[gentoo-user] May be OT: recommended niceness settings for Portage while using Gnome?

[James Homuth]

I just got Gnome set up completely on a 5-year-old laptop with 512 MB of RAM
running on a P4, and am sort of halfway in the middle of playing with it. In
the process, I'm discovering I still need to install a few things. Just one
problem. I emerge said things, and the system flatlines until such time as
the compilation(s) are done--load is currently sitting at 2.1+. Are there
any make.conf settings I can tweak so that I can still actually use the
system while things compile, or would I be better off setting things to
compile, throwing in a movie, and coming back when they're done? Thanks for
any pointers.