System Requirements

honolulu · n00b Joined: 21 Mar 2006 Posts: 6 Location: vienna

hey guys, i'm going to install gentoo 2006 on my old computer!

but, before doing that, I have a question...

... what do you think are the minimum system requirements for

installing gentoo 2006 on a x86 system?

i would use it for coding java, php,... mp3 and dvd would be nice ???

TwoManAdv · n00b Joined: 03 Oct 2005 Posts: 72 Location: New York

Straight from the 2006 handbook

Hardware Requirements
CPU i686 or later
Memory 128 MB
Diskspace 1.5 GB (excluding swap space)
Swap space At least 256 MB

If your going to be using older hardware I would suggest staying away from KDE and Gnome.

nephros · Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 8:19 pm Post subject:

honolulu · n00b Joined: 21 Mar 2006 Posts: 6 Location: vienna

my computer is a pentium III 600 mhz, 128 Mb ram (I thinking of upgrading to 384 Mb),
cd rom + dvd rom, RIVA TNT2 16 MB RAM grafic card

maybe i could use xfce
would like to use the following apps:
1.Firefox
2.Sun Java J2SE 5.0
3.emacs
4.some dvd player (do you know one?)
5.some mp3 player

what do you think about my grafic card it's not good
for playing dvds isn't it??

and thanks for fast answering

nephros · Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 8:36 pm Post subject:

Your system looks easily powerful enough to run gentoo, including KDE if you turn off the bells and whistles.
I think you should be able to watch DVDs with that TNT2 card. (But I'm not sure about X driver quality for this card. If there's no accelerated driver things might get choppy.)

Upgrading RAM and the gfx card will make the whole thing more fun though. Do that if you can.
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honolulu · n00b Joined: 21 Mar 2006 Posts: 6 Location: vienna

nephros · Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 8:49 pm Post subject:

Here's a couple of threads dealing with older hardware:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=4135
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=11347
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=26740

Theoretically Linux can run on any 386DX or higher, it's just not particularly fun, and even less so with Gentoo if you don't have a compile server ready.

I myself started with Linux on a 16/24MHz machine and a 2MB ET4000 Gfx card, and yes I ran X and Netscape and browsed the web and all that.
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loki99 · Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 8:51 pm Post subject:

As nephros posted above your system can easely run a light DE. A little more ram would be nice and watching dvd with your gpu might be choppy. My gf has an p3 desktop which runs xfce4, firefox, thunderbird, openoffice, the gimp, etc. just fine. For audio we use xmms and for video mplayer or xine.

TwoManAdv · n00b Joined: 03 Oct 2005 Posts: 72 Location: New York

My bad, this is the handbook I was referencing for the system requirements I posted above.
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/2006.0/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=2

Your computer looks like it should run fine. I've never run Gentoo on older hardware but I have run Slackware on a Pentium II and as long as you have patience for compiling you shouldn't have any issues.

Also I would agree with what nephros said above that you might want to consider upgrading your graphics card and memory as these can make a big difference, especially if you intend on using Gentoo on a daily basis.