On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 23:10:31 -0500, /dev/rob0 wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 03:46:06 +0000, Realto Margarino wrote:

>> I run slack 9.0 on a 200mmx with 128 megs and a 2 meg video card.

For a "new" Linux installation i'd advice Desktop Light with such
hardware, a still maintained Slackware 7.1 based distro. That runs
fine on a P1 90MHz with 40megs o' RAM even:
http://delilinux.berlios.de/

Which version of Slack are you useing?

>> I run X with fvwm/xfce/icewm/windowmaker and firefox or opera. For

Interesting, how is FireFox doing speed/snappiness wise on that box?

> Do you find that browsing is annoyingly slow?

Well, i'm not using an old rig now. But the Galeon browser does better
then Mozilla (speed wise). Netscape 4.x is quite fast as well. (Only
more websites seem to use MS-HTML, or incompatible MS JavaScript clone
(JScript) neigther of which render prefectly in the latter.)

> That's how I felt toward the end of my days on a P166 workstation.

How much RAM did you have?

FWIW: i used a p55 as my primary box till about a year ago. It did fine,
even for playing Quake (with Voodoo cart) i had 384MB installed though.

> Back then (about 1.5 years ago) it seemed that none of the browsers were
> very friendly to weak old CPU's. I used Opera mostly. "links -g" was the
> best for system resources, but a bit odd to work with in numerous ways.

I still use Lynx every now and again, maybe check out Dillo:
http://www.dillo.org/

>> a wordprocessor I use abiword although openoffice is doable [ ... ]

I think some of the "small" distros have Ted for .rtf and .pdf :
http://www.nllgg.nl/Ted/index.html

I haven't used that myself (so idunno much about it), but the PDF feature
isn't available in AbiWord AFAIK.

--
-Menno.

Menno Duursma <menno@desktop.lan> wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 23:10:31 -0500, /dev/rob0 wrote:
> > On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 03:46:06 +0000, Realto Margarino wrote:

> >> I run slack 9.0 on a 200mmx with 128 megs and a 2 meg video card.

> For a "new" Linux installation i'd advice Desktop Light with such
> hardware, a still maintained Slackware 7.1 based distro. That runs
> fine on a P1 90MHz with 40megs o' RAM even:
> http://delilinux.berlios.de/

> Which version of Slack are you useing?

Slack 9.0

> >> I run X with fvwm/xfce/icewm/windowmaker and firefox or opera. For

> Interesting, how is FireFox doing speed/snappiness wise on that box?

It's tolerable. It's my main browser. Mozilla, netscape and
thunderbird are all too slow. And I don't notice any difference in
speed between xfce 4 and icewm or fvwm.

> > Do you find that browsing is annoyingly slow?

> Well, i'm not using an old rig now. But the Galeon browser does
> better then Mozilla (speed wise). Netscape 4.x is quite fast as
> well. (Only more websites seem to use MS-HTML, or incompatible MS
> JavaScript clone (JScript) neigther of which render prefectly in
> the latter.)

I find that Netscape 4 is too broken to do what I want. I use it
when I need gui email.

> > That's how I felt toward the end of my days on a P166 workstation.

> How much RAM did you have?

> FWIW: i used a p55 as my primary box till about a year ago. It did fine,
> even for playing Quake (with Voodoo cart) i had 384MB installed though.

> > Back then (about 1.5 years ago) it seemed that none of the
> > browsers were very friendly to weak old CPU's. I used Opera
> > mostly. "links -g" was the best for system resources, but a bit
> > odd to work with in numerous ways.

> I still use Lynx every now and again, maybe check out Dillo:
> http://www.dillo.org/

> >> a wordprocessor I use abiword although openoffice is doable [ ... ]

> I think some of the "small" distros have Ted for .rtf and .pdf :
> http://www.nllgg.nl/Ted/index.html

> I haven't used that myself (so idunno much about it), but the PDF feature
> isn't available in AbiWord AFAIK.

No, I don't think it is. But both word and openoffice are and
that's all that I need.

cordially, as always,

rm

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 03:23:18 -0500, Liam Marshall wrote:

> what are the realistic system requirements for slackware?
>
> If I do replace the workstations I need to be able to do essentially what
> I did under windows. That is, office apps, typing programs, surfing for
> research, etc, and basic programming. I need to know the minimum system
> requirements to do this.
>
> My slowest machine in the lab now does these thing with 450 MHz and 64 MB
> ram. Most other machines are far faster but I still have 6 of these acers
> left that we won't upgrade for a while, except maybe memory
>
Upgrading only the memory on the 450 MHz is a viable alternative
(to approx. 256MB minimum). Although, you might have to look to find the
SDRAM 100 that your workstations require. I have recently used a Celeron
433 with 192MB and it worked fine, even with a 4MB or 8MB PCI graphics
card.

OT: This is not the minimum configuration, but surely a sweet upgrade:

Celeron 1.3G : $35
mboard (for Tualatin) : $55
512MB Memory : $100?
----
$190
--
Rot: 24 hours more, Joh Fredersen, and I will perfect the machine-man.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0017136/quotes

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 12:36:26 +0000, Realto Margarino wrote:
> Menno Duursma <menno@desktop.lan> wrote:
>> On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 23:10:31 -0500, /dev/rob0 wrote:
>> > On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 03:46:06 +0000, Realto Margarino wrote:
>
>> >> I run slack 9.0 on a 200mmx with 128 megs and a 2 meg video card.

[ ... ]

>> Which version of Slack are you useing?
>
> Slack 9.0
>
>> >> I run X with fvwm/xfce/icewm/windowmaker and firefox or opera. For
>
>> Interesting, how is FireFox doing speed/snappiness wise on that box?
>
> It's tolerable. It's my main browser. Mozilla, netscape and
> thunderbird are all too slow. And I don't notice any difference in
> speed between xfce 4 and icewm or fvwm.

Hmn, i would have expected firefox to at least load faster from xfce4
since they both link against GTK+-2.0 (if i'm not mistaken) it'd preload.

Thanks for the info.

--
-Menno.

"Liam Marshall" <lsrpm@mts.net> wrote in message
newspr6dyw4mic44lx2@news.mts.net...
> what are the realistic system requirements for slackware?
>
> If I do replace the workstations I need to be able to do essentially what
> I did under windows. That is, office apps, typing programs, surfing for
> research, etc, and basic programming. I need to know the minimum system
> requirements to do this.
>
> My slowest machine in the lab now does these thing with 450 MHz and 64 MB
> ram. Most other machines are far faster but I still have 6 of these acers
> left that we won't upgrade for a while, except maybe memory

My first Slack install was on a 6x86-P150, 32 MB RAM, 3 GB HD. Now
it's running Slack 9.1, no problem. Obviously not as fast as the
Athlon 1000, but it's just fine if I omit the bloatware. (which
actually, is kinda far and few between.) :-)

Cheers!
Rich

"Liam Marshall" <lsrpm@mts.net> wrote in message
newspr6dyw4mic44lx2@news.mts.net...
> what are the realistic system requirements for slackware?
>
> If I do replace the workstations I need to be able to do essentially what
> I did under windows. That is, office apps, typing programs, surfing for
> research, etc, and basic programming. I need to know the minimum system
> requirements to do this.
>
> My slowest machine in the lab now does these thing with 450 MHz and 64 MB
> ram. Most other machines are far faster but I still have 6 of these acers
> left that we won't upgrade for a while, except maybe memory

One thing that seems to be getting neglected - the swap partition(s).
Give it as much swap space as you can afford. I posted that I have a
6x86-150 with 32 MB RAM - that box also has TWO (count'em - two) 256MB
swap partitions. One on 4 GB hda and one on 3 GB hdb.

Have Fun!
Rich

"Rich Grise" <null@example.net> wrote in message
news:f0Wec.25626$F9.3789@nwrddc01.gnilink.net...
> "Liam Marshall" <lsrpm@mts.net> wrote in message
> newspr6dyw4mic44lx2@news.mts.net...
> > what are the realistic system requirements for slackware?
> >
> > If I do replace the workstations I need to be able to do essentially
what
> > I did under windows. That is, office apps, typing programs, surfing for
> > research, etc, and basic programming. I need to know the minimum system
> > requirements to do this.
> >
> > My slowest machine in the lab now does these thing with 450 MHz and 64
MB
> > ram. Most other machines are far faster but I still have 6 of these
acers
> > left that we won't upgrade for a while, except maybe memory
>
> One thing that seems to be getting neglected - the swap partition(s).
> Give it as much swap space as you can afford. I posted that I have a
> 6x86-150 with 32 MB RAM - that box also has TWO (count'em - two) 256MB
> swap partitions. One on 4 GB hda and one on 3 GB hdb.
>
> Have Fun!
> Rich

Time for a crappy OE post from work here LOL. I remember back in the day
there was something about the size of the swap drives and that pretty
much anything over 128 was a waste and not even going to be used. This
must not be true anymore? If you have 2 swap drives how does the kernel
decide which one to use? Is it a spread over the 2 or are they utilized
independently?

<offtopic bottom post>
Has anybody seen the new Dawn of the Dead movie?
</offtopic bottom post>

Hallo Scott

> day there was something about the size of the swap drives and that
> pretty much anything over 128 was a waste and not even going to be
> used. This must not be true anymore? If you have 2 swap drives how

Since (AFAIK) 2.1.117 a swap-partition may be up to 2GB. Might even be more
with 2.6 now, dunno.

> does the kernel decide which one to use? Is it a spread over the 2 or
> are they utilized independently?

You can assign priorities - use this first, then that. Between swaps with
the same priority round-robin is used, so you may gain speed here if your
drives can be used independently (with parallel-IDE only if they are on
different cables, I think).

Juergen

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Liam Marshall wrote:
| what are the realistic system requirements for slackware?

I have installed and used Slackware 9.0 on a 80486DX4-80 with 16Mb ram and an
800Mb hard drive. Running Blackbox under X, it ran ok (no speedster, but
reasonably usable). That should give you the measure of the bottom edge of the
range of "realistic system requirements" for Slackware.

[snip]

- --
Lew Pitcher

Master Codewright & JOAT-in-training | GPG public key available on request
Registered Linux User #112576 (http://counter.li.org/)
Slackware - Because I know what I'm doing.
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