[lug] new install

[Daniel Webb]

On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 03:15:34AM -0600, Ken MacFerrin wrote:

> I'd disagree.. those programs are only storing that much in memory
> because it's available.  Firefox, java and adobe actually run quite well
> under XFCE4 on an old 600Mhz, 192MB Ram ultraportable laptop I have
> sitting around.  It almost feels snappy even.  I can't speak for OOffice
> on that machine since Xubuntu installs AbiWord by default, but otherwise
> it works quite well for light duty use..

Yes, I guess I overstated it a bit, but I don't think by too much.  A lot of
it depends on how you use your system.  My mom only has one web page or
document up at a time, and closes down the program when not using it.  If you
use your computer like that, even Windows 98 is fairly stable and memory-light
(I think she actually hit that bug once in Win98 where it would crash after 40
days or whatever).  The way I use my computer, there are many Firefox tabs
open, and several OO documents open at any given time.  For that kind of use,
128M won't cut it.  I have a lot of old Thinkpads, and the least memory I have
been able to get away with when using Firefox and OO is about 192M (but 228M
is better and that is the max for the 600E).

Also, both Firefox and OO seem to have some hefty memory leaks, so you need to
restart them regularly if you have a very low-memory system.  Right now on my
system they aren't using much memory, but a few weeks ago I saw OO using 450M
of memory with one small document open.  I've seen Firefox do similar.  Much
of that memory was swapping and dragging down the system, so I don't totally
buy the "they only use memory because they can" argument.  If they're using
swapped memory that drags down the whole system "because they can", they
aren't very well written.