[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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