[gentoo-dev] Fwd: [gentoo-user] Questions--help answer these and you might help Gentoo and Linux as a whole

[Mike Frysinger]

help him out :D

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: [gentoo-user] Questions--help answer these and you might help Gentoo 
and Linux as a whole
Date: Thu, 03 Oct 2002 19:23:04 -0700
From: "Charles N. Burns" <charles.burns@×××.net>
To: gentoo-user@g.o

I have a demo for a school tomorrow in which, if I can prove that Gentoo
will work well as a server OS (to use a big server rather than a bunch
of small workstations not running Gentoo) then the school will probably
go with my recommendation, and I have a few questions whose answers will
greatly help the demo's likelyhood of success. This server will be used
by thousands of people per year and, if Gentoo, I will let each one of
them know about it and how to get it. (These are good CS students, the
type of people that Gentoo is best for, IMO)

1) Mozilla's cursor isn't blinking as I type this. This is irritating
beyond belief and makes it impossible to see where anyone is typing. How
to fix this? (I am in GNOME2, which is what I will use for the demo)

2) Can Gentoo's kernel safely, stably address 12GB of memory? If not,
will the stock kernel? (Clearly I have to enable high memory and
recompile, but back with 1.1a my system would crash when I enabled
highmem to support the full GB in my Linux server)

3) Does anyone know how to make HP X-terminals (specifically the Entria
2) display 16-bit or 24-bit color rather than nasty looking 8-bit? Does
anyone know if it can't be done? Does anyone know these things even
exist? HP doesn't seem to! The things have 2MB of video RAM, so I would
think they can, but the screen gets scrunched into a small corner and
gets mangled when we try.

4) What CFLAGS should I use for the FASTEST compilation. I figure -O0 is
one (to not optimize). Any others to speed things up? I will be
compiling like 20+ files at once, so every little bit helps.

5) Biggie---How do I make X start up with a higher priority every time,
rather than manually renicing it each and every time it starts? I use
KDM if that matters. I can use something else, like GDM, if needed.

6) What other cool stuff can I do for the demo? The server (not mine,
mine is just the demo) will support 35 X-terminals (the Entria II's I
told you about above). I plan to show it running GNOME2, Anjuta, and
EMACS and perhaps a few shells for each user, and then simultaneously
compiling 20 or so programs to show that the system won't freak out or
get dog slow. I'd like to show that Linux is very useful for programmers
learning ANSI C, Java, BASIC (is there a BASIC interpreter for Linux??),
and general use--such as showing they can use Dia for making their
flowcharts. My demo system is a dual AthlonXP 1400MHz W\ 1GB RAM and an
18GB 10KRPM SCSI drive. The server will be, if the demo works, a dual
Xeon 2.8 W\12GB RAM and 5 10KRPM SCSI drives in RAID10 + hotspare. (Not
bad for 35 X terminals!)
Any ideas on how to show it as useful (if it is for these tasks) and as
generally cool? I was thinking of showing off a few themes, but they
will look like crap in 8-bit color...

7) Hmm, Mozilla is just broken as hell. What browser should I demo?
Mozilla's cursor doesn't work, cut/paste doesn't work even between
Mozilla applications, and overall it is being a piece of junk. I see the
system install emerged 1.0 for some reason. I'll have to try 1.1.

Any other ideas, warnings, caveats, etc? I am doing the demo TOMORROW
(Friday OCT 4 2002) so need answers ASAP, ***but answers after tommorow
will still be useful*** because I will have a few days to show off to
individual instructors.
Any help appreciated. Thanks.
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