No more Gentoo!

[Gooberlx2]

My linux box is sooo slow (233Mhz PII Dell) that I can't stand it taking days to compile things in Gentoo. Time to switch. I think I'm going to try the Knoppix HD install 'cause I was very impressed by how everything worked right out of the box.

Anyone else running Knoppix as their linux OS and not just as a demo?

 

[Sunner]

Gentoo isn't really for a box like that IMO, sad but true.
Try Debian perhaps?
APT is one of the best package management systems out there, and Debian keeps their QA very tight, resulting in a very stable distro.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Yeah Knoppix is based off of Debian (I believe it has apt).

IMHO Gentoo is actually spectacular for such a slow machine, considering everything is compiled for that specific hardware. Gnome2 and Kde3 seem much faster than say a Redhat/Suse/Madrake install. But even though I got that far I'm just still sick of waiting for other things to compile (xine, totem, mplayer, openoffice, mozilla, evolution, etc, etc). Knoppix is made for i686 systems so it should still be reasonably fast (or atleast faster the redhat), and it's convienient to boot. 😀

But yeah, you're right. Debian base/apt seem to be the way to go for this machine.

 

[Sunner]

Gotta take a crapload of hours to compile X/KDE/Gnome though...

Ever done a "time" when compiling Moz or X or something?

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

yeah i'd recommend debian or bsd, or knoppix if you want it a bit more automated.

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: Gooberlx2
Yeah Knoppix is based off of Debian (I believe it has apt).

IMHO Gentoo is actually spectacular for such a slow machine, considering everything is compiled for that specific hardware. Gnome2 and Kde3 seem much faster than say a Redhat/Suse/Madrake install. But even though I got that far I'm just still sick of waiting for other things to compile (xine, totem, mplayer, openoffice, mozilla, evolution, etc, etc). Knoppix is made for i686 systems so it should still be reasonably fast (or atleast faster the redhat), and it's convienient to boot. 😀

But yeah, you're right. Debian base/apt seem to be the way to go for this machine.

PIIs are i686 (well, actually PPro, but PPro + MMX ~= PII). Has anyone got any benchmarks showing performance differences in Gentoo vs. standard binary distros? I would be surprised if there was any significant improvement.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: CTho9305

Originally posted by: Gooberlx2
Yeah Knoppix is based off of Debian (I believe it has apt).

IMHO Gentoo is actually spectacular for such a slow machine, considering everything is compiled for that specific hardware. Gnome2 and Kde3 seem much faster than say a Redhat/Suse/Madrake install. But even though I got that far I'm just still sick of waiting for other things to compile (xine, totem, mplayer, openoffice, mozilla, evolution, etc, etc). Knoppix is made for i686 systems so it should still be reasonably fast (or atleast faster the redhat), and it's convienient to boot. 😀

But yeah, you're right. Debian base/apt seem to be the way to go for this machine.

PIIs are i686 (well, actually PPro, but PPro + MMX ~= PII). Has anyone got any benchmarks showing performance differences in Gentoo vs. standard binary distros? I would be surprised if there was any significant improvement.

Well, I can give you my personal impression, not very scientiffic, but user experience is what counts, right?

I can't find any big difference at all, if any.
The whole benefit with Gentoo, for me at least, is in Portage, and the speed at which new versions of software shows up in the Portage tree, which is good for my workstation.
Wouldn't wanna run something this bleeding edge on a server though, I prefer a more mature distro, such as Debian there, or perhaps a BSD or something 🙂

 

[lowtech1]

I haven't try Gentoo yet, because it would take too much time to compile on my lowly Cel~500.

However Debian potato & woody is much quicker on my system compare to RH 7.x or 8.0.

I have only run Knoppix in demo mode & found it is very quick & fast boot. ELX linux is also is quite a nice distro, but I didn't like it because I couldn't get Rdesktop to work with it.

As for Yoper linux, which is the quickest by far for booting that I have seen from a loaded distro with KDE3, but I can't get the keyboard to work even after 4 installs on 3 compleatly different system/chipset.
The desktop is beautifully arrange which I will explore this weekend when I have more time to play around with it.

Ps. I'll download the stable 3.1 again this weekend & will install on my system & let you know what I think of it. My current version is 3.1 beta that I download about 3 months ago.

 

[vash]

That machine, can run linux, but it will not run Gentoo very well. Gentoo's main draw is the compiling of all applications, so if you have lots of time and lots of CPU cycles to burn, then its a great distro. With a 233mhz box, it will take MANY hours to compile many large applications. My suggestion is to try Debian for a machine like that.

vash