16 megs of RAM okay for a linux box?

[THELAIR]

Im going to be installing Mandrake 7.0 onto a 150mhz PPro, 1 gig hard drive and 16 megs of ram. Just wondering if the RAM will really limit what the operating system can do. I had NT4 running on this system before with two 32 meg EDO simms (64 total) and it was okay, but i want to sell that ram, and all im left with is four pieces of 4 meg Simms

On the linux box i want to do regular stuff (no games) just web surfing and general linux learning, so should the 16 megs be allright? Or does linux really require a decent amount of RAM, such as around 64 megs? Would 32 megs be a better upgrade than 16, or should i keep hte 64?

thxs

 

[GL]

Definitely get more RAM. It's doable but it probably will get frustrating at times. I'd say keep the 64MB and use it.

-GL

 

[Kill_Phil]

if you really want to, you could do with 16. but it will be annoying at times like GL stated. either 32 or 64 is alot better

 

[THELAIR]

okay so the RAM issue is the same as if i had Win9x or NT installed, min 64 megs. And here i thought linux was the be all and end all of operating systems, not requiring the large min comp specs that microsot puts out. Oh well...

 

[Wizkid]

16 MB's will probably be OK if you stick with the command line only...

 

[claw]

Well, if you never want to use X (the thing that brings up all the pretty windows) and run lynx (text-based browser) to browse the web, then you're welcome to use it with 16 MB

Linux is small, but X and Netscape are huge memory hogs, so you'll need at least 32 to do stuff.

 

[dszd0g]

I agree with what others are saying. 16MB is just fine for running command line. That also assumes you aren't trying to run a webserver, squid, or some other memory hogging application. For just experimenting with linux on the command line, firewall/router, it will work just fine.

32MB will allow you to run X slowly. Don't use one of the more advanced Window managers like Enlightment or KDE.

You will most likely be able to run just fine with 64MB.

Things that can benefit from more than 64MB:

Gimp
Squid
Apache under high load
X Games (Loki and such)
etc.

For most things more than 64MB in a linux box is overkill, but who am I to speak. I have 256MB in mine. It is using absolutely 0K of swap. Linux will however generally be using almost all the physical memory you throw at it. It uses it to cache the filesystem and improve performance. Can't let that memory go completely to waste.

 

[TheyCallMeSAK]

Hmmm. No way you should try and use only 16Mb. I would even keep the ENTIRE 64Mb in that system. Really,, I don't think you could get much for that old EDO memory. That stuff has like at least a 60ns access time.

 

[Burn]

TheyCallMeSak - Go check out how much it costs to buy a new 32mb simm. There are a lot of people with older systems willing to pay a great deal of money for them.