How good is gentoo on *OLD* hardware?

dragonslay · n00b Joined: 25 Nov 2004 Posts: 30

Hello, I plan on installing gentoo on the following:
223 mhz pentium, 30 mb ram, 3gig SCSI harddrive
90 mhz pentium laptop, 40mb ram, 800mhz harddrive (probably scsi).

If you can help me on this, Tha'd be great. Thanks.

cram · Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 10:59 pm Post subject:

To start, I would definitely do a stage 3 install, or you could be spending several weeks waiting on compiles.
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thebigslide · Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2005 12:11 am Post subject:

I would do a stage 1 on 3 install as in my sig. Since your hardware is wanting, might as well make up for that in software. I did this install on a C466 laptop and it took 2 days straight. Putting the computer in the freezer helps

cheers

thebigslide · Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2005 12:12 am Post subject:

Oh, and to answer the actual question... Gentoo runs amazing on old hardware. With windows 95, the laptop in question would not play divx. Under gentoo, it was able to decode divx5 with some % left to spare. X was very very fast also.

SilverOne · Apprentice Joined: 10 Nov 2003 Posts: 161

I run gentoo on a P166 MMX box with 128MB ram.

Did a stage2 install, it took me about 36 hours until I was satisfied with it.
(no X).
It acts as a firewall/fileserver for my home network.

The 30MB ram in your machine is gonna be the biggest problem when compiling I presume. Gentoo will run just fine, but performance with memory intensive tasks will suffer.

What do you plan on using the machines for?

troth · n00b Joined: 03 Feb 2005 Posts: 13

the bootstrapping thing is really more personal preference I think; if I were you I'd worry more about the kernel and what software you intend to use

dragonslay · n00b Joined: 25 Nov 2004 Posts: 30

Wow.. I never knew gentoo could run so good on old hardware!

Well, I found out my old computer was even older-- pentium 233 mhz.
The laptop I may be getting is 120 mhz-- a little better thent he last one.

Just a question: would I be able to use gentoo with "tinyx" as included in small linux?
P.S. I want to get the 233 mhz on the network, but when I try running the driver in dos it says "pci device not found".. how do I fix this? The light is on. Sorry if this is off topic.

yngwin · Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2005 5:04 pm Post subject:

I had Gentoo running just fine on both a Pentium MMX 166MHz and a P2/350.

tinyx? try kdrive (in portage)
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dv.long · n00b Joined: 15 Feb 2005 Posts: 3

I'd install Gentoo on Pentium 266 MMX with 112 MB RAM

I've heard it should work fine, such fast as Win98 or even faster.

Maybe, I did something wrong, but it works SLOW. I am not talking about X. For example, unpacking in Gentoo takes much more time than unpacking same archive in Windows. Xorg works normally fast, when using fluxbox, but applications that use qt and gtk a terribly slow. When some program like Mozilla starts, even mouse pointer slows down.

I did stage 3 using packages. I did everything according to handbook, compiled the kernel 2.4 with optimizations for my CPU. I tried to recompile it several times, with different flags - things are the same.

Is it really possible to make the system (including graphical interface) work faster? Maybe, slower than win98, but enough fast fo normal work.

If anyone can help, I will deeply appreciate any advices.

BlackEdder · Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 1:21 pm Post subject:

Have you double checked that dma is turned on?

dv.long · n00b Joined: 15 Feb 2005 Posts: 3

Of course I did. DMA is on.

SnEptUne · l33t Joined: 23 Aug 2004 Posts: 656

Did you have NPTL support enabled? If you don't change the system much, you should also consider prelinking.
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dv.long · n00b Joined: 15 Feb 2005 Posts: 3

No I dont have NPTL, for I'm using kernel 2.4 and stage3 installation, because I don't have LAN - I got only dialup connection via winmodem, so it can work only on working linux system.

If I want NPTL support, I have to set CHOST to i586 or higher, but I should NOT change CHOST if I use non-stage1 installation - here is the problem - doing this "might render the system unusable".

Is NPTL really effective?

kimchi_sg · Advocate Joined: 26 Nov 2004 Posts: 3038