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> I'm in the process of installing Gentoo on a rather old |
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> machine. It's an old HP Pavilion with a 450MHz Celeron |
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> Mendocino and 256MB of PC133 SDRAM. I'm using an nVidia PCI |
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> FX6200 video board instead of the i810 on-board chip, and it's |
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> got a decent hard drive (160GB). |
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> |
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> I was wondering if there were any particular tips/tricks for |
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> getting the best performance out of such a machine. It's to be |
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> used for basic word processing and a few games. Hopefully the |
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> nVidia 6200 will allow OpenGL to run fast enough for something |
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> like TuxRacer. |
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> |
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> I chose XFCE for the desktop along with both Abiword and |
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> OpenOffice. I probably should have installed OOo from a binary |
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> package, but I decided to build it just to see how long it |
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> would take (so far it's at about 26 hours and counting). |
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|
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Fvwm is lightweight. |
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|
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Make a point of compiling the kernel without anything |
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you don't need; if you might need something then make |
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it a module. |
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|
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Don't run daemon's you don't really need. For example, |
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log into the command line and use "startx" or "xinit" |
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rather than having the thing boot into an X11 login. |
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|
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Use a large amount of swap compared to ram (with your |
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drive maybe 2G) and avoid tmpfs for working storage. |
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|
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If all you're using the thing for is surfing or basic |
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development then it should work fine. The old standard |
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for using X11 was a minimum 12MB of core and 40MB disk. |
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For a long time that was difficult, then IDE came along |
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and big disks got cheaper :-) |
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|
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-- |
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Steven Lembark 85-09 90th St. |
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Workhorse Computing Woodhaven, NY, 11421 |
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lembark@×××××××.com +1 888 359 3508 |