Gentoo on Older PC

[andrewdodd13]

I'm intending to install Gentoo onto my little sis's PC sometime this week. Now these are the specifications:
Pentium MMX 233MHz
64MB EDO RAM
3dfx Voodoo 3 2000 - 16MB RAM
8x4x32 Freecom CD-RW
Aztech 2320 PnP Sound Card (Problems before).

Now, as i understand, I can get XFCE running under this system with a decent UI for a 13 year old.
Also, she'll probably need aMSN, Firefox and a decent media player. Now I had problems with this sound card before with RH8. Does anyone know how to make it work under linux? (It appears as a modem in windows for some reason :S).
PS. Anyone know a good kernel config for this set-up? I need it to be relatively fast...

[sdousley]

I'm intending to install Gentoo onto my little sis's PC sometime this week.

i think the key word there is week

On a computer of those sorts of specs, it will take a LONG time to install.... compiling stuff from sources takes a long time.

On my computer (AMD Athlon XP 1700+ with 256MB Ram) KDE took 10 hours to install. Fluxbox took about 10, but that's on a slightly better puter than you're lookin to install on

[andrewdodd13]

Hmm yeah I was thinking that, and I can't stop/start the compilation of a single program can I? Because emerge clears the cache on start iirc...

[sdousley]

i think if ur emerge'ing multiple apps, you can stop once an app has finished, but midway thru an emerge of a particular app, i think if u stopped/started it, it will start that emerge from the beginning again

[andrewdodd13]

Yeh thats what I thought. My main concern isn't compile time though as I can leave it on while she's at school, its mainly that the system will be usable by her for everything she wants to do.
I take it no one has any ideas about the sound card?

[sdousley]

if you are not bothered about it being out of commission for a week or so, then i cant see any reason why it wouldn't be ok.

Just out of curiosity, why are you installing gentoo on it rather than a distro that doesn't compile everything from sources?

[andrewdodd13]

I want it to be pretty lean and fast for her to use, she's gonna moan if I use one of the older versions of Red Hat.
I might try a minimalist distro first, but a stage 1 gentoo install will probably the faster solution (even though its not the fastest to install).

[Cabhan]

About the soundcard, I assume that you had issues with ALSA? Have you taken a look at the ALSA page for it?

http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc...module=azt2320

All I can suggest is just compiling a kernel with ALSA support, and if that doesn't work, try everything at that site by hand. No one has posted complaints, so I can only hope that means good things.


Wow, I just took a good look at your specs. MHz. Good luck.

[andrewdodd13]

Okay thanks, I don't actually think it was ALSA before on this PC as it was RH8 and Knoppix 3.2 that I used on it. I'll compile the kernel with ALSA support .
By the looks of things the stage 1 install is coming along quite nicely .