[ale] Need a better Linux distro

[Jeff Hubbs]

On 6/1/20 10:00 PM, Steve Litt via Ale wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Jun 2020 18:18:23 -0400
> Jeff Hubbs via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>
>> On 6/1/20 4:02 PM, Steve Litt via Ale wrote:
>>> On Sun, 31 May 2020 23:50:32 -0400
>>> Jeff Hubbs via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>>>   
>>>> On 5/31/20 9:30 PM, Leam Hall via Ale wrote:
>>>>> Gentoo is interesting, but all my computers are old; second or
>>>>> third hand.
>>>> As are all mine. Your point? :)
>>> Depending on how old, initial compilation takes more than a day on
>>> old computers. Even daily updates take awhile on old computers.
>> If you're not doing xorg etc., there isn't any initial compilation
>> other than the kernel and basic features like a system logger and a
>> cron system.
> I think today even a lot of servers have X, and all desktops do. I was
> assuming X with some kind window manager. But now that you mention it,
> the way I'll do it next time is install the base system, config the
> kernel, and boot. Once I'm there I can emerge X and, let's say,
> OpenBox, and then later Firefox and Chromium and Libreoffice when I get
> the time. That way, if I blow the first install, at least I've only
> sacrificed a couple hours.
If I ever have Xorg on a server, it's only to support running of GUI 
apps remotely via SSH - I don't run Xorg on the console. On the other 
hand, if I'm setting up a server to provide network services (web, file, 
print, DBMS) then I'm basically building a race car...and race cars 
don't have e.g. stereos and fuzzy dice. :) In all seriousness, though, 
not having Xorg or GUI apps reduces your dependency cross-section by loads.
>
> Of course, I use Void for more reasons than lack of compilation, so it
> will still be rare that I install *too.
>
>
>> As for daily updates (which you can certainly choose to
>> do, or not), it depends greatly on what you have that hit Portage the
>> previous day. Sometimes my file server shrugs its shoulders and goes
>> "I got nuthin', boss!" but then again, all it really has past the
>> base system as defined by the current profile is Samba. If you've
>> got, say, KDE and a pantload of desktop apps then Portage is going to
>> be moving mountains working out all your dependencies.
> The person who has KDE or Gnome deserves what he gets. LXDE is a
> perfectly good user interface, and if they ever truly deprecate it,
> LXQt. Or just plain Openbox for that wide-open feeling.
Well, then Bob's your uncle, no? The Gentoo machine upstairs that's 
mostly used for Firefox, Thunderbird, and LibreOffice-bin only has 4GiB 
RAM and it's fine like that with XFCE, even running FoldingAtHome at the 
same time. 4GiB is just inside what you can handle KDE with if you don't 
cut away some deps.
>
>>> I wonder if there's a way to do the initial compilations on a VM,
>>> where they're very fast, and then rsync the results to root on the
>>> iron machine?
>> You don't even need a VM. You can generate an entire Gentoo system in
>> a chroot on your Big Bad, tar it up, boot your target machine to the
>> Linux liveCD of choice, partition and format drives there, blow the
>> tarball onto those partitions, chroot into what you just laid in,
>> install the boot loader of your choice, and reboot.*
> Trouble is, that chroot is probably on spinning rust, so it will be
> slower than a VM. If the chroot is on some kind of RAM drive, I drop my
> assertion.
If your Big Bad spins rust, isn't that on you? :)
>
>> One thing you
>> have to remember is when you're in that initial chroot and you get to
>> the place in the Handbook where you set your CFLAGS in make.conf, set
>> -march=generic -mtune=generic lest anything you compile before you
>> move it over makes a binary your target machine might not be able to
>> support.
>>
>> * This really isn't any different than what you do to install without
>> involving another machine.
> Except for time taken.

Yeah, there's the additional step of transferring your tarball over, 
which I guess would be more than worth it when you're Gentooing your 
Pentium II, I guess. It's been many years but the least hardware I've 
had Gentoo running on was a Pentium/75; that was an awful CPU. Someone 
once gave me a 2xP/133 with SCSI and I used to just brutalize that 
machine with Gentoo.

It has been said, "Gentoo is clay." If you get really good at sculpting 
with clay and have clear ideas of what you want to accomplish with it 
and how, it being clay pays off.

I should hasten to point out that Gentoo undergoes evolution all the 
time; installations aren't anywhere near as painful as they were when I 
had my 2xP/133 and it's been many years since you *had* to 
hand-configure a kernel (I almost always do anyway).

>
> Thanks. These are some great ideas.
>   
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
> May 2020 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques
>       of the Successful Technologist
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques
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