Re: [gentoo-user] Anyone running a Netbook satisfactorily on Gentoo?

[Paul Hartman]

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 3:12 PM, Grant <emailgrant@×××××.com> wrote:
>>>> I've installed and updated Gentoo on my girlfriend's Acer Aspire One
>>>> netbook and it's just so slow.  The only things I can think of to
>>>> speed it up would be to upgrade the RAM from 1GB (not sure if that's
>>>> possible) and/or swap out the SSD for a HD.  Anyone running a netbook
>>>> not excruciatingly slow?
>>>>
>>>> - Grant
>>>>
>>>
>>> I've got an Acer One for my father. I don't know the exact type; it is
>>> the one with the 8GB SSD.
>>>
>>> I found it quiet usable, installed Gentoo with a minimal KDE3 on it.
>>> Compiled with -Os, of course. RAM usage is below 256MB most of the time.
>>> The only things I didn't get to work are 3D acceleration and the SSD
>>> card slots but I haven't invested much time into it.
>>>
>>> The slowest part of the system is the SSD. It really slows things done
>>> when they are loaded for the first time (for example the HTML part of
>>> Konqueror takes 3s to load AFTER Konqueror itself came up).
>>>
>>> The rest of the system is pretty fast for my expectations.I compiled
>>> most things in a chroot on my Celeron notebook (2 or 3 times the speed)
>>> before moving it over but I really found compiling not _that_ slow. Its
>>> usable for most regular updates and even kernels and such alike. For
>>> larger packages, I mount an NFS share on /var/tmp/portage because I
>>> don't want to wear down the SSD.
>>>
>>> Other tips:
>>> Use ext2 FS. You don't want the journalling to cost you even more
>>> performance and wear down the SSD.
>>>
>>> I wouldn't use laptop-mode. You don't want it to bog down the system
>>> when it decides to flush its write cache.
>>>
>>> No syslog, it will only wear down the disk with many small write cycles.
>>>
>>> Use the noop IO scheduler (boot parameter elevator=noop). There is no
>>> need for a scheduler on an SSD.
>>>
>>> ArchLinux also recommends deactivating DRI ('Option "DRI" "0"' in
>>> xorg.conf) to free up 32MB of memory.
>>>
>>> Hope this helps.
>>
>> Thanks guys, these are the kinds of tips I need.  I really want this
>> thing to work out so I can switch over to one.  Lemme see if I've got
>> this:
>>
>> 1. run xfce4 (already do)
>> 2. compile with -Os (I was using -O2)
>> 3. use ext2 (I was using ext3)
>> 4. don't use laptop-mode (I didn't know it existed)
>> 5. no syslog (does this mean don't even emerge a system logger like metalog?)
>> 6. use elevator=noop at boot
>> 7. deactivate DRI
>> 8. upgrade RAM to the max
>
> Which of these still apply when using a conventional HD instead of a
> SSD in the netbook?

This is all just my opinion and not backed by scientific method... I
would use a journaling file system no matter what, just to recover
from crashes/dead batteries better... I'm not sure the journaling
would have a significant negative impact on the SSD life (certainly
not as much as, say, running Gentoo on it in the first place).

Otherwise, I think normal laptop performance tuning guidelines would
apply... Do whatever you can to reduce disk access. On my laptop I
disabled swap, set the hdd to power off after X minutes of idle,
disable disk cache in web browsers, use /dev/shm for portate tmpdir,
disable cron and hald disk polling and slocate and all the other
things that run in the background on their own and cause the disks to
wake up. And cpu frequency scaling of course.

With all of that I'm able to get a whopping 75 or 80 minutes battery
life out of my Acer laptop. Compared to about 30 minutes when it's
running full steam ahead. :)