will gentoo run?

davidson · n00b Joined: 27 Dec 2002 Posts: 4

hi there i was looking around the site for awhile and noticed you needed 64mb to run gentoo.. well i have 32 and was wondering if it would still run fine on that. (note that i am new to linux and would like to give it a shot) also i have no idea what x86 is (im not even sure if that was right what i just typed

) but i have a p233, 3gig, 32mb of ram and i was wondering.. will gentoo run on my pc or is it just to outdated?

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

There are ways around it, but it isn't easy. For the most part, it would require another machine that had at least 64MB of RAM. Assuming you could get the additional RAM, the installation would take quite a while. Compiling takes a good amount of time, especially on older machines.
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scocou · Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2002 5:08 am Post subject:

x86 refers to an Intel or compatible processor (cpu) that has either 80286, 80386, 80486, 80586 or 80686 as it's model number. A Pentium (classic) 233mHz is a 80586 (more commonly called a 586) processor, while 686 refers to either a Pentium 2, 3 or 4. The 486, 386 & 286 were the predecessors to the Pentium chips that to my knowledge never surpassed 100mHz, but I could be wrong. I still use a 486DX4 66mHz on occasion with Slackware 8.0 and it works great with only 16mb RAM. This is with no X, if I need X then I use a trim window manager like Waimea or Windowmaker, which I would advise for your case with 32mb RAM. I would suggest it (Slackware) for your tired old box, but if you ever get a 686 try Gentoo! Oh yeah, the x in x86 just means they are referring to any of the above-mentioned cpu's, it's like saying Windows 9x, although I try not to say that often, such foul language

474 · l33t Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 714

If you really want to do Gentoo on that box, I suggest compiling on a strong machine and building binary packages, which you'll subsequently use to build on the older box. Ah, let me see now ... yes ... you'll need to:

Use "-march=pentium-mmx -Os -pipe" in make.conf (optimising for size is a good idea methinks and P233 must be an MMX type). Trouble is, the machine you're compiling on may not like pentium-mmx specific code very much if the chip is signifcantly different. If so, you might have to settle for "-mcpu=pentium-mmx -march=i586 -Os -pipe" which is a reasonable compromise, and should allow you to build successfully on any newer system.
When you build on the newer system, change the bootstrap.sh script. Change lines 126 and 129 to these respectively:
Code:

emerge --buildpkg ${myGLIBC} ${myBASELAYOUT} ${myTEXINFO} ${myGETTEXT} ${myZLIB} ${myBINUTILS} ${myGCC} || cleanup 1
Code:

emerge --buildpkg ${myNCURSES} || cleanup 1

Then go through stage 1. For all other subsequent emerges during install be sure to use the --buildpkg option also.
Burn a CD, or plug a hard disk in to the newer system and copy everything in /usr/portage/packages/All plus a copy of the portage distfile, e.g. portage-2.0.64-r4.tar.bz2 or whatever. Just make a tarball of the whole /usr/portage tree, but lose the distfiles first, you won't be needing them (except for portage).
Now start setting up your older box. The idea is, instead of running bootstrap.sh, just do:
Code:

emerge portage
emerge --usepkg glibc baselayout texinfo gettext zlib binutils gcc ncurses

And:
Code:

emerge --usepkg world

where appropriate and so on. You won't need to worry about emerge rsync during the install and you won't need to compile anything except for portage itself, so install should be quite fast and smooth.

I've used a similar technique to build Gentoo on systems where I don't have an Internet connection available. The above should work (well hopefully you get the idea). The only issue is getting the portage tree over to the old system. The 1.4 boot CD won't let you eject it, so you either need to have another CD drive handy, or use a 1.2 CD which does let you eject. Of even better, just put the hard-drive you're going to use on the old box in the newer system, and pop it into the old box where everything will be in place, chroot it into it and tidy up the loose ends (i.e. building the kernel) - in which case you won't even need to use the whole use/build binary package approach. Yeah, maybe that makes even more sense!

If you try this and are successful, I'd make a complete bzipped tarball of the whole partition and back it up. That'll give you a sure fire way to get a workable Gentoo system up and running on the box at any point in the future (and indeed, any similar box).

davidson · n00b Joined: 27 Dec 2002 Posts: 4

well thanks a lot for the replys.. and yes i do have a newer pc that i am using right now.. the problem is i dont really have the space on this machine to install linux or i would.. lol yes i know my old box is only 3 gig and this one is 20 but right now the 3 gig has more space than my 20 lol.. but ill try what you suggested kerframil.. and i think i might stick the old hdd into this beast and try to install it. if all fails i can just do a format... sigh... i hope it doesnt go to slow on my old one because that is what happened to all the other linux's ive tryed on that box.. now before i start i have ONE more question..... WILL gentoo run really slow on my old pc OR will it run at a reasonable speed not taking 5 minutes to load one program?

delta407 · Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2002 4:35 pm Post subject:

Gentoo runs great on old hardware. I have a P100 laptop with 24 MB of RAM that -- believe it or not -- runs everything, including X, without swapping. RedHat, Mandrake, and Windows 95 on the other hand swap during boot. Gentoo is faster and leaner than all of the above, and will 'feel' better than any of them.

(Of course, that depends on what you're doing; I wouldn't want to run X on such a slow box, but they make decent file, mail, or DNS servers.)
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davidson · n00b Joined: 27 Dec 2002 Posts: 4

so it should run on my box without having to wait 5 mins to load a program such as the internet or something (i really dont care how long it takes to boot as long as the programs run fast)

delta407 · Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2002 6:15 pm Post subject:

Assuming you can get Gentoo loaded (and, again, depending on what you want to do), it will be nice and responsive. Personally, I wouldn't recommend running a workstation (i.e. web, mail, word processing, etc.) on 32 MB of RAM, but it should be tolerable once everything is in.
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nomoore · n00b Joined: 14 Dec 2002 Posts: 15

yes the performance should be tolerable for most things if you use a small window manager. i.e. fluxbox (or whatever 'box) or windowmaker. The idea is to use as little ram as possible since that is your main limiting factor. Also you probably don't want to run mozilla, it's a beast. Try one of the browsers with a smaller footprint such as phoenix.

hhaamu · Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2002 8:09 pm Post subject:

delta407 · Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2002 10:48 pm Post subject:

474 · l33t Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 714

OK, assuming you want GUI apps for everything - for a browser, maybe even net-www/dillo. Yes it's a bit limited bit it's very lightweight and fast. It's also used as by the new net-mail/sylpheed-claws build which would probably make a good choice for an email client. For a word processor, app-office/abiword and for an editor, app-editors/gvim should be OK. Nearly all of the above are gtk+1.2 apps and should run OK (especially if you don't compile in gnome support - USE="-gnome"). IMHO, avoid KDE apps like the plague. Qt alone is a monster.

Be really aggressive about disabling USE flags you don't need - it will seriously help (you only need to explictly disable things you don't need that are in /etc/make.profile/make.defaults). app-admin/ufed is a really neat tool to help set the USE flags. If in doubt with your chosen ebuilds, have a look a the ebuild file itself to see what USE flags they recognise.

I've already suggested -Os to keep binary sizes small (helps with RAM consumption too). But you might even want to tone down the optimisation further. For example, telling gcc to optimise instructions for an arch/cpu (such as pentium-mmx) will certainly generate faster executing code. Unfortunately, it's an insoluble fact that faster binary is almost always bigger binary. I haven't tested this in the case of gcc, but I suspect that the greater the arch level the bigger the binary, hence the more RAM/disk space is consumed. You might want to test this by emerging something a few times with different flags on an existing Gentoo box with the --usepkg option. Then compare sizes of the generated package - for a a fair test you'll want to take note of the uncompressed size.

EDIT: Almost forgot, make sure you use USE="-nls" too!

BlackBart · Apprentice Joined: 07 Oct 2002 Posts: 252

i am running gento fine on my p120 w/48 megs of ram, it's significantly slower than windows 95 though

474 · l33t Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 714

delta407 · Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2002 3:03 am Post subject:

474 · l33t Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 714

delta407 · Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2002 3:23 am Post subject:

scott_ell · Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2002 3:52 am Post subject: Why not...

474 · l33t Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 714

BlackBart · Apprentice Joined: 07 Oct 2002 Posts: 252

part of it is people do have new hardware and they just have an old box that they don't use and decide to install linux on it, or their old box is a laptop (my case) and a new one costs more than $250

delta407 · Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2002 5:22 am Post subject:

474 · l33t Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 714

noff · Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2002 7:27 am Post subject:

I agree with Delta that Gentoo may not be distro to be used in all cases. If the want a useable system maybe try and older version of Redhat 7.3 or 6.2, Gentoo really does crave as much hardware as you can throw at it. All the optimization ability of Gentoo seems to merely make fast hardware faster, generally not slow hardware decent. Everything in Gentoo is latest, but if you want Linux on old hardware I wouldn't recommend it.

But, if you want to try it more power to you and I hope it works out well.
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What Larry was saying is that if you make it too easy for programmers, then poor programmers will be able to do things best left to good programmers, and will inevitably do them poorly. Everyone will suffer in the long term as a result." - Tom Chance

davidson · n00b Joined: 27 Dec 2002 Posts: 4

i still havnt given it a shot yet but i am going to in a few days.. i have just been quite busy lately to install it but im going to give it a shot. just so you know i am running currently right now on my old pc windows 2000 with no trouble at all.. and it runs pretty good for a p233 32mb of ram so if gentoo will run as good as 2000 in gui mode then i will be happy :wink:

noff · Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2003 3:10 am Post subject:

I find Windows 2000 on my girlfriends computer 500MHz and 256MB to be slow and on my Mom's 366 pretty bad. However that may just be the perceived lag and not actual slowness. Your system should be pretty reasonable. For best results go with a *box.
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What Larry was saying is that if you make it too easy for programmers, then poor programmers will be able to do things best left to good programmers, and will inevitably do them poorly. Everyone will suffer in the long term as a result." - Tom Chance