optimize gentoo for old touchscreen terminal

[pawstar]

Greeting Folks,

I'm looking for any hints, docs, tips & tricks to optimize gentoo for an older touchscreen terminal. The thing has a fairly ancient Pentium 233 cpu and only 64MB ram but HDD space is not an issue. The terminal will be running a custom QT-embedded application (including sqlite) and ssh for admin purposes. I want to get the fastest boot speed & maximum user interactive performance with as little compromise on stability & security as possible.

Some questions that came to mind so far are:
kernel 2.6 vs 2.4?
.config optimizations?
static /dev nodes or udev?
glibc vs uclibc?
gcc (which version) vs intel icc ?
einit?

I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty, done many gentoo installs in the past but this would be the first one stripped down so much and where every bit of optimization counts so any help is much appreciated.

Also, which file system would be the most reliable to maintain data integrity in case of hard resets (eg. someone pulls the plug?).

TIA

[mw007]

pawstar,

I did something similar with a system I made for my car. Has GPS, hard-drive for music, wifi, etc.

Here are the basic specs of my system: Pentium 333Mhz, 32 MB RAM. It's an old IBM thinkpad 1300 series.

I used kernel 2.6 because I could easily use alsa (not sure if that is a requirement of yours)
.config optimizations -- YES, I only have what I need. And I use an initrd to speed up boot, along with eInit

I use glibc, but only because some mods I made to gpsdrive required it.

I use gcc because it's what I know and works really well with gentoo

Another thing that may be more applicable for you, since UI responsiveness is important, but drive space isn't, is using statically linked libs where ever possible. It may be a pain to admin, but it'll make things a lot more responsive, esp considering you're using a QT-based UI.

Hope that helps,
mw