Laptop having 32 bit Atom processor recommended for install?

Greemngreek · n00b Joined: 09 Sep 2019 Posts: 10

My father has this old Acer eMachine laptop with an Intel Atom processor that he has given me to bide my time till I get a new one in November for my birthday. I was thinking about installing Gentoo on it and wanted to know a few things:

1) Will there be any speed improvement in the laptop? Most distros I installed on it have been very slow and Gentoo users on Reddit seem to be divided on the subject with some saying ' no effective improvements ' and others saying ' yes, very '.

2) In case, both factions seem to agree on the large compilation time involved in installing new softwares. How do I reduce this time to the minimum and what are some tips and tricks I should know?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Sep 22, 2019 11:31 am Post subject:

Greemngreek,

I have a Acer One with the N270 Atom. Any execution speed improvements you get need to be offset against the build time.
I would say that the net gain is probably negative.

Its only two months to your birthday, so a 32 bit Atom is not a good target to install Gentoo.

That's only one angle, assuming that the Atom builds for itself.
What other motives do you have for installing Gentoo?

If you already have an Intel/AMD install then distcc can do a lot of the heavy lifting. There are other build approaches too.
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NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Greemngreek · n00b Joined: 09 Sep 2019 Posts: 10

Thanks for the answer Neddy!

I wanted to install it just as a project, to see whether I could install it and to familiarize myself with it's working.

Also, how well does Gentoo optimize a laptop with a big RAM? My father's bloated Windows system with 8 GB RAM runs fast. Seems to me 32 bit systems having low RAMs are in more need of optimization and speed...

Goverp · Veteran Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 1993

I retired my Atom-hearted notebook a year or so ago. If I were to revive it, I'd use the 32-bit version of Arch Linux, which saves you having to compile code, but generally offers a similar ability to start with very little pre-installed.
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Hu · Moderator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21586

In my opinion, the biggest gain you get out of Gentoo is the ability to completely omit functionality you won't use. If you don't install it, it can't take up space on disk or processor time to run. There's probably some gain from having programs optimized for the local system, but in most cases, that gain will be overshadowed by the effort required to obtain it. As Neddy says, on net, trying to optimize execution is a loss.

If you want to do this for a learning experience, go ahead. What you learn will be applicable on bigger, more capable computers. For your first lesson, try to find the lightest-weight programs that can still satisfy your requirements. Try to use just a window manager, without a desktop environment. Use tools with a long history of efficiency, not the bloated bundle-the-world attitude of very young projects like Electron or Rust.

Since you are looking at a 32-bit system, look at your system hardware and decide whether PAE is right for you.

Greemngreek · n00b Joined: 09 Sep 2019 Posts: 10

Thanks Hu!
That's exactly my doubt. Since even bloated distros run 'speedy' on powerful computers, what's the point of optimization for little to no effect? Older laptops are the ones that require optimization for a marked speed increase right?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Sep 22, 2019 4:45 pm Post subject:

Greemngreek,

The kernel manages RAM very well.

How much benefit you get from optimisation varies from application to application but in general, slower memory constrained systems require all the help that they can get.

At the other extreme, some things are single threaded. Take for example, dependency tree calculation at the start of emerge.
When I run it it on a 4 core Raspberry Pi, three cores are wasted. Its a single threaded part of emerge.
When I run it on a 96 core Cavium Thunder II, 95 cores are wasted.
The Pi runs at 1.5 GHz/core, the Cavium is 2GHz/core, so its a bit faster there but not as much as the pure hardware specs might make you think.

As a project, go for it, it will be educational. Let it run 24/7 for building things.

My N270, now retired in favour of an ARM64 Chromebook runnig Gentoo, took about 10 days running 24/7 to update. That includes libreoffice, firefox, thunderbird and the xfce4 desktop.
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Greemngreek · n00b Joined: 09 Sep 2019 Posts: 10

Will do that Neddy. Thanks!

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Sep 22, 2019 5:05 pm Post subject:

Greemngreek,

If you have another Linux install, it can help out with the building.
Even a Virtualbox guest Linux install on a Windows system will do :)
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Greemngreek · n00b Joined: 09 Sep 2019 Posts: 10

Really? I have a Windows PC (technically my father's). How do I go about it?

Jaglover · Posted: Sun Sep 22, 2019 5:50 pm Post subject:

Greemngreek,

you could install Gentoo base without compiling much, for practicing. If I was you I'd probably do just that. Install the base system to get the feel and gain some experience.

Using your father's PC as helper is not a trivial task for a beginner. And using distcc does help but some packages like GCC build locally and it will take forever with your Atom. There is Gentoo Wiki article about using distcc, have a look at it. It is possible to build in NFS chroot, this method does not require any resources from your Atom.
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Greemngreek · n00b Joined: 09 Sep 2019 Posts: 10

Okay. Thanks!

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Sep 22, 2019 5:54 pm Post subject:

Greemngreek,

Install Virtualbox.

That allows you to create one or more Virtual PCs (Virtual Boxes) inside the real one.
Each of these Virtual PCs is isolated from the real hardware and when you ask about the hardware they have, they will show you some emulated hardware that is not related to the underlying real hardware at all.

Simply put, Virtualbox is a program that makes itself look like another PC. Several PCs if you want.
It does consume real resources. Do not overcommit RAM. As the Virtual PCs are only programs on the host, they can be swapped when there is not enough RAM.

Install Virualbox. Create a guest that has a 40G or so HDD, that will be a file on the hosts operating system. That's enough to install a full desktop system.
Follow the installation instructions for your distro of choice. Gentoo works.
Follow the handbook.

There are a few traps for the unwary. When you ask for help here, be sure to remind us that you are installing into Virtualbox.
I won't tip you off any more. That would spoil your learning experience.

I reccommend that you do a Virtualbox install rather than an Atom.

Once you have a Virtualbox install, it can build for the Atom or help the Atom build for itself. There are several ways to do that but its a topic for another day.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Greemngreek · n00b Joined: 09 Sep 2019 Posts: 10

How much RAM do you recommend I allocate?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Sep 22, 2019 6:01 pm Post subject:

Greemngreek,

Well, my real Atom has 1.5G. Raspberry Pis get by on 1G. Try between 2G and 4G.
Its only shut down the guest, choose a different number, reboot the guest, so trial and error is pretty painless.

The same is true for CPU.

No taking the lid off, hardware setup is point and click. :)
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Greemngreek · n00b Joined: 09 Sep 2019 Posts: 10

Will do that. Also, the installation and updates will take the same compilation time if I allocate 1 GB RAM, same as my Atom, right?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Sep 22, 2019 6:25 pm Post subject:

Greemngreek,

RAM is only part of build time equation.
CPU cores count too. Provided you have enough RAM, each core can work on a separate part of the build.

Big C++ jobs can want 2G RAM per CPU to avoid swapping. There is only a few of them though.

There is no need to emulate the Atom too closely. The learning experience will be equally valid on either system.
On a more capable system, you don't wait as long between lessons :)
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

eccerr0r · Posted: Sun Sep 22, 2019 6:33 pm Post subject:

just wanted to mention i'm still holding out on my Atom netbook (N270 single core dual thread, 2GB RAM.)

Distcc is a huge part of keeping sanity and it's still slow because distcc doesn't always work.
I recently built Firefox 68.1 on this thing, took shy of 8 hours to build just firefox. That doesn't include the 17+ hours for rust. Distrust? noooo....

BTW how long does rust take to build on rpi (assuming single core, and probably one with more than 1GB RAM)?

(As an aside, rust 1.34.2 took just a bit more than 9 hours to build on a Pentium 4, 32 bit, 3GHz, 1 core dual thread , ... so the atom is shockingly worse...(distcc enabled for both runs, but there is no distrust))
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