Linux used to be the OS for low-spec machines....

[Seeruk]

Laptop with 1ghz processor and 128mb RAM

I have just tried 4 differnet flavours of Linux on a customers laptop. 3 refused to install and one installed but I wouldnt wish the performance on my worst enemies!

I remember the days when a distro with gnome would install on anything and run just fine!

Now installed XP SP2 instead... install took half the time of the linux install (45 minutes) and is running just fine (for now!)

I know I could go with X or Y but really anything more abstract than Gnome or KDE (not a chance on those specs!) has been a complete disaster with novice users in the past.

 

[magomago]

you had to use gnome or kde? Try other lightweights that would run absolutely smooth like Xfce. If you really want to be minimalist go Fluxbox...

in any case the lack of ram is hindering preformance, and even for winxp 128 megs really doesn't cut it as you'll start to hit the swap almost instantly.

 

[Nothinman]

Gnome and KDE have never been lightweight, I don't think I'd try running them (or XP for that matter) on a machine with less than 512M of memory.

 

[Oil]

Xubuntu would be a great distro to try

 

[Seeruk]

I know all about XFCE and fluxbox, e16/17. As I said above though any 'normal' (i.e. not a teccy who can appreciate their brilliance!) hates the living crap out of them. Every time I have installed such desktops for them they come back within 2 weeks guaranteed begging for me to put something else on.

I know I used to install gnome regularly on a 128mb machine with probably less of a cpu than the laptop above!

Xubuntu was the one that actually installed (after almost 2 hours) and it ran like absolute sh1t

 

[xtknight]

GNOME is no environment for low-end systems. Modern Linux distros don't run as well as Windows on low-end systems, I'd say. But Linux can be stripped down to the point where it's better than Windows.

 

[Nothinman]

I know I used to install gnome regularly on a 128mb machine with probably less of a cpu than the laptop above!

Maybe, back in the Gnome1 days but that was a very long time ago.

128M is just not enough for a full fledged UI any more, even Windows will page like hell if you to do anything more than browse the web.

 

[cheesehead]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I know I used to install gnome regularly on a 128mb machine with probably less of a cpu than the laptop above!

Maybe, back in the Gnome1 days but that was a very long time ago.

128M is just not enough for a full fledged UI any more, even Windows will page like hell if you to do anything more than browse the web.

Well, I can't honestly figure out why Linux is not more efficient. OSX, after all, does actually run within reason on 128mb of RAM - my school has a bunch of 300mhz PowerMac G3's with 256mb of RAM, and they run very well indeed.

 

[Nothinman]

Well, I can't honestly figure out why Linux is not more efficient. OSX, after all, does actually run within reason on 128mb of RAM - my school has a bunch of 300mhz PowerMac G3's with 256mb of RAM, and they run very well indeed.

There's more to Gnome than there is Apple's UI, or at least it's broken up into more, smaller chunks. Looking at a freshly logged in Edgy box there's over 20 process just for my Gnome session. Everything from the window manger, nautilus, any applets on the dock, background gnome stuff like the volume manager, dbus, etc. While a lot of it will be shared between the processes they all also have their own seperate, private data in memory. It looks like it's using just under 100M without any filesystem cache, just starting Firefox without visiting any pages will push that up to the 128M mark. Using something smaller like Ephiphany or Galeon would help, but you're still stuck right around the 100M mark without even opening any apps.

Although I must say I was a bit surprised, I just started an Edgy VM with only 128M and it wasn't too bad to use. It hit the swap space a bit, but not too bad.

 

[drag]

The only general purpose distribution I like for low-end machines anymore is Debian.
Xubuntu, Ubuntu, Fedora Core, etc have all moved on and are attempting to compete with Vista, and thus low end machines are not a priority.

The Xubuntu maybe has potential, but apparently are under the false beleif that XCFE is automaticly uses less ram then Gnome. (it does, but only by maybe 10 megs, at most) They are a bit delusional as the 'live cd' installer for Xubuntu claims to run on such-and-such amount of RAM, but it doesn't. (it won't instal on machines that have their minimal specs for installation.)


If you want to see how your system would run with less ram check out mem option in kernel boot parameters.

Try rebooting then passing mem=96M to the kernel.

 

[drag]

OS X is completely unusable at 128 or less megs of RAM. Even back in 10.2.x days.

I know. I had to get OS X working well on many G3 machines for a school I worked for...

 

[drag]

Also if you want try to see if you can get a good install going on a old machine without rebooting and such.. then use Qemu and limit the amount of RAM in the VM to 96megs of ram.


Take a strong look at Icewm.

 

[Seeruk]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Although I must say I was a bit surprised, I just started an Edgy VM with only 128M and it wasn't too bad to use. It hit the swap space a bit, but not too bad.

Hmm.... just given me an idea for next time. Create a VM image, trim all the crap out and clone it over to the physical disk of the target machine. Bit of hassle but interesting to see.

It used to be a 'weapon' in the linux fanatic's arsenal that windows was bloated and linux was the lean mean machine. With most of the distro's these days it aint the case (thought quite what vista uses all those gigs for I will never know!)... especially for those such as the Ubuntus that have no install choices like windows.

 

[Brazen]

I think Ubuntu 6.06 runs just fine on a 128MB Ram machine, but then my requirements aren't much. My 1.3 ghz, 256 MB Ram Windows machine at home runs like a snap to me, and it plays WarCraft 2 just fine.

 

[kamper]

I just installed netbsd on a machine with a 100mhz processor (think it's amd) and 48M of ram and it seems to be fine. Of course it took about an hour just to unpack the install sets and there's no way I'm going to put X on it

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: Seeruk
I know all about XFCE and fluxbox, e16/17. As I said above though any 'normal' (i.e. not a teccy who can appreciate their brilliance!) hates the living crap out of them. Every time I have installed such desktops for them they come back within 2 weeks guaranteed begging for me to put something else on.

I know I used to install gnome regularly on a 128mb machine with probably less of a cpu than the laptop above!

Xubuntu was the one that actually installed (after almost 2 hours) and it ran like absolute sh1t

my "non techie" in laws (read, they are literally farmers) don't complain about XFCE. In fact, they like the fact that their machine is fast and stable (no crashes). It's a P3 450 with 256MB memory. It has a pirated XP on their from another in law when I replaced it (who wants to shell out $80 for XP on an old crap machine). It's been running solid (on dialup even) for almost 2 years now. You can run XFCE + thunderbird + Firefox with a few tabs all in physical memory without hitting swap. I doubt XP can be stripped down to even START with 128MB without hitting swap.

 

[Noema]

I installed Xubuntu on my parents' old P4 1.4GHz with 128MB of SDRAM and it runs well. They have been using it for almost 3 months now; like it, they are happy and they can do everything they could do in Windows ME (what the Machine originally had), with the added bonus of added security. You do need the alternate install CD for it to install on machines with less than 192MB of RAM. And forget about the live CD.

And like nweaver, the thing barely hits swap with FF, Evolution and perhaps a media player playing music. It's great They can even run Google Earth now (albeit at min settings, and even then it's kinda choppy, but they don't mind).

For older machines, Damn Small Linux rocks. I use it in an ancient PIII 700MHz lappy with 64MB RAM and it flies. Great for surfing the web. In fact I'll be computerless for like 2 weeks in the near future and that will have to suffice as my main rig for that time

 

[Nothinman]

especially for those such as the Ubuntus that have no install choices like windows.

The choices are still there, I believe you just have to use the Alternat Install CD or just go in and remove them after the initial installation.

 

[Kalessian]

DSL will run great on that machine. However, it may be a little too "techy" for the people you are working for.

I would suggest trying Arch Linux. I had a screenshot up before of me using Azureus, Firefox, Fluxbox, Transparency effects, Eterm, and some other stuff all using less than 100 MB of memory.

Load up Xfce4 on it without any of the advanced modules, disable anything fancy, grab firefox and maybe Ktorrent instead of Azureus, thunar instead of nautilus/konqueror, Koffice instead of OpenOffice, etc., and you should be fine.

Arch is a very fast and lean distro.

archlinux.org

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

especially for those such as the Ubuntus that have no install choices like windows.

The choices are still there, I believe you just have to use the Alternat Install CD or just go in and remove them after the initial installation.

I _think_ for the alternate install, you have to chose 'back' and you get taken to a menu with all the choices you could want. You can also use the Server Install CD which just gives you a stripped down-to-nothing system and you can install whatever you want from scratch.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Linux is great for low spec machines.
Current Gnome and KDE are horrible for low spec machines.

Maybe go with fvwm? Yes it's a bit ugly, but it tends to be user friendly, lightweight, and quick. It isn't a monster like Gnome, but it's far from a minimalist solution like Blackbox or Fluxbox. Also, it's older than dirt so it shouldn't have too many problems.

Also, if you want the "best" possible performance, then it may be worthwhile to compile and install everything from source, that way all the features of the CPU will be used to their potential, rather then just default compiled i386 or i486 binaries. That probably won't make much of a difference here though, as the problem is almost without a doubt the amount of ram in that machine.

 

[Nothinman]

Maybe go with fvwm? Yes it's a bit ugly, but it tends to be user friendly, lightweight, and quick. It isn't a monster like Gnome, but it's far from a minimalist solution like Blackbox or Fluxbox. Also, it's older than dirt so it shouldn't have too many problems.

That might help a bit, but not much since you'll most likely have at leaset half of the Gnome stuff in memory anyway since you'll want to use those apps. Metacity itself only uses ~8M RSS so replacing it won't change much.

Also, if you want the "best" possible performance, then it may be worthwhile to compile and install everything from source, that way all the features of the CPU will be used to their potential, rather then just default compiled i386 or i486 binaries. That probably won't make much of a difference here though, as the problem is almost without a doubt the amount of ram in that machine.

It won't make a noticable difference at all and would be a huge waste of time and some larger things like Xorg might not even compile with that little amount of memory.

 

[Seeruk]

Originally posted by: nweaver

Originally posted by: Seeruk
I know all about XFCE and fluxbox, e16/17. As I said above though any 'normal' (i.e. not a teccy who can appreciate their brilliance!) hates the living crap out of them. Every time I have installed such desktops for them they come back within 2 weeks guaranteed begging for me to put something else on.

I know I used to install gnome regularly on a 128mb machine with probably less of a cpu than the laptop above!

Xubuntu was the one that actually installed (after almost 2 hours) and it ran like absolute sh1t

my "non techie" in laws (read, they are literally farmers) don't complain about XFCE. In fact, they like the fact that their machine is fast and stable (no crashes). It's a P3 450 with 256MB memory. It has a pirated XP on their from another in law when I replaced it (who wants to shell out $80 for XP on an old crap machine). It's been running solid (on dialup even) for almost 2 years now. You can run XFCE + thunderbird + Firefox with a few tabs all in physical memory without hitting swap. I doubt XP can be stripped down to even START with 128MB without hitting swap.

I hear what ya saying.... i.e. the old machine with pirated windows on, that was exactly what I was attempting to replace. But although your inlaws use XFCE, I can honestly say I have had 30-40 example customers who have thrown it and similar back at me within 2 weeks and not one who didnt come back.

I have no doubt windows hits swap.... a LOT with 128mb of RAM.... but it performed immeasurably better than Xubuntu with no trrimming whatsoever.
Then I did trim out services and autostarts ... and after boot it does occasionally... but really surfing and using works (which they had a legit license for) it ran surprisingly smooth.

Nothinman, I did use the alternate install (you have to for <192mb) and I did remove a load of crap... but pretty tough to find everything and then know what to remove for the 'average' user.

And thanks for the suggestion in archlinux Kalessian. I have never played with that distro and may try it in future

 

[drag]

I hear what ya saying.... i.e. the old machine with pirated windows on, that was exactly what I was attempting to replace. But although your inlaws use XFCE, I can honestly say I have had 30-40 example customers who have thrown it and similar back at me within 2 weeks and not one who didnt come back.

So your saying that people hired you to replace Windows with Linux on old machines and they all came back later to have you reinstall Windows?

 

[R64]

I have a PIII 700MhZ laptop with 256MB RAM. Any recommendations for an OS? The machine will be primarily used for Word/PowerPoint and PDF files, with some amount of image editing (nothing fancy, resize etc).

TIA,