--- layout: post title: "Installing Gentoo on a Lenovo ThinkPad X60s" date: 2016-07-12 13:00:00 +0200 categories: linux ---

Currently, my only laptop is a IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad X60s, a top line ultrabook from 2006 that features:

- An Intel Core Duo L2400 dual core 32 bit CPU, clocked at 1.66 Ghz;
- 2GB of RAM;
- 60GB of SATA1 hard drive;
- Wifi, Bluetooth, trackpoint mouse only, 56k modem, and a decent set of I/0 ports (including a CardBus slot!).

This machine had an installation on Arch Linux, and I was using it for school stuff. It runned smoothly KDE5, Atom (great editor, I am using it to write this article), and it was usable even with PhpStorm. Pretty impressive for such an old thing, right?

Since now I don't need this laptop every day I decided to give a try at Gentoo, another rolling relase, DIY install distro. This was both a test of my skills, my patience and the performances of the machine. For those of you that don't know, Gentoo hasn't binary packages: imagine using Arch with just a developer mantained AUR.

I followed the installation guide without any problem until I had to emerge and install 309 packets from my `@world` set: it took 15 hours! The compilation of `cmake` crashed because of memory starvation, and so I had to use a spare USB stick as swap (the root file system was not resizable as it was JFS). After some research and a couple of seconds in `top` I discovered that PAE was not implemented in the install disk kernel. TIP: if you want to use a nicer install enviroment, use the Arch ISO. With Gentoo, the initialisation of the file system is made with a stage 3 tarball and not by tools like `pacstrap`.

I had another problem with `make menuconfig`, the tool used to specify what features add or remove in your compiled from source Linux kernel. The `ncurses` menu showed me 64bit options, even if the install disk and the CPU were both 32 bit. If you have this issue too, you can set the `ARCH` variable by your own:

{% highlight bash %} # make ARCH=i386 menuconfig # make ARCH=i386 # make ARCH=i386 install {% endhighlight %}

At the end, I made it! I only have a base install, but i can show you `screenfetch`:

I have not installed Gentoo in dual boot because I did not figure out how to switch my bluetooth dongle in HID mode yet, so I can't select the OS with `rEFInd`. Hope this rambling was, if not useful, at least entertaining!