Gentoo + KDE on a 2gb laptop HDD? Is it possible?

Randuin · n00b Joined: 14 Aug 2003 Posts: 28

Okay I have a really old laptop (IBM Thinkpad 560X) It's got a 2.0gb hard drive in it, I'm using windows 98 on it at the moment, which, needless to say. Sucks

So now I'm asking this...

Is it possible to run gentoo + KDE + baghira theme on this machine?

galenjr · Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 2:49 am Post subject:

my files take up about 3.4 gigs with KDE and not much else installed.

Archangel1 · Veteran Joined: 21 Apr 2004 Posts: 1212 Location: Work

Yeah, I reckon mine was well less than that.
For a start - emerge kdebase, not emerge kde. Then add kdemultimedia and cohorts if you need them. Some aggressive use of DO_NOT_COMPILE may help too.
One possible issue is that you may need a certain amount of hdd space to compile in the first place, which coule become a problem once the machine is pretty full. Only one way to find out though.

If the hdd's only 2GB, one imagines the machine isn't the quickest and may be short on RAM? If it is, you may have to look to an alternate WM.

Randuin · n00b Joined: 14 Aug 2003 Posts: 28

Even say if I ran something light like fluxbox, would it function well?

200mhz
48mb of ram btw

John5788 · Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 3:59 am Post subject:

fluxbox would run faster than kde
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Randuin · n00b Joined: 14 Aug 2003 Posts: 28

Would it be possible to run the latest xorg? Or may be I should try getting an older version so it would perform better?

John5788 · Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 4:19 am Post subject:

i cant see why it cant run the latest xorg. but i bet itll be super laggy with xcomposite
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Randuin · n00b Joined: 14 Aug 2003 Posts: 28

Heh, well I just want a clean system to do basic web surfing/word processing and whatnot

PowerFactor · Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 9:20 am Post subject:

You're really going to be cutting it close with that hard drive, but it might be doable. You might want to mount /usr/portage and /var/tmp/portage on another machine via nfs to give yourself a little more room.

As for kde, I'd say a full kde install is practically out of the question. And with that little ram I'd recommend sticking with something like fluxbox for your wm. You might still want to emerge kdebase though if you have space on the drive. The reason being konqueror runs circles around gecko based browsers on a cpu that slow. I know, I've tried it. If you do install a mozilla based browser compile it with USE="-gtk2 moznozft" A gtk2+xft enabled mozilla is just about unuseable on a cpu that slow in my experience. I haven't tried a gtk1 compiled mozilla on my slow box yet but I suspect it woud be noticeably faster.

About the only X based browser you'll be able to run on that without a lot swapping though is links -g. With just X+fluxbox running you'll be using about 35M of ram, give or take 5M or so. Firefox will add about 16M to that initially. Konqueror plus the kde services it starts up along with it will take about 18M initially. And either of them will use another few meg after you've browsed a few pages.

And be sure to compile everything -O2 instead of -O3.

Ari Rahikkala · Guru Joined: 02 Oct 2002 Posts: 370 Location: Finland

In fact, if you want to stay sane, you might well want to try out something like Debian or Slackware on that box, unless you have a lot of time to spend waiting on compiles and are sure that the hardware's stable enough for pushing all the code for a complete system through gcc.
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Archangel1 · Veteran Joined: 21 Apr 2004 Posts: 1212 Location: Work

I wouldn't even think about KDE in that sort of RAM. Even 128 would be pushing it.
There's something called KDrive in portage which is apparently a smaller X server. Absolutely no idea what it's like though, it just sounds appropriate here.

I think Powerfactor's pretty much on the money. Except I think he meant "moznoxft"

PowerFactor · Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 7:35 pm Post subject:

Yea, "moznoxft" was what I meant. And I believe kde runs quite comfortably on a system with 128M of ram, but that's another discussion. :wink:

Boris27 · Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 8:04 pm Post subject:

I wouldn't want to run KDE on that machine, for loading times alone. Not to mention general slowness. Try something like flux.
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sloane · n00b Joined: 03 Sep 2004 Posts: 1 Location: Frankfurt

If it helps, I just installed it on a Thinkpad A20m on a 2 gig partition. Managed to install xorg, enlightenment, firefox and the full kde in that order (some wireless card stuff first). Had very little space after that.

I have 192 meg of ram, KDE seemed to run ok, but a little slow to open all the KDE applications etc. Enlightenment is much more snappy. I think 48 meg's probably pushing the limits for KDE.

I've since removed kde, and have about 496 meg of HD space. There's about 340 in the /usr/portage dir,which I'm thinking of pruning - I'm running out of space installing just Thunderbird (ie emerge -O thunderbird).

Still I'd say go for it, it's worth a spin.

CrashPat · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 01 Mar 2004 Posts: 97

KDE is slow on a FAST machine, it would be painful on that machine. Not to mention it would take about 6 months to compile.

Put openbox or fluxbox on it and call it good.
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xmoy · Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 9:42 pm Post subject: