[plug] Mandrake 9.0 System Requirements

[ryan at is.as.geeky.as]

Being a staunch Debian user, I installed Mandrake on a machine at work to
assess it suitability to replace some Windows machines here.  I hate people
comparing Linux to Windows on the premise that it should be a slip-in
replacement for it, so I am not trying to do that.  This is purely a
responsiveness/machine spec issue.

I was VERY impressed by Mandrake except for its general responsiveness.  I
installed it on a PIII 600, 64MB RAM, 8MB Riva TNT, using Gnome 2.  I've
never used Gnome 2 before so am not familiar with it's performance.

I know the RAM is lacking, but Windows 2000 and Debian (Gnome 1.4) both
appear to run very nicely on this machine, and this was a comparison
exercise after all.  I installed a medium amount of fruit and after bootup
65+ MB of swap is in use and the machine runs about as well as a legless
donkey.  Swapping constantly and tuxracer runs at about 0.2 frames per
second.  I've disabled every service I can find and it makes no apparent
difference.  Is there a bunch of useless services eating my performance I'm
unaware of, is Gnome 2 a real behemoth?

Is this kind of thing normal given the machine spec, what other machines are
people running it on and what performance do you get?  I'll try more RAM
when I find some :)

Ryan