| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
unheatedgarage
n00b
Joined: 19 Sep 2016
Posts: 60
|
 Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2021 6:45 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
| grubber33 wrote: | Cool thread, here's some of my memories from 2003 (Pentium II Celeron, 192MB RAM):
- Had to follow install instructions with lynx in a secondary terminal because no smartphones
|
I still do all of my installs like that -- it just feels wrong to do it any other way.
This is a cool thread.
I'm still using a dual core Pentium D CPU 3.20GHz with 4 gigs of RAM, and the runtime performance is acceptable, Build times used to be fine with distcc, but it seems more & more these days programs are building with Rust and other things that won't distribute, and that's getting frustrating.
Been using Gentoo full time since 2016, but I think I tried it for the first time back in 2011 on an old 32 bit system. So I'm definitely a noob in this crowd. I love Gentoo though, and this is a great community. 
_________________
I'm not even mad; I'm impressed! |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
eccerr0r
Watchman
Joined: 01 Jul 2004
Posts: 9695
Location: almost Mile High in the USA
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2021 7:03 pm Post subject: |
|
|
How fast did it take the Pentium D to build rust 1.47? My guess: 5 hours?
I was kind of surprised, pentium4's, at least high clocked ones, aren't too bad relatively speaking while building rust compared to an Atom core. A dual core P4 would be even better.
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
unheatedgarage
n00b
Joined: 19 Sep 2016
Posts: 60
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2021 7:11 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Code: | Tue Jan 12 04:36:04 2021 >>> dev-lang/rust-1.48.0
merge time: 10 hours, 30 minutes and 59 seconds.
Sat Feb 6 06:06:18 2021 >>> dev-lang/rust-1.49.0
merge time: 11 hours, 38 minutes and 46 seconds.
|
This was all on my binhost. Frankly I couldn't imagine building it in the background on a running desktop while trying to watch a youtube video or something. Anyways, I've since started using rust-bin because I'm lazy and in-no-way a purist.
_________________
I'm not even mad; I'm impressed! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
cokey
Advocate
Joined: 23 Apr 2004
Posts: 3355
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2021 7:29 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Installing 1.4 was fun back in 2004.
The main thing I remember was having to type | Code: | | ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge -pv foo |
We did that a lot back in the day.
Oh and XFree86 took about 8 hours to compile, so did GCC and glibc.
_________________
https://otw20.com/ OTW20 The new place for off the wall chat |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
eccerr0r
Watchman
Joined: 01 Jul 2004
Posts: 9695
Location: almost Mile High in the USA
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2021 7:44 pm Post subject: |
|
|
That's odd. Thought it would get into the 5-hour mark. Just checked - it seems my P4 (3.4GHz, single core, dual thread) got rust done in 11 hours, and rust seems to parallelize well.
Build time just keeps getting longer and longer...
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ferg
Guru
Joined: 15 Nov 2002
Posts: 536
Location: Cambridge, UK
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2021 9:10 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Brilliant. Reasonably confident I gave some 1.2 CDs in the the loft if you want more pain..,,,,
_________________
Climb up it, kayak down it + make sure it runs on GNU/Linux
"cease to exist, giving my goodbye, drive my car into the ocean,
you think I'm dead, but i sail away, on a wave of mutilation!" |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
unheatedgarage
n00b
Joined: 19 Sep 2016
Posts: 60
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2021 9:44 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| eccerr0r wrote: | That's odd. Thought it would get into the 5-hour mark. Just checked - it seems my P4 (3.4GHz, single core, dual thread) got rust done in 11 hours, and rust seems to parallelize well.
Build time just keeps getting longer and longer... |
Interesting...clearly I've been doing it wrong.
I have some other questions about rustc and distcc -- I'll update my "fun with distcc" thread shortly.
_________________
I'm not even mad; I'm impressed! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
eccerr0r
Watchman
Joined: 01 Jul 2004
Posts: 9695
Location: almost Mile High in the USA
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2021 1:21 am Post subject: |
|
|
I do have to admit, part of the 11 hour was using distcc. The first part of rust (specifically the llvm part) actually can be distcc'ed, but I would still think that total build time should mostly scale because the stage1/2 compilers can't be distributed. It'd probably tack another hour or so on, based upon the typical 2:1 build time ratios between my atom (standing at 25 hours) and the p4.
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
xineg
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Posts: 115
Location: Australia.
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2021 1:41 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Just did Neds Olde Gentoee but with an added USE=" -*" in my make.conf and it was up and running in a couple of hours. The main difference was being able to remove udev. I think this actually took time off of install because most of my modern day builds are cutting all the rubbish I don't want out. With static-dev, knowing about the system when building kernels and subsequently building them into the kernel I don't really need to detect things. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Hu
Administrator
Joined: 06 Mar 2007
Posts: 21756
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2021 4:56 pm Post subject: |
|
|
USE="-*" is fine if you want an absolutely minimal system. However, be aware that some ebuilds will hard-depend on a supporting package having a flag enabled, and that the flag will be default-enabled in the profile. Your explicit -* will override that, so you may see dependency conflicts most people will not see. When this happens, you will either need to allow that flag to be enabled, or avoid the consuming package. The choice is yours.
I only make this post because we have at least one other user who set USE=-* and then kept coming to the forum with odd problems that were traced to that choice, so I want to be sure you are aware of the potential problems that lie ahead. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
eccerr0r
Watchman
Joined: 01 Jul 2004
Posts: 9695
Location: almost Mile High in the USA
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2021 9:44 pm Post subject: |
|
|
kind of funny, when I first got into Linux, I moaned and b17ched at the 5 hour kernel compile time when my poor old computer didn't have enough RAM and HDD was slow because it was interleaved 2:1... but now these 25 hour rust compile time doesn't faze me as much... what gives...
Then again at one point I got my kernel compile times down to 1m 30sec ... but that was just a memory again too...
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
AJM
Apprentice
Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 189
Location: Aberdeen, Scotland
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2021 10:15 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| NeddySeagoon wrote: | | April 2003, I thought it was April 2002 I started, just after ADSL arrived here. |
I'd forgotten the additional pain of downloading distfiles over dialup! At the time though I worked at the university so could burn the bigger files to cd-rw for use at home. I actually did the bulk of my first Gentoo install at work to make use of the network connection, can't remember the exact CPU but it was a slot mounted Athlon of some description to replace my previous P166 (pre MMX, 32MB RAM) - don't fancy running Gentoo on that even back then, FreeBSD was slow enough! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
xineg
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Posts: 115
Location: Australia.
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2021 2:22 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Hu wrote: | USE="-*" is fine if you want an absolutely minimal system. However, be aware that some ebuilds will hard-depend on a supporting package having a flag enabled, and that the flag will be default-enabled in the profile. Your explicit -* will override that, so you may see dependency conflicts most people will not see. When this happens, you will either need to allow that flag to be enabled, or avoid the consuming package. The choice is yours.
I only make this post because we have at least one other user who set USE=-* and then kept coming to the forum with odd problems that were traced to that choice, so I want to be sure you are aware of the potential problems that lie ahead. |
Hey Hu! Like yourself (and most posters to this topic) I've been around awhile. I've been doing -* on every install for ~20 years, and yes I do like minimal systems as in no extra wanted fluff, but I do it for control. You can still do -* and have many use flags and system filled with the weird and wonderful, it just means that you personally have to enter every use flag (short of altering ebuilds in a personal overlay and removing dependencies by hand). I understand why an in experienced user would be asking questions because most things refuse to build until you add some flags to them. Probably not a great idea for new gentoers, but rest assured I won't be asking questions.
Last edited by xineg on Tue Mar 09, 2021 3:02 am; edited 2 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
timeBandit
Bodhisattva
Joined: 31 Dec 2004
Posts: 2719
Location: here, there or in transit
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2021 2:51 am Post subject: Re: How was it using Gentoo in the early 2000s? |
|
|
| xylophone wrote: | | I'm curious about the experience with Gentoo on old hardware, but specifically usage in the early days with regard to installation and updating (compiling, basically). |
Things broke more often. Portage was not as smart as today; despite having simpler code to build and somewhat shorter build times, overall maintenance time was probably higher. There was often something that required manual intervention after a world update of any complexity. Resolving blocks or ABI changes used to be an occasional nightmare; now it's virtually automatic.
I can't make much of a comparison to modern hardware because I've not used Gentoo on any.  I finally lost patience 5-6 years ago (maybe more) and switched my then-primary PC (laptop) over to Mint. Bit over a year ago I ditched that too, for a MacBook Pro. I did keep Gentoo on my server (albeit with a two-year-ish stretch when I didn't even bother update it) because nothing else would have let me keep it in service for so long--it's my repurposed desktop workstation, bought new in 2002.  (And, as I posted earlier today, the upgraded HDD I installed in 2004 only just failed. Hooray, enterprise SCSI.)
Overall, I have been pleasantly surprised by the improvements in Portage and ebuilds since I left. I am much less pleased with the short-sighted bloat in many of the upstream packages. Fortunately I can live without most of the worst offenders or use their -bin versions.
_________________
Plants are pithy, brooks tend to babble--I'm content to lie between them.
Super-short f.g.o checklist: Search first, strip comments, mark solved, help others. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
eccerr0r
Watchman
Joined: 01 Jul 2004
Posts: 9695
Location: almost Mile High in the USA
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2021 4:57 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Long live revdep-rebuild !
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
saellaven
l33t
Joined: 23 Jul 2006
Posts: 648
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2021 6:15 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| eccerr0r wrote: | | Long live revdep-rebuild ! |
I just noticed that the default revdep-rebuild has been rewritten in python and the old one is now revdep-rebuild.sh
I guess it's been a while since I used it. emerge @preserved-rebuild ftw!
_________________
Ryzen 3700X, Asus Prime X570-Pro, 64 GB DDR4 3200, GeForce GTX 1660 Super
openrc-0.17, ~vanilla-sources, ~nvidia-drivers, ~gcc |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
NeddySeagoon
Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54365
Location: 56N 3W
|
| Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2021 9:40 am Post subject: |
|
|
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Feel free to take an April 2003 Gentoo for a test drive.
The base system is there.
Xfree is installed but not yet set up.
Gnome is mostly installed.
Once I have a desktop, I'll host a VirtualBox disk image.
_________________
Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
flysideways
Guru
Joined: 29 Jan 2005
Posts: 439
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:27 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| I had far more time to spare, and pretty much everything I thought I wanted was in the tree. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
sdauth
Guru
Joined: 19 Sep 2018
Posts: 575
Location: Ásgarðr
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:59 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Still having that 2003 vibe with lil' Atom K510 @1.66Ghz :
| Code: | Mon Mar 22 00:52:17 2021 >>> sys-devel/gcc-9.3.0-r2
merge time: 16 hours, 58 minutes and 18 seconds. |
Of course, with pgo, lto, hardened for maximum pleasure.. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
flysideways
Guru
Joined: 29 Jan 2005
Posts: 439
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 2:31 pm Post subject: |
|
|
arm64 Pi 4 | Code: | Wed Dec 23 20:17:18 2020 >>> sys-devel/gcc-9.3.0-r2
merge time: 6 hours, 42 minutes and 43 seconds.
|
It amazes me how this compares to the 1.2ghz Athlon that idled at about 170 watts. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
NeddySeagoon
Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54365
Location: 56N 3W
|
| Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2021 9:04 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Gentoo from 09-April-2003 looks like twm, three Xterms and X clock It llooks just the same today.
Gnome 2.2.1 with a few apps open,
and KDE 3.1
Its been interesting putting Historical Gentoo together again for the first time in 18 years.
_________________
Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Jojobinha_2009
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 27 Mar 2021
Posts: 77
Location: Brazil
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2021 12:28 am Post subject: My uncle used to use Gentoo back in the day... |
|
|
I remember seeing him boot up his laptop and seeing the KDE 3.5 splash screen loading...
Once he told me that installing Gentoo on his computer took 3 weeks. 
But it was thanks to him that I was inspired to use Linux in the form of Kubuntu 8.10 and today, 13 years later, Gentoo itself.
_________________
Intel Core i5-9400F / 24GB DDR4 2666MHz / GeForce GTX 1060 3GB
Powered by Gentoo for x86_64
======================================================
Seize the day, and remember to have fun! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
maalth
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 06 Jun 2003
Posts: 76
Location: Can't tell you...
|
| Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2021 6:11 pm Post subject: |
|
|
This is a great topic. I'm going to date myself a little. I started using Gentoo from version 1.2. Back then you can install from either a stage 1 & 2 tarball or from stage 3. I had a dual PIII 800 Mhz with 1 GB RAM with multiple hard drives to act as a server which served me well for many years. I recall the nightmares of installs/updates stopping because gcc wanted to be a pig. Usually restarting seemed to fix the problem. Switching to ECC memory reduced the frequency of having to restart. The PIII at the time had bugs in the proccessor (my two were buggy ones). I never had any trouble with any of the hardware working with gentoo outside of that. Once everything was installed, it was rock solid stable until it was time to upgrade. I don't have that server anymore, but I'm looking forward to installing it on a new machine which will not be a server this time.
_________________
Screw you guys, I'm going home... |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
The_Pope
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 03 Jul 2016
Posts: 111
|
| Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2021 6:46 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Tony0945 wrote: | I had (still have) a k6-3+ on 512M RAM similar to NeddySeagoon's. I do remember that the initial emerge -e @world took three days.
...
Biggest problem is that it only supports ISA and PCI cards and only a few PCI slots. The ISA slots are totally useless.
|
I got into Gentoo late. Like, 5 years ago or so. Portage worked, things weren't already bloated, or not this much. Installed Gentoo on a pre-MMX Pentium with 128MB RAM but it froze at loading some SATA driver. The x86 boot CD was already asking for 256MB so I used some other distribution's install disc. (An old Zenwalk CD, can't remember which one, but I do have the ISO and I got it from the vim FTP site.)
I'm occasionally pestering people about making Linux run on old computers, because that's what the open-sourcers were bragging about 20-30 years ago. That should be an eternal commitment.
I still run a K6-III+ at 450MHz, but the motherboard can take 768MB of RAM. Epox made some motherboards with this chipset and probably support for 1GB of RAM, but I wouldn't want to start over.
At some point, binutils had an upstream bug where it would assume the existence of the Intel CET instruction. Gentoo reported that upstream, and Gentoo tested on a Cyrix 686 reported the same bug for gcc. It has been fixed... in GCC 12. I'm still waiting for the release.
To get X, a lot of things depend on rust, which requires SSE2. Even the lightest window manager, MATE, still needs rust. (The meta package of MATE pulls in rust.)
I'm still working on a sureshot way to get X on these old computers, but so far you just need to install rust-bin and other packages demanding it, on a different computer, by moving the Gentoo drive. Then you can easily uninstall rust and the packages that depend on it. In the case of Xfce4 it's just xfce4-meta and thunar. The latter is the file manager, so you need to install another one. I think I have PCManFM on a Pentium 3 right now.
On one system, the only way I could get a sound card in there is ISA. The kernel still can have ISA enabled and even has the module for this card. Crystal Semiconductors chip.
I'm trying to replicate this on about 7 computers with various processors and RAM sizes so far
_________________
Stop the world. I want to descend. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Hu
Administrator
Joined: 06 Mar 2007
Posts: 21756
|
| Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2021 7:20 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| FVWM seems fine without Rust. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
Gentoo Chat
