint LMDE) distro |
Rolling release
| Quote: | | [*] I'm planning on installing Gentoo on an old Toshiba A80 laptop with only 40GB HDD and less than 512MB RAM. Can it Handle Gentoo? |
Yes. But the limited RAM is a limitation you will feel. It will make certain things slower.
| Quote: | | [*] What Desktop Environment is the Gentoo default? |
None. It's entirely up to the user if (s)he wants to install a DE and which one.
| Quote: | | Can I switch the DE to LXDE easily? |
Yes.
| Quote: | | [*] The 40GB HDD is currently split into 3 partitions, 8GB (ext4) for '/', 31GB (ext4) for '/home', and 1gb for swap. Can I use that configuration without change? |
You can, but the root partition is on the small side. You may have problems compiling bigger packages such as firefox and libreoffice.
| Quote: | | [*] Related to #4, can I retain the contents of my '/home' partition when installing Gentoo, without making backups to another HDD (yes/no only, I'll ask how if it's a "yes" on the installation forum) |
Yes.
| Quote: | | [*] Is there a x64 version or have to use amd64 on intel machine for 64bit? |
amd64 is the name we use for x86_64 / x64
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"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." - Abraham Lincoln
Free Culture | Defective by Design | EFF |
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jarhead70
n00b
Joined: 20 May 2012
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Sun May 20, 2012 9:53 am Post subject: Re: Newbie: Gentoo considerations |
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Thanks for taking time to answer my questions. I have further questions, however.
| yngwin wrote: | | Quote: | | [*] I'm planning on installing Gentoo on an old Toshiba A80 laptop with only 40GB HDD and less than 512MB RAM. Can it Handle Gentoo? |
Yes. But the limited RAM is a limitation you will feel. It will make certain things slower. |
What are those "certain things"? Are they critical?
Using the laptop with Mint 11 LXDE I have decent speed. The only drawback I faced is playing videos, but that's caused by ATI seemingly cut support for 9x00 Mobility chipsets, and have to use compatibility drivers.
| yngwin wrote: | | Quote: | | [*] What Desktop Environment is the Gentoo default? |
None. It's entirely up to the user if (s)he wants to install a DE and which one.
| Quote: | | Can I switch the DE to LXDE easily? |
Yes. |
I've read the Gentoo install guide. Using the minimal install CD is certainly not for the faint hearted. What's more it requires inet connection. I'm more inclined on using the LiveCD, as noted in the networkless installation guide. As of version 12, are there no more LiveCD but only LiveDVD available for download?
The guide also a bit vague on networkless install. Am I to assume that installing with LiveDVD will be like installing Ubuntu/Mint (have some pre-selected packages installed) or is it like the minimal CD install but with menus?
| yngwin wrote: | | Quote: | | [*] The 40GB HDD is currently split into 3 partitions, 8GB (ext4) for '/', 31GB (ext4) for '/home', and 1gb for swap. Can I use that configuration without change? |
You can, but the root partition is on the small side. You may have problems compiling bigger packages such as firefox and libreoffice. |
Are there no pre-compiled binary repository available like Debian/Ubuntu/Mint? Do I have to compile every package I want to use with Gentoo?
How much bigger must the root be if I intend to use (among other things) Firefox, PHP, Nginx, MySQL? I have no plans on using any office suites out there, but maybe AbiWord and Gnumeric.
TIA |
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mv
Watchman
Joined: 20 Apr 2005
Posts: 6747
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| Posted: Sun May 20, 2012 10:55 am Post subject: Re: Newbie: Gentoo considerations |
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| jarhead70 wrote: | Thanks for taking time to answer my questions. I have further questions, however.
| yngwin wrote: | | Quote: | | [*] I'm planning on installing Gentoo on an old Toshiba A80 laptop with only 40GB HDD and less than 512MB RAM. Can it Handle Gentoo? |
Yes. But the limited RAM is a limitation you will feel. It will make certain things slower. |
What are those "certain things"? Are they critical? |
Compiling and doing regular work simultaneously might be a problem. This is a problem, since this means that upgrading packages (which usually costs no time to the user) might make work dramatically slower or even impossible.
| Quote: | | What's more it requires inet connection. |
During installation and even more during regular updates of gentoo you will need internet connection anyway. There are some possibilities for experienced users to avoid this (generating download commands and using another machine to execute them) but this is not fun to maintain - neither for installation nor for the regular updates. If you have not access to a machine with a good internet connection, gentoo is probably not the distribution for you.
| Quote: | | it like the minimal CD install but with menus? |
There is not so much difference in the choice of the install medium: Essentially, you must recompile everything. And Gentoo is not for users who want to avoid using the shell.
| Quote: | | Are there no pre-compiled binary repository available like Debian/Ubuntu/Mint? |
No. This is more or less the whole point of gentoo: That you can customize your programs for compiling (with USE-flags) so that you can drop a lot of dependencies which are mandatory in a binary distribution - you only build in what you need (if the package supports dropping the dependencies). So you can have a smaller system, only containing what you really need. The other point is that only in this way it is possible to have a really rolling release, because if e.g. a library is upgraded not all packages using that library have to be shipped again - you just recompile them.
Since in this way everybody has his own customized system, a binary repository makes no sense.
If you want a binary system similar to Gentoo (small, but with the disadvantages of all binary distributions), you might want to look at ARCH.
| Quote: | | How much bigger must the root be if I intend to use (among other things) Firefox, PHP, Nginx, MySQL? |
I would say 20GB is almost a minimum, independent of the distribution. But even then you will have severe limitations (and in gentoo you should carefully organize your distfiles directory to avoid losing space and downloading repeatedly, e.g. with trickyfetch from the mv overlay). To might also want to look at squash_dir from the mv overlay to considerably decrease the space requirements for portage, kernel sources, and some other directories, but this is fun only if you run a kernel with aufs support. |
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John R. Graham
Administrator
Joined: 08 Mar 2005
Posts: 10589
Location: Somewhere over Atlanta, Georgia
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| Posted: Sun May 20, 2012 2:08 pm Post subject: Re: Newbie: Gentoo considerations |
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| jarhead70 wrote: | | How much bigger must the root be if I intend to use (among other things) Firefox, PHP, Nginx, MySQL? |
Just to clarify, using these packages isn't the primary issue. For instance, Firefox will need 3 - 4 GiB of temporary space to compile and will need about a GiB of virtual memory during the link phase. It would help to resize your swap partition, upping it by 0.5 to 1 GiB. Even so, expect the link phase of Firefox to take the better part of a day. Same for large libraries like glibc.
The absolute best thing you could do to make Gentoo more comfortable on this machine is to acquire some more RAM, if you've got the sockets, that is. You'll be pleased at how cheap old memory is on eBay. 
- John
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Last edited by John R. Graham on Mon May 21, 2012 10:36 am; edited 1 time in total |
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yngwin
Retired Dev
Joined: 19 Dec 2002
Posts: 4572
Location: Suzhou, China
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| Posted: Sun May 20, 2012 2:17 pm Post subject: |
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There are a few binary packages, e.g. for Firefox and LibreOffice, but the point of Gentoo is to set your own options and compile things yourself. But in cases like yours, it can be handy to use those binary alternatives. In general tho, Gentoo is a from-source distro.
As for the install, I would recommend using any Linux LiveCD you are comfortable with (Ubuntu, Mint, or the Gentoo-based SystemRescueCD) and follow the standard (networked) install as explained in the handbook. The networkless install is more of a hack to temporarily work around the limitation of not having a working network (e.g. because of drivers) during installation. Maintaining Gentoo without an internet connection is just painful.
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"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." - Abraham Lincoln
Free Culture | Defective by Design | EFF |
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destroyedlolo
l33t
Joined: 17 Jun 2011
Posts: 846
Location: Close to Annecy (France)
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| Posted: Sun May 20, 2012 2:22 pm Post subject: |
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Hi,
I have some machine with only 256 Mo and they are working fine with Gentoo/LXDE.
As per my own test, Firefox with < 512Mo is creating lot of swap (so I choose Midory or Opera on them), and in all cases, you have to avoid using lot of tab and site having lot of graphics with are quite memory consuming ...
Otherwise, they are part of my Distcc farm and they doesn't cause any trouble.
Bye |
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jarhead70
n00b
Joined: 20 May 2012
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Sun May 20, 2012 2:36 pm Post subject: |
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Thank you all for answering my questions and clearing things up. All this time I thought Gentoo is like other distro I know of (Debian, etc) but it's not the case. Maybe it's more similar to DSL (Damn Small Linux?).
I think at this time Gentoo is not for me, as I'm only beginning to use Linux. I think I gain more experience 1st with other more "user-friendly" distros before using hardcore ones like Gentoo. But I certainly add Gentoo on my to do/try list before I die, so I'll be back
At the very least, Gentoo doesn't require me to re-compile the compiler 1st like DSL (or is it?!  )
Thank you all
Sincerely
Jarhead70 |
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John R. Graham
Administrator
Joined: 08 Mar 2005
Posts: 10589
Location: Somewhere over Atlanta, Georgia
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| Posted: Sun May 20, 2012 3:10 pm Post subject: |
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Gentoo is more like Linux from Scratch than Damn Small Linux. You don't have to recompile the compiler but you'll eventually end up compiling a new version. However, many people recompile the whole system set as soon as the box is self sustaining to get the benefit of the custom CFLAGS. With Gentoo, that's simple (although time consuming):- John
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destroyedlolo
l33t
Joined: 17 Jun 2011
Posts: 846
Location: Close to Annecy (France)
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| Posted: Sun May 20, 2012 10:48 pm Post subject: |
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DSL is dead : I suggest having a look on Tiny Core Linux which is replacing it : same kind of system but more the philosophy of Gentoo as YOU have to choose which tools to install.
Unlike Gentoo, everything has been compiled for you and people shoot the right option to make your system workable. But with Gentoo, you got better optimization as you can fine tune almost everything.
It keeps also the good feature of DSL allowing you to have totally unbreakable system ... as everything is potentially rebuilt from scratch at every reboot. |
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jarhead70
n00b
Joined: 20 May 2012
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 10:32 am Post subject: |
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Thanks mv for pointing me to Arch. Guess I'll start there and work my way up to Gentoo. Now, off to install VirtualBox on my main sys (win7) and try to install Arch+everything I intend to use on a 12GB virtual drive. I wonder if it'll blow up on me 
Thanks destroyedlolo for pointing me to Tiny Core Linux. That's very useful to know. |
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