Gentoo on a Netbook?

davidwebb · n00b Joined: 04 Jul 2009 Posts: 3

I am totally new to Linux and want to learn it. I have read about different distributions and am interested in Gentoo since it will help me learn it quite well. I know that it is quite time consuming to learn it, but I am ready to put down a real effort.

I will buy a new netbook and am planning on installing a Linux distribution on it. My question is then is Gentoo a good choice? I have been reading at http://www.linux-netbook.com/ about different linux distributions optimized for netbooks, but it seems like they are more "easy" installed and I want something more hardcore =) The netbooks I have been looking at have Intel Atom N270 1.6 GHz, 1 GB RAM. Is that enough for Gentoo? Can the compilations be done on a machine like that?

John R. Graham · Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 3:25 pm Post subject:

I've recently installed Gentoo on a new Acer Asipre One netbook, which also has a 1.6GHz Atom and 1GiB of RAM, with no issues at all. I've also installed Gentoo on a 90MHz Pentium 1 with 80MiB of RAM and compilations could be done on a machine like that. (They did take a while, though.) In other words, 1.6GHz and 1GiB of RAM is more than enough! :wink:

The video built in to the Intel Atom companion chipset is merely okay. Don't plan to do heavy gaming with it. I'm really looking forward to the Intel Atom CPU + nVidia Ion chipset netbooks.

I think you're right that Gentoo is an excellent distribution if your goal is deep learning. Welcome to the Gentoo community!

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

sebaro · Veteran Joined: 03 Jul 2006 Posts: 1141 Location: Romania

I'm using Gentoo for about 5 years now on my K6-II PC.
There are some packages that take some time to compile, like gcc, glibc, mysql, qt4, kdelibs.
Remember to read the Gentoo Handbook http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/.

davidwebb · n00b Joined: 04 Jul 2009 Posts: 3

Thanx for your fast replies. I am glad to hear that it worked well for you john_r_graham on the Acer Asipre One since it is probably something similar that I will get. When you guys say that it will take some time, are we talking hours or days? Just so I know what I am getting into =)

John R. Graham · Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 4:08 pm Post subject:

Compile times are good on any 1.6GHz machine. Here are some typical times for large packages from my Aspire One:

glibc: 45 minutes.
gcc: 1 hour.
kdelibs: 50 minutes.
openoffice: 7 hours.

openoffice is by far the largest package in Portage and Gentoo provides a binary package, openoffice-bin, so that you don'rt have to compile it. These are among the largest packages; most compile much faster.

A basic install of Gentoo can be completed by a novice in under a day. However, you won't have a GUI at that point. Gentoo has excellent documentation. Start with The Gentoo Handbook. Avoid the "Gentoo Installer LiveCD" and choose instead the "Gentoo Minimal Installation CD". After you have the basic text-mode installation complete, look at Gentoo Desktop Documentation Resources under Gentoo Documentation Resources. You'll likely be tweaking your first install for weeks as you learn, which, given that that is your goal, will be part of the fun.

Finally, don't hesitate to ask questions.

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 4:52 pm Post subject:

davidwebb,

You are coming to Gentoo for the right reasons to make a go of it. My Acer Aspire One is now running Gentoo, but it came with Linpus Lite, a SDD drive and only 512Mb RAM. I did the build on a real USB drive to avoid using the life of the SSD and moved the install over after.
I've also added another 1G of RAM, which is less than straightforward.

Build times on the Acer compared favourably with my Athlon XP 3200+ system. Heres some elapsed times, obtained with MAKEOPTS="-j3" and --jobs=2

davidwebb · n00b Joined: 04 Jul 2009 Posts: 3

Once again, I really appreciate the fast responses here at the forum. And thanks for the estimates of the times, it was better than I expected so I will definitely go for Gentoo. I have started to read the hand book. I will just have to go out and get myself a netbook and start to get my hands dirty =)

John R. Graham · Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 10:56 pm Post subject:

Happy to help. One more thing. Get one with a with a real hard drive as opposed to only flash memory. Although bettery life does suffer, you can't easily make a fully working Gentoo system in 8GiB of solid state disk.

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 3:33 pm Post subject:

john_r_graham++

Thats why I built my install on a USB hard drive, then installed it on the SSD
I do updates the same way.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

s4e8 · Guru Joined: 29 Jul 2006 Posts: 311

I NFS-export my netbook gentoo, put compiling task to desktop (NFS+chroot).