Arch Linux

jdhore

Member

From: NYC

Registered: 2007-08-01

Posts: 156

Re: Gentoo or Arch for me?

I'm going to try Arch first and get it up and running to my liking. I will perhaps try Gentoo when I have more time (I hear it takes quite a long time to compile everything for a fully functional, graphically based desktop). The only problem I have is lack of time.

Thanks again guys!

On my 2.4GhZ Pentium 4 with 1GB RAM "dev" box, it takes roughly 10 hours to get from sticking the Gentoo CD in to rebooting into a full GNOME environment. Faster FSB, faster clock, more RAM, faster RAM will all make it faster, but compare that to roughly 2 hours to fully install Arch on the same system and get to a full GNOME desktop.

methuselah

Member

Registered: 2007-10-02

Posts: 570

Re: Gentoo or Arch for me?

I'm going to try Arch first and get it up and running to my liking. I will perhaps try Gentoo when I have more time (I hear it takes quite a long time to compile everything for a fully functional, graphically based desktop). The only problem I have is lack of time.

Thanks again guys!

On my 2.4GhZ Pentium 4 with 1GB RAM "dev" box, it takes roughly 10 hours to get from sticking the Gentoo CD in to rebooting into a full GNOME environment. Faster FSB, faster clock, more RAM, faster RAM will all make it faster, but compare that to roughly 2 hours to fully install Arch on the same system and get to a full GNOME desktop.

More RAM and faster RAM..... can you please explain these to me? I had also been thinking about trying Gentoo one of these days. I just don't want to go through the whole install process to finally get everything back to where I have it now on Arch.

I also am wondering about the custom cflags..... can I use those on the Arch system with my zen2 kernel? I mean, I know I could set them in the menuconfig (as well as a few other of the "ricer" options available with the zen2 patch, but would building packages with ABS and AUR use the custom CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, AFLAGS, and MAKEFLAGS that are available in the menuconfig settings?

jdhore

Member

From: NYC

Registered: 2007-08-01

Posts: 156

Re: Gentoo or Arch for me?

I'm going to try Arch first and get it up and running to my liking. I will perhaps try Gentoo when I have more time (I hear it takes quite a long time to compile everything for a fully functional, graphically based desktop). The only problem I have is lack of time.

Thanks again guys!

On my 2.4GhZ Pentium 4 with 1GB RAM "dev" box, it takes roughly 10 hours to get from sticking the Gentoo CD in to rebooting into a full GNOME environment. Faster FSB, faster clock, more RAM, faster RAM will all make it faster, but compare that to roughly 2 hours to fully install Arch on the same system and get to a full GNOME desktop.

More RAM and faster RAM..... can you please explain these to me? I had also been thinking about trying Gentoo one of these days. I just don't want to go through the whole install process to finally get everything back to where I have it now on Arch.

I also am wondering about the custom cflags..... can I use those on the Arch system with my zen2 kernel? I mean, I know I could set them in the menuconfig (as well as a few other of the "ricer" options available with the zen2 patch, but would building packages with ABS and AUR use the custom CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, AFLAGS, and MAKEFLAGS that are available in the menuconfig settings?

More RAM = More RAM, it will go faster on 2GB of RAM as opposed to 1GB because it can fit more in RAM...especially for those pesky C++ apps..
Faster RAM = well... My dev box is on DDR PC2700 RAM...If you have PC3200 it'll be a bit faster and if you have DDR2 RAM, it'll be even faster than that.

What you would do for CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, AFLAGS and MAKEFLAGS is specify them in /etc/makepkg.conf and it will apply those to any package you build with makepkg.

methuselah

Member

Registered: 2007-10-02

Posts: 570

Re: Gentoo or Arch for me?

More RAM = More RAM, it will go faster on 2GB of RAM as opposed to 1GB because it can fit more in RAM...especially for those pesky C++ apps..
Faster RAM = well... My dev box is on DDR PC2700 RAM...If you have PC3200 it'll be a bit faster and if you have DDR2 RAM, it'll be even faster than that.

What you would do for CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, AFLAGS and MAKEFLAGS is specify them in /etc/makepkg.conf and it will apply those to any package you build with makepkg.

Well, of course more ram = MORE RAM! which will = faster performance..... but if Arch64 registers 3.6GB of ram for my computer, why would Gentoo have more ram than my computer can offer? Maybe you weren't saying that comment about why Gentoo would be faster than Arch.....

..... Maybe you were just saying that the common rules of having a fast system is always the amount of RAM you have, and the way it's configured...... And if you had meant it that way and I had originally mis-read that, then I am sorry. I had thought you were referring to the different way it uses the cache of ram.... I know my -Arch generic x86_64 kernel had this setting :CONFIG_X86_L1_CACHE_BYTES=128 ....... while my custom AMD64 has this setting: CONFIG_X86_L1_CACHE_BYTES=64 ..... which is what my Turion 64x2 TL-60 has: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turion_64_ … _nm_SOI.29

I guess my question is what specifically does a Gentoo AMD64 kernel with all optimizations configured have over a generic x86_64 -ARCH kernel? On the same exact system with the same amount of ram.

I've read on the Gentoo wiki about their advantages of compiling individual apps with the custom flags already built into the kernel, how it will build the apps specifically for your system and it's settings, but as for the kernel and it's performance, I would like to hear some info on that. I recently have been trying to learn about the kernel and the best way to configure it, I'm very interested in learning all that I can about things like latency, nice settings, what is the best timer frequency setting, and anything else about building a kernel to be very fast.

Last edited by methuselah (2008-09-12 03:13:17)