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Why does Source Mage use so much hard drive space? Is there a way I can stop it from caching?
What should I do in preparation for changing from Red Hat Linux to Source Mage?
Is there anything I need to change in the BIOS before I install Source Mage?
How can I contact people involved with SMGL?
Great Question!
There are several ways to get involved with the SMGL team or the SMGL Community. Here are just a few of them:
The Web Site: One of the best ones is right here, through our web site. You will find forums, these FAQ's, a Wiki, and several other ways to communicate with other SMGL users and team members.
The Mailing Lists and IRC Channels: Mailing lists are currently located here:
![[WWW]](/wiki//smgl/img/moin-www.png)
http://www.sourcemage.org/contact. Email: All of the team members have their emails linked on the org chart. If you can't find your answer anywhere else, just ask us directly!
Why does Source Mage use so much hard drive space? Is there a way I can stop it from caching?
First of all, if you look at a basic install of Source Mage versus some standard/full installs of other distributions, I think you'll find that your disk usage is dramatically decreased in Source Mage... but enough with my diatribe, you want answers!
The key to your success is in the sorcery command. Type in sorcery at the prompt, and you'll be greeted with a graphical menu. Proceed to the option section, and from there to the feature menu. The options you probably want to disable, if you'd like to conserve disk space, are "ARCHIVE" and "CACHE." This will save you disk space. However, the down side to selecting these options is that if you ever cast a spell that requires a dependency that you've already installed to be re-installed, you're going to get to go through the whole compilation of that application again, instead of having it read off of disk.
But hey, that's why you bought a dual Athlon 1800+ system, right? So it could compile programs for you all day long (that and to put you in contention at distributed.net).
What are the best compile optimizations to pick as default?
This really depends on your needs. If you are concerned about space, then you should choose tiny and strip. This will strip all debugging symbols from the code as well as optimize for space. If you are more interested in speed, then choose speedy. If you choose speedy, you can also choose strip to remove debugging symbols. Unless you plan on debugging, you probably should choose strip as this will save space on your hard drive.
Where are the mailing lists?
http://www.sourcemage.org/contact
What does cast, dispel, sorcery or gaze do?
cast allows you to cast spells. Casting spells is how programs are compiled and installed.
dispel allows you to remove installed programs. It is the opposite of cast.
sorcery provides a nice frontend to both of these programs as well as easing the configuration of many other aspects of Source Mage GNU/Linux.
gaze allow you to view almost every aspect of your Source Mage GNU/Linux system. It shows programs installed along with their respective version numbers. It can show you all files on your system not associated with any installed spell. It has far too many uses to mention them all here. See the associated manpage for more details.
I have heard some stories from people that compiling takes a long time. Does it really take more than 24 hours to compile X?
It really depends on your hardware configuration. On my Athlon 1Ghz, 512MB (and a total of 1Gb swap + RAM), Xfree takes less than one hour to compile, the whole kde3 (including qt) around 3 hours. Not so long... I guess on 386 it would be *much* longer 
Seriously speaking, any machine starting from 500Mhz should be fine.
Editors note: On my P2-350 w/256MB ram (although memory doesn't affect compile time too much), X took about 12 hours to compile. I know we're not all running Ghz power in our Linux machines, so I thought I'd provide this point of reference.
What should I do in preparation for changing from Red Hat Linux to Source Mage?
The main thing to understand when changing distributions is to not expect to end up with the same thing you presently have. If you want your Source Mage system to run just like a Red Hat system, why are you changing? Still with me? Here are some tidbits for you (because you know you REALLY want Source Mage):
Make note of some of your commonly used applications - Source Mage installs a VERY minimalistic set of apps by default, be prepared to have to install everything you want.
Be up to date on kernel configuration and compilation options. Red Hat hands everything to you on a platter... a very big platter which has tons of stuff you don't care about on it, along with the few things you do care about. If you haven't compiled a kernel before/in a while, read the
Kernel-HOWTO. If you have problems, that aren't answered in the FAQ or a
HOWTO, get on the mailing list and/or IRC chatroom. There are lots of us out there who want to help!
Is there anything I need to change in the BIOS before I install Source Mage?
If you're already running another Linux distribution, the answer is definitely no. If you're NOT running another Linux distribution, the answer is probably not. Try installing Source Mage, see what happens. If something breaks and it all points back to the BIOS (which I would suspect is very unlikely) then try going into the BIOS and setting default or fail safe settings, then try it again.