On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 21:47:40 +0200
Olivier Scalbert <olivier.scalbert@algosyn.com> wrote:

> Hi everybody,
>
> If I have correctly understand, it is not possible to install Gentoo
> on a 386 ...
> If am right, do you think it possible to extract my hard disk, put it
> in a newer machine,
> recompile everything for a 386 and put it back in my old PC ?
> In fact, I have a Debian on this machine, but now, packages contains
> 486 instructions (thanks to gcc 3.2) ...

I don't think that it is that you can't, it is probably more along the
lines of why would you want to? It may not be that bad starting from
Stage 3 or even Stage 2, but to start from Stage 1, you would be facing
horrendous compile times.

Just for weight of comparision, the bootstrap alone took 17 hours on my
old AMD K6 450 w/ 512 Meg o' RAM. All in all, it took me an entire
weekend to get to a Stage 3 machine, and then the rest of the week to
get the rest of my apps up (X, Fluxbox, xmms, etc). Unless you're a
complete glutton for punishment, have a lot of spare time, or just
really feel like doing it for the experience, I'd try to steer towards a
binary distribution.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out!

- Brian

--
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in
waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht
the frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl
mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do
not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.