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Snoopster77
n00b
Joined: 15 Jul 2002
Posts: 25
Location: Newcastle, Australia
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 Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2002 3:14 am Post subject: Is running Gentoo viable with just a 56K connection? |
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I managed to get a basic Gentoo system up and running using CD with stage 3 on it. My problem is that I only have a 56K link to the net and the added headache of a 2 hour limit per session. So at the moment there is no GUI and I'm just mucking around with kernel builds and stuff. I'm sort of using this to try and elevate myself out of newbie status when it comes to linux.
However, I would naturally love to have even a basic GUI up and running but I'm guessing that would take 100's of Mbytes. For the amount of phone calls and time spent I would sooner pay someone with some spare bandwidth to burn a snapshot of the complete distfiles directory on several CDs. So that would get me an up to date system but what about when the latest and greatest version of Gnome/KDE/Mozilla/OpenOfice comes out. One of the beauties of Gentoo is it's ability to automatically update but it seems to me that I can't take advantage of this.
Anyone got any thoughts on this?  |
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Techie2000
Guru
Joined: 16 May 2002
Posts: 344
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| Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2002 3:29 am Post subject: |
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| Have you considered fluxbox? It took hours on hours to compile KDE and it hogged my memory like nuts. Fluxbox took under an hour to get going. And it very customizable. Also I think its a nice break from the standard boring GUI schemes of windows, gnome, and kde. |
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Snoopster77
n00b
Joined: 15 Jul 2002
Posts: 25
Location: Newcastle, Australia
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| Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2002 4:06 am Post subject: |
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| My main problem is not compile time but download time. And yes fluxbox is not as big as KDE or Gnome but the continual maintenance of a Gentoo box seems a bit too much for a 56K modem. |
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fghellar
Bodhisattva
Joined: 10 Apr 2002
Posts: 856
Location: Porto Alegre, BR
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Hypnos
Advocate
Joined: 18 Jul 2002
Posts: 2889
Location: Omnipresent
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| Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2002 5:16 am Post subject: |
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This is a great script. I'm stuck with a modem connection at home and I've used it to compile lists of urls for distfiles, which I feed into GetRight and burn onto CD at work on my Windows workstation. However, a modem _is_ useful for keeping your portage tree in sync ... the ebuild scripts aren't too big, so syncing up routinely is realtively painless.
You can upgrade your system as frequently/infrequently as you like; the tradeoff is the compile time and migration difficulties. Eugenia at OSNews upgrades only once a month; she says each upgrade takes 16 hours, but I think that figure includes file downloads.
Find a friend who'd be willing to wget/GetRight a CD's worth of files every once in a while, and you'll be money. |
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lain iwakura
Apprentice
Joined: 09 May 2002
Posts: 176
Location: sd, ca
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| Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2002 9:34 am Post subject: |
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| Snoopster77 wrote: | | My main problem is not compile time but download time. And yes fluxbox is not as big as KDE or Gnome but the continual maintenance of a Gentoo box seems a bit too much for a 56K modem. |
i beg to disagree. granted, i may have more freetime then the average user, but it is possible to keep "up to date" with 56k. once you get gentoo installed (in chunks, i suppose) then maintaining is easy. i've got kde, gnome and fb on my setup. (haven't updated to 3.02 of kde because, well, i rarely use kde in the first place.)
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[resident anime junkie] -- not just a linux freak. |
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Swishy
Guru
Joined: 06 Jun 2002
Posts: 491
Location: NZ
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| Posted: Tue Jul 23, 2002 5:26 pm Post subject: |
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Im also on 56k dialup and I ve found it not to bad for updating , max I ve been downloading updates is around 8hours , admitadly the install took around 2 days , but that was including compiling and im currently running kde 3.02 since then it's only been a matter of a couple of hours for most stuff , and Ive found it no problem typing emerge "whatever" before hitting the sack......
Dale.
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Theres no substitute for C.I. |
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