[wellylug] Linux on Antique Boxen

Tony Booth tbooth at infometrics.co.nz
Mon Nov 25 08:09:50 NZDT 2002


> -----Original Message-----
> From: David McNab [mailto:david at rebirthing.co.nz]
> Sent: Monday, 25 November 2002 02:50
> To: NZOSS; Wellington WLUG
> Subject: [wellylug] Linux on Antique Boxen
> 
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I've just spent a painful weekend installing GNU/Linux onto a friend's
> P133 PC with 32MB RAM and 1GB HDD.
> 
> A big part of the 'fun and games' was building a 2.4.19 kernel, and
> installing a driver for the WinModem, as well as experimenting with
> various combinations of desktop software.
> 
> It took longer for make to build the kernel deps than my 
> 1.5GB box takes
> to build the whole thing. Tried building on big box and NFS'ing over,
> but for some reason the small box kept choking the link to 
> about 12kb/s.
> 
> Wasn't nice either that the box is a Compaq Deskpro, with no onboard
> BIOS and no BIOS floppy - had to boot off Debian rescue and root
> floppies before I could hit the CD drive.
> 
> Luckily the box had an onboard NIC well-supported by Linux (what NIC
> isn't! :)) Otherwise it would have been dial-up hell.
> 
> Mozilla takes over a minute to load, and Dillo is too dumb, 
> so I've gone
> for most of KDE, with Konqueror and the office apps, with Sylpheed for
> the email. OO totally out of the question.
> 
> I tried the minimalist approach - fluxbox, links/dillo, pine etc, but
> what was gained in speed was way lost in user-friendliness 
> (my friend is
> a PC newbie).
> 
> As for partitions - 16MB boot, 80MB swap, the rest root, with swapd
> standing by to carve off 16MB chunks in case of emergency.
> 
> Still not brilliant - 2 mins to boot, 40 secs for Konqueror 
> etc, but at
> least it's a newbie-friendly desktop now, albeit a complete
> swap-thrasher.
> 
> KPPP totally loses the plot - keeps terminating the dialup connection
> and starting again - so I wrote a couple of suid progs which 
> launch and
> terminate pppd directly.
> 
> Bottom line of all this?
> 
> 64MB is a bare minimum for a usable system.
> Anything less feels like root canal therapy during a hangover with no
> anaesthetic.
> 
> This is something people might like to keep in mind when volunteering
> for the SeniorNet Linux install program.
> 
> If anybody asks me again to build a user-friendly Linux 
> desktop on such
> a tiny box, I think I'll be telling them to either upgrade 
> RAM, or go to
> Cash Converters and score a cheap CD from that notorious northeast USA
> company and fend for themself.
> 
> Cheers
> David
> 

What you say is true.  Extra RAM makes all the difference.  I was running a
Redhat 6.1 install on a P100 with 1GB hd and 16Mb RAM, and X was not
feasible.  However, I upgraded to 96Mb RAM and I have little trouble running
Redhat 7.1, KDE (with Galeon as my browser).  A bit slow as one would
expect, but bearable.  StarOffice 5 is still too slow to be usable, but
KWord/KSpread do the job.

Kernel compile takes about 6 hours, so cross-compiling is highly
recommended.  Or run overnight (watch out with those old fans that the
machine doesn't overheat).

With a little more CPU (166) but less (48Mb) memory, my laptop copes easily
with:
* Debian Woody
* Blackbox WM
* Galeon (Moz must be installed though doesn't run)
* Abiword
* Sylpheed (or use the inspired but text-based Mutt)
* dev stuff

I've also tried Gnumeric.  It runs, but real men use dc.

Tony

  .-.   Wellington
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 // \\  Users       
/(   )\ Group
 ^^-^^
        http://wlug.paradise.net.nz/

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