I may have to leave Crux

[hazel]

I shall be sorry to do so because this has been my favourite distro so far. But some packages are getting too big for me to build them. Firefox has been a pain since version 4, when they merged it with xulrunner. But Firefox 5 is so big and needs so much memory for the final libxul.so linking step that I can't build it without running out of memory, even in single-user mode with nothing else running.

Yes, I know, I could pay someone to insert more memory into my computer or buy a new one. But why should I have to do that? Linux is about choice, right? And I can build a kernel on this machine without difficulty and in a reasonable amount of time too, so why should a mere browser be so demanding?

What I think I want right now is something with the simplicity of Crux but binary. That probably means Arch or Slackware. I've long wanted to try Slack; perhaps now would be the time.

[jayd512]

I know this is probably a silly question, considering your knowledge level.
But does a swapfile help with the memory issue?

[Rubberman]

I know this is probably a silly question, considering your knowledge level.
But does a swapfile help with the memory issue?

Besides slowing stuff down to a crawl? Yes, swap will help build this, but if the system is 32-bit, then you are still limited to 4GB per process (and total, unless you have PAE capable hardware).

[jayd512]

Yeah... I know that it can slow stuff down.
My first CRUX install was on an old dinosaur of a box. Had a maxed out 512 RAM and 1 GB swap partition.
But a 256 MB swapfile did help keep me from running out of memory on a large build.
Usually the kind that I would start right before I went to bed at the end of the night.

[Etna]

I shall be sorry to do so because this has been my favourite distro so far. But some packages are getting too big for me to build them. Firefox has been a pain since version 4, when they merged it with xulrunner. But Firefox 5 is so big and needs so much memory for the final libxul.so linking step that I can't build it without running out of memory, even in single-user mode with nothing else running.

Yes, I know, I could pay someone to insert more memory into my computer or buy a new one. But why should I have to do that? Linux is about choice, right? And I can build a kernel on this machine without difficulty and in a reasonable amount of time too, so why should a mere browser be so demanding?

What I think I want right now is something with the simplicity of Crux but binary. That probably means Arch or Slackware. I've long wanted to try Slack; perhaps now would be the time.

I'd rather just hand over some dollar bills, open up my PC/notebook, shove in some new RAM sticks and get on with my life.

No offence, but your decision to leave Crux over hardware issues like lack of memory is impossible for me to understand. I believe the days of having extremely low hardware requirements are long over; even Google themselves are strongly recommending that the the lightweight Chromium web browser be built over a 64-bit machine with at least 4GB of memory. When i built my copy of Chromium on 2GB of memory, the process always failed until i changed the command to build the browser as a "release version" and not a "debug version".

[Dapper Dan]

xulrunner takes forever and a day to compile, no doubt about it! I couldn't believe how large it has to be. But on my CRUX 2.7 box (a Dell E520 with four gigs of ram) Firefox runs pretty flawlessly. These days though, I'm using Chromium more and more as I am right now. If you don't need too many bells and whistles, there's always Links graphics.

[jayd512]

I'd rather just hand over some dollar bills, open up my PC/notebook, shove in some new RAM sticks and get on with my life.

No offence, but your decision to leave Crux over hardware issues like lack of memory is impossible for me to understand. I believe the days of having extremely low hardware requirements are long over...

A few points on that, without total disagreement.

What about the folks that might not have the available finances to hand over a few bucks? Money for the RAM, and then to pay the person installing it.

And what about folks who migrated over from Windows because of Vista's HW requirements? This is really the same argument.

I think the issue that hazel is bringing up, and I hope she corrects me if I'm wrong, is that even OS's that are modeled for older kit are moving beyond what that hardware can deal with... and I can't find any way to disagree with that complaint.
While the OS itself (CRUX) is fine on that machine, the compilation time and memory requirements are, indeed, becoming extreme.

My earlier post was just a question about a possible , and only slightly helpful, workaround.





Just saw Dan's link about Links graphics. Never seen that...
Very nice!

[Dapper Dan]

Just saw Dan's link about Links graphics. Never seen that...

Jay, in many ways, Links graphics is the perfect web browser for a distro like CRUX as it is small, easy to build and very fast... just like CRUX! It won't have the features of Firefox though, pictures and text are pretty much it. Web page navigation has almost no lag.

[Jonathan183]

But some packages are getting too big for me to build them. Firefox has been a pain since version 4, when they merged it with xulrunner. But Firefox 5 is so big and needs so much memory for the final libxul.so linking step that I can't build it without running out of memory, even in single-user mode with nothing else running.

Yes, I know, I could pay someone to insert more memory into my computer or buy a new one. But why should I have to do that? Linux is about choice, right? And I can build a kernel on this machine without difficulty and in a reasonable amount of time too, so why should a mere browser be so demanding?

What I think I want right now is something with the simplicity of Crux but binary. That probably means Arch or Slackware. I've long wanted to try Slack; perhaps now would be the time.

Arch ... much quicker to update and install software than Crux in my experience (compile times are a pain for limited hardware). I got firefox to compile on Crux but kept running into trouble trying to get chromium to compile ... I thought Slackware was source based ...

[Dapper Dan]

... I thought Slackware was source based ...

Slackware uses binaries in .tgz format which makes me remember something that may benefit hazel if she hasn't tried it already. rpm2targz (in ports) will convert packages that can be installed without compiling. There's also deb2targz. I've used both when up against a difficult compile.