Re: [gentoo-user] Portable Gentoo (Pen Drive Linux)

[Alan McKinnon]

On 22/03/2014 15:12, Nilesh Govindrajan wrote:
> On 22-Mar-2014 6:39 pm, "Alan McKinnon" <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com
> <mailto:alan.mckinnon@×××××.com>> wrote:
>>
>> On 22/03/2014 15:00, Nilesh Govindrajan wrote:
>> > On 22-Mar-2014 5:42 pm, "Brian Hesdorfer" <zerophnx@×××××.com
> <mailto:zerophnx@×××××.com>
>> > <mailto:zerophnx@×××××.com <mailto:zerophnx@×××××.com>>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On 3/21/2014 9:53 PM, Nilesh Govindrajan wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> Hi,
>> >>>
>> >>> Since I don't have a laptop, I'm thinking of installing Gentoo on my
>> >>> USB 3 pen drive. I'll use binpkgs from my desktop so that pen drive
>> >>> lives long.
>> >>>
>> >>> Has anybody tried Samsung's F2FS? I heard it performs better than the
>> >>> traditional ext4/xfs/etc on flash drives.
>> >>>
>> >>> Also the pen drive will be used on random hardware (which can be a
>> >>> laptop or a desktop), so what else do I need to consider other than
>> >>> using genkernel's default configuration (the livecd config, which
>> >>> enables all modules)?
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >> FWIW, I've been F2FS plus encryption with Arch and haven't had any
>> > problems. I'd suggest having anything important backed up somewhere else
>> > since it's still seen as experimental (I think).
>> >>
>> >
>> > Of course. Pen drives are as such not very reliable, so backups are
> a must.
>> >
>> >> If you're using it on random hardware and want X, you'll have to
>> > include the variety of video cards you might run into (Intel, ATI,
>> > Nvidia) in your USE flags.
>> >>
>> >
>> > Will it work out the box without configuration?
>> >
>> >> Also, be wary of the predictable naming for network interfaces
>> > (enp5s0, enp9s2,etc). You might want to disable that feature using
>> > something like "net.ifnames=0" in your bootloader or a udev rule so you
>> > can just set eth0 to DHCP and it will work on most machines.
>> >>
>> >
>> > NetworkManager helps with that, or may be just run dhcpcd.
>> >
>>
>>
>> I suspect you will end up duplicating a lot of work that is already done
>> elsewhere by the binary distros. You'll probably also have your hands
>> full just trying to keep up with video hardware as you'll need at least
>> intel, fglrx and nvidia drivers (plus maybe nouveau and radeon).
>>
>> Are you 100% sure you want to go that route? Sounds like a huge amount
>> of work. In your position, I would rather investigate a LiveCD type
>> solution with a persistent fs layer on top and let the distro do all the
>> heavy lifting.
>>
>> Especially as you don't have the target hardware to hand for testing,
>> you can only test by plugging the stick and seeing if it works.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Alan McKinnon
>> alan.mckinnon@×××××.com <mailto:alan.mckinnon@×××××.com>
>>
>>
>
> I realize those problems, and that's why I've stayed away till now. I'm
> running Fedora currently on the pen drive.
> But the unmatched flexibility of gentoo is tempting me.
>
> For example, 3.13.5,6 have problems with USB 3 storage. I've patched the
> kernel on my desktop and it's working fine.
> Such things are against mainstream distros.
>
> What other distros are suited for this use case?
>


I don't really know, but that's because I too use Gentoo almost
exclusively, nothing else satisfies my OCD need to tweak everything
exactly right :-)

Pen drives tend to be slow so I think a great hulking monster like
Fedora won't suit the use-case.

You'd need something smaller and lighter, designed for lower end systems
I think.
Perhaps check out DistroWatch and try out a few? IIRC they have search
and filters that can help pick out the more lean distros




-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@×××××.com