[lug] Linux on older hardware

[J. Wayde Allen]

On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, Jenni wrote:

> I have a RedHat 7.0 KDE 2.whatever P166 desktop with 128MB of RAM and it
> runs much smoother.  KDE still loads slow, but once it's up, the rest
> seems to work just fine.

I think we must all have different pain thresholds <wink>.

My main machine is a P5-166 with 62 MBytes of RAM, and I have no real
problems with it.  Probably my biggest use processes are:  X-windows,
Enlightenment, Postfix, Apache serving my project web pages, Python for
data processing and analysis, Netscape, LaTeX, and Applixware.

Older hardware "should" work OK, but you may have to choose your
applications with a bit of care.  You may also need to specially compile a
kernel to support the older hardware.

Also, you've probably noticed that the common thread is that more memory
is what really seems to make a difference.  My feeling is that the CPU
speed doesn't so much matter these days.  The performance bottle neck
seems to be the data transfer rates between I/O such as how fast you can
get data to/from the disk.  Not many people are doing the number crunching
that massive CPU horse power provides.  System cache memory and a good
sized swap partition can help a lot here.

- Wayde
  (wallen at lug.boulder.co.us)