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

[Nilesh Govindrajan]

On 22-Mar-2014 6:56 pm, "Alan McKinnon" <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote:
>
> 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
>
>

It works actually. Using gnome3. I've even used it to run eclipse for
working on my project at college and friend's laptop.
May be debian would be good, need something stable. Gentoo is stable
because it's manually tweaked, but too much work to manage that for random
hardware.