Sorry about the break in communication over the past few days; the job and real life intruded, as is wont to happen. It always seems like I have a long list of things to write about, and the time I need to write them gets claimed by something else. That’s life.

I’ve reinstalled Crux in that time, first building a conventional system like I’m used to (Openbox, etc.) and now issuing a system-wide rebuild command using some wacky CFLAGS, MAKEFLAGS and LDFLAGS that have been discussed on the Crux mailing list. My /etc/pkgmk.conf looks like this right now:

export CFLAGS="-O3 -march=pentium3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -fvisibility-inlines-hidden -ffast-math"
export CXXFLAGS="-O3 -march=pentium3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -fvisibility-inlines-hidden -ffast-math"
export LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed -Wl,--relax"
export MAKEFLAGS="-j 2"

Ah, it’ll probably break everything. That’s okay. That’s how I learn.

On the other side of the fence, I collected a rather amusing list of X-based software — like the list of GTK1.2 stuff — and I’ll try to post that in the coming days. There’s nothing terribly earth-shattering in the list, but it might be a curiosity for someone leaning on an ancient machine who just needs a halfway-decent file manager, or something like that.

That GTK1.2 Ubuntu system really grew on me, to be honest. When I took the time to make it look a little more attractive (which is a lot of work in itself) and reoriented myself to the software pecularities, I actually found I liked it. That might just be human nature, on a small scale though — people learn to like things that pose difficulties, if they can surmount them eventually. More likely than not, it’s an issue of pride. 🙄

Regardless, consider that another endorsement for a desktop made of nothing after GTK1.2. If you take the time and find software you like, it might turn into a labor of love. And machine performance will not disappoint, I promise. 😉