For old computers? [LWN.net]

For old computers?

Posted Feb 27, 2009 11:19 UTC (Fri) by saffroy (subscriber, #43999)
Parent article: CrunchBang Linux 8.10

"The light system requirements suggest that CrunchBang Linux is a perfect match for an outdated computer or a netbook"

Or install a minimal Debian, use WindowMaker or Xfce and you're done (Lenny with wmaker runs perfectly on my 2001 600MHz laptop with 256MB RAM). I suspect you can do that with Ubuntu as well? Plus, you won't have to edit your window manager config file (it's so 90's!).

"Firefox 3 is installed with out-of-the-box Flash support"

Hmm how light is that? I think browser speed vs. modern day web sites is what drove my last voluntary desktop upgrade, and it will probably cause my next laptop upgrade (600MHz is getting a bit too slow for Firefox, sometimes I use h3v instead).

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For old computers?

Posted Feb 27, 2009 14:32 UTC (Fri) by pascal.martin (guest, #2995) [Link]

I have Debian Lenny, Gnome, running Firefox and the system monitor. Oracle XE is running in the background. In other words: a fat install indeed.

System memory used: 187.8 MB.

As other people, I am surprised this small install uses so much RAM. Would be interesting to see the list of processes...

For old computers?

Posted Feb 27, 2009 16:47 UTC (Fri) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

You can certainly install a text-mode Ubuntu and add a WM on top (U-Lite is another light Ubuntu that packages this up a little), but it's a lot less newbie friendly than simply booting a Crunchbang Live CD, playing with it, and then installing to hard disk using the graphical Ubuntu installer.

The Crunchbang team deserve huge credit for delivering a light distro that is Ubuntu-based, meaning easy installation, easy security updates, and a huge library of apps, even on very old PCs.

For old computers?

Posted Mar 2, 2009 11:08 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]

Xfce hasn't actually been lightweight for years, unless it's improved recently (my only experience since around 2004/5 has been Xubuntu, which is a bit of a pig).
A while after version 4 came out I switched to KDE (probably around 3.2 then IIRC), and it was actually faster and lighter. Seriously. Of course KDE4 now uses about double the memory, so it's swings and roundabouts...

For old computers?

Posted Mar 6, 2009 20:56 UTC (Fri) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link]

> Xfce hasn't actually been lightweight for years, unless it's improved
recently (my only experience since around 2004/5 has been Xubuntu, which
is a bit of a pig).

When I last used Ubuntu, it's base system was pretty large. It had many
large daemons (done in Python, Perl...) running which I didn't need or
even didn't have the hardware (Bluetooth etc). So it might not be Xfce or
Xubuntu issue, but inherited from the Ubuntu base.

In Gnome desktop main memory usage (before you start any apps) seemed to
come from out-of-process[1] panel applets, I guess that's a problem with
Xfce too. (Out-of-process applets are a reliability measure as in-process
applets can crash the whole panel if they have bugs)

[1] UI app(let) memory overhead is surprisingly large. They load a huge
amount of shared libraries and each library adds to the overhead. There's
private font, locale and theme data etc.

For old computers?

Posted Mar 7, 2009 10:45 UTC (Sat) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]

I guess the resource thing is why the Plasma devs are integrating as much
as possible in plasma itself, like power and network management. But as
you say, stability is the problem you get. More testing and QA is needed
to get plasma to a reasonably stable state. In case of NM, this isn't a
big issue - NM already IS a separate daemon, and having ANOTHER daemon to
just show the interface is silly to begin with...