[plug] need to upgrade? -was Re: [plug] kmail and the gigasecond bug

[Peter Wright]

On Sat, Sep 08, 2001 at 11:02:25PM +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
> On Sat, 08 Sep 2001, Steve Vertigan wrote:
> > Bret Busby wrote:
> > > If I have to upgrade to one of these new-fangled, multi-CD versions
> > > of Linux, then, the hardware upgrades required, would mean that I
[ ... ]

Bret, you may find that once you actually give a modern distro a fair go
(even on one of your secondary machines), most (if not all) of your
concerns will disappear.

Or then again you may find that they don't :). But it should be worth at
least giving it a try.

> > I'm running Mandrake 7.2 quite happily on a P200 with 96 MB ram.
> > Before that I was running it useably (though not quite as happily) on
> > 32 MB ram so I don't see why a later version of Redhat should cause you
> > problems.

> > Just because a distro bundles more than one CD worth of packages
> > doesn't mean you have to install them all

...though especially with Mandrake/Redhat, I've found (both at first and
second hand) that it's _simpler_ (though not necessarily better) if you
have sufficient disk space, to just install everything.

Good point to remember though. :]

> > and the kernel can be customised to size with a recompile.

Generally a good idea.

> > Regards,
> > Steve
> 
> This Cyrix 6x86 is reated as being equivalent to about a pentium 75/90.
> It is a fair bit less than a P200. To upgrade the RAM is relatively
> expensive - EDO RAM, if it can be obtained, and, need pairs of chips,
> from memory (no pun intended). Also, from memory, this CPU is supposed to
> use the 486 instruction set.

I'm running a fully up-to-date (well, as of a couple of weeks ago) Debian
system, with Xfree864 and KDE 2.2, on a Pentium 90 with 40 megs of RAM and
720 meg HD (Toshiba Portege laptop) and it runs quite adequately.

I generally only use the full KDE desktop to show it off to people - due
both to the fact that the display space is small (only 640x480) and it
does take a while to start up. I use fvwm2 for general use, with konqueror
(the only KDE app I use regularly) when appropriate.

Just as a comparison point... I have another old Toshiba 486DX2-50 laptop
with only _8_ megs of RAM (320meg HD), though I haven't used it for a
couple of years now. That laptop used to run XFree86 (3.3.6) fine in VGA
mode, though I only ever used it to run fvwm and a handful of extremely
lightweight apps like xterm/rxvt and nedit.

> We also have RH 6.2 installed on a 486 with 16MB RAM; one of the nodes of
> our LAN. we use two Cyrix 6x86's in our LAN. Does RH 7.x run on a 486?
> Does it run, with X-Windows, in 16MB RAM? Would your Mandrake 7.2 run on
> a 486 with 16MB RAM? Is Mandrake 7.2 any more recent than RH6.2?

I think Mandrake is actually compiled with Pentium-specific
optimisations... which I believe means you flat out won't be able to run it
at all on a 486.

I'm sure RH 7.x will run fine. However, remembering what a pain RH can be
with installing packages you didn't ask for, don't need and don't want, I'd
suggest installing _without_ X initially and then adding the X packages
manually later.

Oh, and no way in hell do you want to install KDE or Gnome on a machine
with only 16meg RAM. Use a nice light window manager like blackbox (my
current favourite) or icewm or sawfish and leave the heavy GUI stuff for
machines that can handle it. :)

> Bret Busby

Pete.
-- 
http://akira.apana.org.au/~pete/

-- 
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