Where do you go, when even Gentoo isn't enough?

[lars_the_bear]

Hi folks

I was drawn to Gentoo because I thought it offered the chance to keep my old-ish Lenovos running. When I retire (shortly), these will be the only computers I have, and I don't want to spend a chunk of my retirement savings on computers. And, in fact, Gentoo works fine on these computers.

But I'm increasingly sure that Gentoo isn't what I need, because keeping it up to date requires constant compilation. I've complained about this before but, so far as I can see, nobody has a solution that is workable for me.

But if not Gentoo, then what?

All the mainstream Linux versions (Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian) are too full of bloated cruft that is hard to remove (and I'm aware that one person's 'bloated cruft' is another person's 'essential infrastructure'). Linux variants that seem to be more lightweight either

- lack applications that I want to run, or
- are hobby projects with no clear future.

Is there any practical way to run Linux on a ten-year-old computer these days? By 'practical' I mean not as an enthusiast or a tinkerer, but just as somebody who wants to use a computer and not worry about it? Or are those days gone? Is Linux now only suitable for this year's hardware, unless you want to fiddle with it all the time?

BR, Lars.

[asturm]

Gentoo binhost was not an option for you?

[lars_the_bear]

Gentoo binhost was not an option for you?

I'm perfectly happy to use Gentoo binaries, but it seems that my (very minimal) configuration/USE-flags mean that they mostly don't get used. I just started another thread about why I'm not getting the binary version of node2s, but my experience is that most things I install/update get built from source.

BR, Lars.

[asturm]

I don't see what else will work for you then, or in other words, you're asking the wrong question. It should end with: " ... when Gentoo is too much"

Any binary distro alternative is unlikely to give you anything "lighter" than Gentoo binhost profile config, except maybe for disk space what with not having to install development files.

[szatox]

Alright, well, if you're looking for a binary distro, LFS is clearly not for you, and at this point writing your own ebuilds won't cut it either.

Maybe check out Devuan? I think it forked off of Debian, so should have a pretty decent software base, but it also uses OpenRC, so maybe you'll like it more than the original.
Looking for something smaller, DSL has made a comback though with a changed objective; it doesn't fit on 50MB businesscard CD anymore. I'd say it's more of a hobby project too, but hey, if you want something lean, it might actually be a good choice.

[Hu]

If you want to use the Gentoo binhost's binaries, you must accept the choices made by the people who built those binaries. That may mean enabling features you don't need, or disabling features you do need. If you want to run a system built exactly to your specifications, with nothing missing and nothing unnecessary, you will need either to build it yourself or to convince someone with better hardware to build it for you.

[Zucca]

If I need to choose something other than Gentoo, I'd go with:

• Void Linux
• Alpine Linux
• Some BSD, maybe DragonflyBSD

[NeddySeagoon]

lars_the_bear,

To sum up what you are saying ...
1. Binary distros give you too much bloat
2. Source distros take too much compile time.
3. You are about to retire and do not want to replace the hardware you have today which is adeqwate for running Linux. (Today).

Running and building Gentoo and probably other source based distros can be seperated onto different systems.
Both Oracle and Amazon have free offerings.
I have no idea if they will be adequate to build wat you want.
Then you install your own binaries on your Lenvos
It costs nothing to test.

Looking forward to long and happy retirement, how much longer do you expect the Lenvos to be adequate?
Software gets bigger every year. I suspect you will need a hardware ugrade in a few years. It's a question of when.

[lars_the_bear]

If you want to use the Gentoo binhost's binaries, you must accept the choices made by the people who built those binaries. That may mean enabling features you don't need, or disabling features you do need. If you want to run a system built exactly to your specifications, with nothing missing and nothing unnecessary, you will need either to build it yourself or to convince someone with better hardware to build it for you.

Yeah. I think Gentoo is unsuitable for my needs. I'm trying to work out what, if anything else, might be suitable. Of course, that's not a Gentoo question -- it's a 'not Gentoo' question. I do understand that. I just thought somebody might have some ideas.

Right now, my feeling is that desktop Linux is basically unsuitable for old-ish computers. Gentoo is unsuitable because of all the compiling, and everything else is unsuitable because the pre-compiled distributions are too bloated and resource intensive. In 2015 Fedora absolutely flew on these computers. Now it won't even show a desktop without thrashing.

I find this situation deeply depressing but, of course, I'm not blaming anybody here for it.

BR, Lars.

[Hu]

We do have an idea. Across multiple threads, including in my post that you quoted, we have advised that you need to compromise on what you build versus what you download as a prebuilt. You realistically cannot have all of:

• Modern software
• Everything tuned to your exact preferences
• Everything built for you by someone else, at no cost to you

The easiest compromise is, as I suggested above, to accept the preferences of the person(s) who build things for you. If you absolutely require that everything be tuned to your preferences, you will need to build it yourself or convince someone else to make that exact build for you. This applies beyond Gentoo. You might find a distribution that has prebuilt preferences closer to your own, or you might not. I have been happy with Gentoo for a long time, so I have not kept up with what other distributions might be suitable for your particular preferences.

[Banana]

I would use debian stable with a low resource DE to get old hardware going again.

Also there is a recent thread about the rigth distro for old hardware: https://www.linux.org/threads/ideal-dis ... -pc.48442/

[szatox]

Right now, my feeling is that desktop Linux is basically unsuitable for old-ish computers.

Could your choice of DE be a problem rather than the distribution? What desktop are you using?
GNOME and KDE aren't known for being small and lightweight.
There are alternatives though. I've been happily using LXDE since infamous KDE4 became a thing. Other options exist too.

[pjp]

Is there any practical way to run Linux on a ten-year-old computer these days?

The issue isn't a 10 year old computer. Mine works just fine. I don't think a new-ish laptop would work well with Gentoo given the amount of compiling, but that's just me. Is there really no used PC hardware in your area that you could use to build the binaries? I wouldn't expect that to cost too much for something in the last 5 years or so.

[John R. Graham]

Asked & answered in another thread, I think.

- John

[pjp]

Yes, but now "he has to" in order to meet his requirements. Especially if he is unwilling to compromise on USE flags for some of the bigger packages. I also suspect if he provided output on the issues with incompatible USE flags, some would be resolvable in favor of using the binary.

And spending a little allows him to continue to use old hardware. It seems like a reasonable compromise.

[wjb]

It depends how many Lenovos you have, but using Nx PCs with distcc will build about ~N times as fast as one by itself. So, build on one (with distcc and FEATURES="buildpkg") and share the PKGDIR with the drones.

My Dell Inspiron from 2007, with a glorious 2G RAM is still alive because it has a twin VM running on a newer (14 years) machine to manage the heavy lifting for it.

[C5ace]

lars_the_bear:

Try Calculate Linux 'calculate-linux.org'. This is complied Gentoo. They have KDE, Cinnamon, LXQt, MATE and Xfce Desktops. I used the XFCE Desktop yn the past on a 15 year old HP Laptop.

[dmpogo]

I am a bit surprised that you can't make laptops that flew 2015 Fedora to work - what are your specs ? I am running Gentoo on 2007 Core 2 Duo / 4GB RAM desktop (compiling everything except browsers) quite OK.

[John R. Graham]

That's been my experience as well. I have such a machine, a Core 2 Quad, albeit with 8GiB of RAM, running as my main home server. Its BIOS has a 2010 date. I compile everything.

- John

[rab0171610]

We got a Lenovo IdeaPad 1i a few years back on Black Friday for 99 USD. It has an Intel Celeron N4020 Processor (1.10 GHz, up to 2.80 GHz Burst, 2 Cores, 2 Threads, 4 MB Cache) and only 4gb RAM. We bypass the internal 128 GB eMMC and use a 1GB NVME drive connected via an NVME to USB adapter. We run KDE Plasma on it. Our main computer is the distcc provider. Other than that it sometimes does some of its own compiling. Major updates to KDE/QT, gcc, etc I remove the NVME drive and plug it directly into the main computer via the USB. I mount it and chroot into it.
When connected to the host computer to compile, I have lines preconfigured in make.conf for Makeopts (to match the hosts CPU), Features (to turn off distcc), and turn on the use of PORTAGE_TMPDIR. When finished, I comment and uncomment to change those three lines back to the way they were, exit, umount the file systems & drive and return it to the laptop it came from.
That has worked great for a few years and the laptop is actually pretty snappy and responsive for such a low-end, bare-bones system running a full featured DE. This week I finally set it up to use binaries. Out of approx 1000, maybe 700 or so could now default to binary packages.
So in my experience, almost anything can still run Gentoo with a full featured DE.

[lars_the_bear]

Hi folks

Thank you for the replies, but I feel I probably haven't articulated the situation very well.

In a few months I will be retiring, after 40+ years in the IT industry. I want to have one, simple laptop computer, that I use for everything. I want to run Linux on it, because that's what I know. And because the alternatives are so unattractive. I don't care what kind of Linux it is, frankly -- I just want it to work, without much fiddling. Frankly, I want to have as little do do with computer fiddling as a I possibly can when I retire. But I do want to run particular applications, and they're all heavyweights.

I don't want to buy a new laptop, because I will have to be much more careful about my expenditure. The best I currently have is a 2015 Lenovo with 16Gb (non-expandable) RAM. It will run Ubuntu tolerably well if I switch from Gnome to XFce4 and strip out a load of cruft. Getting it to a workable state is rather difficult and time-consuming, and I know that if I updated Ubuntu, it would undo everything I've done to make it workable, and I'd have to do it all again. Fedora appears to run fine with XFce4 but, again, there's an awful lot of stuff running that I don't need (what's an 'evolution-data-server'??). The dependency sprawl with Fedora is so extensive that it's virtual impossible to remove anything that the default install includes. So, although I can use Fedora for basic stuff, just at the desktop it's using 8Gb of the 16Gb RAM. I can't run the software I want to use, in that state.

But currently this laptop is running Gentoo, and it's flying. But it's just starting its second day of compiling after an update. Right now it's stuck on qtwebengine, because I have USE=-pulseaudio. I haven't installed Pulse because it just uses resources and does nothing I need. Maybe I could override the USE selection and install the binary. But who knows whether it will work? Well, maybe somebody knows, but I don't. I've had variable success with this kind of thing.

I'm not just being fussy or pedantic in my choice of settings, I just want to install as minimal a Linux as I possibly can, to give my laptop a fighting chance of being able to run monster applications like FreeCAD and Darktable. And it can under Gentoo, as it never could under anything else, because I couldn't get enough memory free.

It blows my mind that somebody (rab0171610?) can run Gentoo on a laptop with 4Gb RAM. When I ran 'emerge @world' I was told in no uncertain terms that even my 16Gb wouldn't be enough, and I had to add swap. And the swap is actually in use, so I can't imagine how this process would have worked with 4Gb.

The fact that people report success with this kind of hardware makes me wonder what they're doing, and I'm not. I'm about 95% sure that Gentoo isn't going to work for me in the long term, which is why I raised this thread. But there's still a nagging suspicion that, if I did something different, maybe it would work.

Maybe running FreeCAD on a 2015 laptop without a load of fiddling is an unrealistic goal -- I just don't know.

BR, Lars.

[C5ace]

Hi folks

Thank you for the replies, but I feel I probably haven't articulated the situation very well.

In a few months I will be retiring, after 40+ years in the IT industry. I want to have one, simple laptop computer, that I use for everything. I want to run Linux on it, because that's what I know. And because the alternatives are so unattractive. I don't care what kind of Linux it is, frankly -- I just want it to work, without much fiddling. Frankly, I want to have as little do do with computer fiddling as a I possibly can when I retire. But I do want to run particular applications, and they're all heavyweights.

I don't want to buy a new laptop, because I will have to be much more careful about my expenditure. The best I currently have is a 2015 Lenovo with 16Gb (non-expandable) RAM. It will run Ubuntu tolerably well if I switch from Gnome to XFce4 and strip out a load of cruft. Getting it to a workable state is rather difficult and time-consuming, and I know that if I updated Ubuntu, it would undo everything I've done to make it workable, and I'd have to do it all again. Fedora appears to run fine with XFce4 but, again, there's an awful lot of stuff running that I don't need (what's an 'evolution-data-server'??). The dependency sprawl with Fedora is so extensive that it's virtual impossible to remove anything that the default install includes. So, although I can use Fedora for basic stuff, just at the desktop it's using 8Gb of the 16Gb RAM. I can't run the software I want to use, in that state.

But currently this laptop is running Gentoo, and it's flying. But it's just starting its second day of compiling after an update. Right now it's stuck on qtwebengine, because I have USE=-pulseaudio. I haven't installed Pulse because it just uses resources and does nothing I need. Maybe I could override the USE selection and install the binary. But who knows whether it will work? Well, maybe somebody knows, but I don't. I've had variable success with this kind of thing.

I'm not just being fussy or pedantic in my choice of settings, I just want to install as minimal a Linux as I possibly can, to give my laptop a fighting chance of being able to run monster applications like FreeCAD and Darktable. And it can under Gentoo, as it never could under anything else, because I couldn't get enough memory free.

It blows my mind that somebody (rab0171610?) can run Gentoo on a laptop with 4Gb RAM. When I ran 'emerge @world' I was told in no uncertain terms that even my 16Gb wouldn't be enough, and I had to add swap. And the swap is actually in use, so I can't imagine how this process would have worked with 4Gb.

The fact that people report success with this kind of hardware makes me wonder what they're doing, and I'm not. I'm about 95% sure that Gentoo isn't going to work for me in the long term, which is why I raised this thread. But there's still a nagging suspicion that, if I did something different, maybe it would work.

Maybe running FreeCAD on a 2015 laptop without a load of fiddling is an unrealistic goal -- I just don't know.

BR, Lars.

Lars:
Try Calculate Linux. This is 100% compiled Gentoo with a slightly different layout of the / file system structure. You can optionally use emerge to recompile with different USE flags. I installed today Calculate Linux XFCE with Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice on a VirtualBox VM with 2GB RAM single CPU.

[szatox]

It blows my mind that somebody (rab0171610?) can run Gentoo on a laptop with 4Gb RAM. When I ran 'emerge @world' I was told in no uncertain terms that even my 16Gb wouldn't be enough, and I had to add swap. And the swap is actually in use, so I can't imagine how this process would have worked with 4Gb.

I run Gentoo on a mini VPS with 1GB RAM and 20GB disk.
I did get somewhat creative to squeeze it in, but quite frankly the biggest trick is I don't use it for FreeCAD.

Still, this:

The best I currently have is a 2015 Lenovo with 16Gb (non-expandable) RAM

16GB RAM doesn't look bad at all. I know there are people who rock boxes equipped with terabytes those days, but it is not the standard, and it won't be for a while
The biggest issue with laptops is their absolutely shitty cooling. They come with strong CPUs, which are easy to advertise, but as soon as you try actually using them, they get throttled to 20-30% of their theoretical performance. Honestly I don't know what to do about it; replacing the tiny fan with a proper cooler doesn't really seem viable.

So, although I can use Fedora for basic stuff, just at the desktop it's using 8Gb of the 16Gb RAM

That's hard to believe.
My web browser with a few dozens of tabs can take a few GBs, but that's with a few dozens tabs open. 8GB for "just the desktop" is a lot.
Unless you're reading it wrong. Is this 8GB of RAM _actually_ used, or does this figure include caches and buffers? You know, those things are not necessary and will be dropped as soon as you run out of "free" (AKA "wasted") RAM, but kernel keeps them around in case it can speed things up for you without any extra cost.

[lars_the_bear]

Try Calculate Linux. This is 100% compiled Gentoo with a slightly different layout of the / file system structure. You can optionally use emerge to recompile with different USE flags. I installed today Calculate Linux XFCE with Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice on a VirtualBox VM with 2GB RAM single CPU.

Thanks. I did try it, briefly. The problem is that I couldn't make the installer use my pre-existing filesystem layout. I have 6Gb of my data on this laptop and, while it's backed up, it's an awful lot of data to restore, if I accidentally create a new filesystem on top of it. I suspect if I knew more about Calculate, I might be able to figure out how to install it in a safe way. It's on my to-do list.

BR, Lars.

[Goverp]

...
When I ran 'emerge @world' I was told in no uncertain terms that even my 16Gb wouldn't be enough, and I had to add swap. And the swap is actually in use, so I can't imagine how this process would have worked with 4Gb.
...
Maybe running FreeCAD on a 2015 laptop without a load of fiddling is an unrealistic goal -- I just don't know.

I wonder if you're trying to compile qtwebengine. That ebuild (and chromium, and possibly other ebuilds that use the same web browser source) generates a warning if 2*<jobs> (where jobs is the "-j" parameter from make.conf) exceeds your available memory. That's because some of the humungeous compilations involved need 2 GB, and so if you try running in too many threads, it will run out of memory. While using swap will alleviate the memory limit, it will kill compiler performance, so you're far, far better off reducing -j. You probably don't want USE="jumbo-build" on qtwebengine (if it still works, it has a habit of being removed 'cos it Google broke it), or certainly not at high values of JUMBO_BUILD_LIMIT
Other things to avoid are the use of "-pipe" and using tmpfs for /var/tmp/portage (or equivalent as configured in make.conf). While they can improve portage performance on large systems, they consume memory, and in this case there ain't none to spare.

If you do want one of these big ebuilds, you may gain by switching from gcc to clang for them - clang seems to only need 1.5 GB per thread when compiling these monsters, though that of course require you to build clang and configure your Gentoo toolchain appropriately, which may be more effort than its worth. The wiki has details.

As to running FreeCAD, I think you might be asking a lot, though I've not played with it recently. One way to avoid the (presumably huge) compilations for that might be using their AppImage/Flatpack, which ever it is, though of course that will definitely not be optimised for your hardware, and will use its own versions of the libraries so carefully optimised by Gentoo.