[gentoo-amd64] Re: How much value does llvm provide for a low-use laptop?

[Duncan]

Mark Knecht posted on Sat, 22 Apr 2017 11:38:59 -0700 as excerpted:

> As for my wife's laptop which started this discussion I had an emerge 2
> weeks ago of about 200 packages, mostly KDE, which took almost 24 hours
> to build on a 5-6 year old laptop.This time around I have about 175
> packages today. We'll see how long it takes as a data point but I've
> decided to move her to Ubuntu. I think I need to be spending my time
> more productively than building this much code this often. I already run
> Ubuntu as a VM on my Gentoo machine due to apps not supported (or not
> building correctly) by Gentoo in portage. Sad as it will be the first
> non-Gentoo boot in my house in about 15 years.

Is her laptop 64-bit or only 32-bit?  Either way, how many other machines 
of similar bitness do you have around?  (I'm presuming all x86 or amd64, 
no arm/mips/ppc/whatever.)

Some time ago I had a 32-bit netbook and my 64-bit main machine.  I 
update the main machine frequently, often a couple times or more a week, 
but found myself falling behind on the netbook (which I built in a 32-bit 
chroot on the main machine and secure-rsynced over), not updating it for 
a year or more at a time, sometimes, so it was a *BIG* job when I finally 
/did/ update.  (FWIW, there was, very deliberately, nothing private on 
the netbook, and contrary to the name, it wasn't net-connected most of 
the time anyway, so I wasn't really worried about the security 
implications of not updating for that long.)

My takeaway from that was to make everything the same arch, loosen up the 
c(xx)flags somewhat to build a bit more generically, adjust USE flags to 
be a bit more generic as well, and do binpkg builds which I can then 
emerge -k onto all machines.  That way I'm building most things just 
once, altho I imagine I'd customize USE flags and/or c(xx)flags on a few 
packages.

I haven't really gotten the other machines yet that I have in mind, but 
ultimately, I want, probably, a repurposed chromebook for portability, 
and a small, effectively embedded system with a bunch of gigabit ethernet 
ports and wifi, for a router.  Thus the message I posted here a couple 
years ago, getting ideas.  (I got a bunch for the router, not so much for 
the chromebook replacement or similar.)

So obviously I've not set it up yet, but the idea is sound.  If I have 
more than one machine, make sure they're all the same arch and build most 
things just once, to install on everything from the router to the 
netbooks to the main machines.  After the first build, presumably on the 
main machine, everything else in common at least would be either binpkg 
updates, or perhaps rsync updates.

Of course if her machine is 32-bit x86 and it's the only one you have, 
you're in the bind I was in and can't really share with anything else.  
But you can still setup a 32-bit chroot on your presumably faster main 
build machine and build there, so at least the builds shouldn't take as 
long... unless of course you let it get a year-plus behind, like I did, 
and have to figure out how to actually get all the updates thru once you 
/do/ update.

But having been there, if it's about your only 32-bit only machine or is 
otherwise the odd one out, I wouldn't blame you at all for sticking 
whatever binary-based distro on it.  Tho FWIW I'd probably make it arch, 
not ubuntu, but that's just me.  If ubuntu's more her, or your, style, go 
with it! =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman