On 22/03/2014 15:12, Nilesh Govindrajan wrote: > On 22-Mar-2014 6:39 pm, "Alan McKinnon" <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> >> On 22/03/2014 15:00, Nilesh Govindrajan wrote: >> > On 22-Mar-2014 5:42 pm, "Brian Hesdorfer" <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]> >> > <mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>> wrote: >> >> >> >> >> >> On 3/21/2014 9:53 PM, Nilesh Govindrajan wrote: >> >>> >> >>> Hi, >> >>> >> >>> Since I don't have a laptop, I'm thinking of installing Gentoo on my >> >>> USB 3 pen drive. I'll use binpkgs from my desktop so that pen drive >> >>> lives long. >> >>> >> >>> Has anybody tried Samsung's F2FS? I heard it performs better than the >> >>> traditional ext4/xfs/etc on flash drives. >> >>> >> >>> Also the pen drive will be used on random hardware (which can be a >> >>> laptop or a desktop), so what else do I need to consider other than >> >>> using genkernel's default configuration (the livecd config, which >> >>> enables all modules)? >> >>> >> >> >> >> FWIW, I've been F2FS plus encryption with Arch and haven't had any >> > problems. I'd suggest having anything important backed up somewhere else >> > since it's still seen as experimental (I think). >> >> >> > >> > Of course. Pen drives are as such not very reliable, so backups are > a must. >> > >> >> If you're using it on random hardware and want X, you'll have to >> > include the variety of video cards you might run into (Intel, ATI, >> > Nvidia) in your USE flags. >> >> >> > >> > Will it work out the box without configuration? >> > >> >> Also, be wary of the predictable naming for network interfaces >> > (enp5s0, enp9s2,etc). You might want to disable that feature using >> > something like "net.ifnames=0" in your bootloader or a udev rule so you >> > can just set eth0 to DHCP and it will work on most machines. >> >> >> > >> > NetworkManager helps with that, or may be just run dhcpcd. >> > >> >> >> I suspect you will end up duplicating a lot of work that is already done >> elsewhere by the binary distros. You'll probably also have your hands >> full just trying to keep up with video hardware as you'll need at least >> intel, fglrx and nvidia drivers (plus maybe nouveau and radeon). >> >> Are you 100% sure you want to go that route? Sounds like a huge amount >> of work. In your position, I would rather investigate a LiveCD type >> solution with a persistent fs layer on top and let the distro do all the >> heavy lifting. >> >> Especially as you don't have the target hardware to hand for testing, >> you can only test by plugging the stick and seeing if it works. >> >> >> >> >> -- >> Alan McKinnon >> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> >> >> > > I realize those problems, and that's why I've stayed away till now. I'm > running Fedora currently on the pen drive. > But the unmatched flexibility of gentoo is tempting me. > > For example, 3.13.5,6 have problems with USB 3 storage. I've patched the > kernel on my desktop and it's working fine. > Such things are against mainstream distros. > > What other distros are suited for this use case? >
I don't really know, but that's because I too use Gentoo almost exclusively, nothing else satisfies my OCD need to tweak everything exactly right :-) Pen drives tend to be slow so I think a great hulking monster like Fedora won't suit the use-case. You'd need something smaller and lighter, designed for lower end systems I think. Perhaps check out DistroWatch and try out a few? IIRC they have search and filters that can help pick out the more lean distros -- Alan McKinnon [email protected]
