[plug] Old 486 advice

[Craig Ringer]

Leon Brooks wrote:

>On Wednesday 17 October 2001 07:44, Craig Ringer wrote:
>
>>>How much RAM would you sugest to run X? if at all?
>>>
>>32MB for XFree86. I beleve there are "thinner" X implementations out
>>there but I expect they'll cost, and if you had money you wouldn't be
>>using a 486.
>>
>
>Er, if you're *only* running Linux and X, not the apps themselves, 8M is more 
>than enough for a thin WM. Most _video_cards_ come with at least 8M of their 
>own these days. (-:
>
But alas it isn't possible to use video RAM as conventional main memory, 
or the other way around (ignore evil shared memory video cards here, and 
AGP memory sharing isn't relevant for a 486). X needs a chunk of RAM to 
run, and believe me you don't want to be swapping on a 486 so more is 
ideal. What use is X with no apps anyway?

>Consider recompiling the kernel and X specifically for your machine, and 
>trimming out support for everything you don't use, such as alternate models 
>of your video card, firewalling/scsi/USB/etc kernel support, unwanted 
>services.
>
Absolutely. If you can swing it, find a faster machine to build the 
kernel on too since I won't want to think about how long a kernel build 
on a 486 would take, its bad enough on a P100. In fact, send me a 
.config and tell me what kernel version its for and I'll build you the 
image and modules. I can make it available over FTP when ready. (This 
because nobody deserves to have to do a kernel compile on a p100).