On Sun, 27 Oct 2002, Lucas Peet wrote:

> >distribution to install and use (try installing and actually using
> >redhat on an old P120 with 32MB of ram...)
> 
> Yes, but how many weeks did it take to compile and install on a system
> like that??

heh, I recently found out how to seriously cheat to make this a
non-issue...

I mounted the hard drive through NFS to my GHz box and chrooted the gentoo
setup in a shell.  It effectively was a login on the old computer, but
with a transplanted brain.  Compiling was every bit as fast as what would
be on my GHz box (perhaps faster due to distributed resources.)  It helps
to have one of those aftermarket hard drives with the included controller.  
That P120 has a 160GB hard drive and has no problem moving data around at
20MB/sec.

Before I learned that trick, it took about a day to compile a basic
system.  Another for a basic world.  X by itself was another day.  
Anything gnome or kde was a killer, since c++ code takes a huge amount of
RAM to compile OR run.  Compiling for minimalist settings resulted in
speedy performance.  This may be impossible with today's distributions,
but I once had SUSE running on a 486 with 16MB in a very useable
configuration.  The default of everything most people are used to might
prove unreasonable for such a system.  That's why I like the ability to
craft my own system from the tarballs.

Even without the NFS trick, I would still prefer maintaining and using a 
gentoo distribution on that old computer.  It just feels right.