23 Jun
2006
23 Jun
'06
9:42 p.m.
After watching an 800MHz P3 system build Gnome (and
its dependent
packages) on a NetBSD system, I got to wondering how usable NetBSD is
on older slower hardware, such as MicroVAX II.
If you want to build Perl or X or the kernel, what do
you do? Start
the make and come back in a week?
I have a collection of NetBSD machines (eight ports, six different CPU
architectures - SPARC, 68k, VAX, x86, alpha, ppc). The VAX, alpha, and
ppc machines are normally turned on only when I want to build something
for them.
I've never tried to build perl on anything. But I do irregularly bring
them all up to date and do builds of the world on them. My slowest
machine is the MicroVAX-II which I run diskless (because I do not have
any disk interface for it for which I have a nontrivial amount of
working disk), with 9M of RAM (someday I hope to scare up the boards to
up it to its limit of 16).
And, basically, the answer is "yes". When I start a build of the world
on the ?V2, I don't expect it to complete in less than a week. (The
kernel takes more like a day.)
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