Memory question

[--Ed--]

Hi all.  Just wondering about the memory requirements listed for all the different flavours. The all say 512M min with 1G recommended.  I am more interested in LXDE and am curious about why all need the same minimum.  I thought that LXDE was suppose to be a light environment and could be used on older systems, ones that don't have 512M ram. Am I missing something here? Is the number based more on the packages that are included?

[nerdful1]

fyi, I have found in some cases the live cd needs more memory to just work, but if you were to take out the hard drive and install from another memory rich machine, the hard drive will then work in the memory poor machine.

I speak of 2009.2 etc.

just a hint if you have the resourses to play like that.

I would expect some lighter flavors should work in 256M anyway, even off the cd.

I'm lazy and didn't research, just keeping your hopes up

[T6]

the requirements are for kde4 and gnome but yes, those are not for all the machines now, there is some situations where you won't be able to run pclinux under 256 mbs, possibly lxde will do

pclinux is not designed to run on older hardware, some older cpus won't work with the current kernel

i am not sure if the latest lxde will come with a legacy kernel

how old is the hardware you want to use?

there is something to consider here, the requirements are meant to run light desktop and ligth apps, if you are fan of firefox and you are limited on ram, system will be slow(depending on the cpu)

if you have a pc with low amounts of ram depending on the system you can add more ram on a reasonable price, used parts can be free sometimes

[gseaman]

I can run LXDE, E17 and Openbox livecds in 384mb ram. I've only installed LXDE and it runs very well. I can play flash videos on youtube, etc. Some play glitch free, others don't. (This probably is dependent on video codec.) The menus are not always snappy, but there is not excessive swapping.

Galen

[--Ed--]

What I have done is take the HD out of a Toshiba Portege 3490CT. It is maxed out at 256M ram and has a 600Mhz P4 I installed the HD into one of the Dell D600's I have and installed LDXE onto it.  I then put the HD back into the Toshiba and with a little tweaking got the wireless working.  The response times aren't too bad but video is very jerky. For none video browsing speeds are just fine. Yeah, it did take some time, but then, I am currently unemployed so that didn't factor into the equation.

By the way it does say on the LDXE page

It is especially designed for cloud computers with low hardware specifications, such as, netbooks, mobile devices (e.g. MIDs) or older computers.

It begs the question: how old is old?

[Was_Just19]

What I have done is take the HD out of a Toshiba Portege 3490CT. It is maxed out at 256M ram and has a 600Mhz P4 I installed the HD into one of the Dell D600's I have and installed LDXE onto it.  I then put the HD back into the Toshiba and with a little tweaking got the wireless working.  The response times aren't too bad but video is very jerky. For none video browsing speeds are just fine. Yeah, it did take some time, but then, I am currently unemployed so that didn't factor into the equation.

By the way it does say on the LDXE page

It is especially designed for cloud computers with low hardware specifications, such as, netbooks, mobile devices (e.g. MIDs) or older computers.

It begs the question: how old is old?

Well a 600Mhz CPU is rather old and weak.
Another consideration is whether the video is using some of that ram or not.

[gseaman]

LXDE requires the least amount of memory of all of the low memory desktops. The only possible exception is the Openbox iso that is about to be released. If 256mb ram works for you, that is probably the best that you are going to get.

There are distros that can run an X desktop on as low as 64mb, but they don't have the excellent hardware recognition that PCLinuxOS has. I have an old celeron with 128mb ram that runs Win98 reasonably well. The only Linux livecd that will boot on the machine is PCLXDE, but it hangs after the desktop loads. (This may work if I set up a swap partition or install from the command line, but it is my wife's machine so I am limited to livecd testing )

Galen

[vc]

Referring to this post:

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,69020.msg578777.html#msg578777

Although not aimed at the original question, the graphic attached to that post does provide some interesting memory-utilisation data.  If you desire both beauty and efficiency in a 'light' desktop environment, then it seems to me that Enlightenment may be a good choice.

Well a 600Mhz CPU is rather old and weak.
Another consideration is whether the video is using some of that ram or not.

Video RAM allocation is a good point to consider.  However, I disagree with the point of a 600MHz processor being 'weak', as that does not fit the performance I've observed of the Asus EeePC 700-series models.

[vc]

I have an old celeron with 128mb ram that runs Win98 reasonably well. The only Linux livecd that will boot on the machine is PCLXDE, but it hangs after the desktop loads. (This may work if I set up a swap partition or install from the command line, but it is my wife's machine so I am limited to livecd testing )

My wife also has an old Celeron laptop:  it is a 400MHz Fujitsu LifeBook B2130 with not much more memory than you have described.  PCLinuxOS 2007 with KDE3 is installed on that unit, and it performs fine - that 'old' laptop has no difficulty with playing DivX .avi videos in fullscreen mode, whereas such would likely not have been possible at all with the original Windows 98SE install.

Regarding your Celeron machine:  I would recommend swapping the hard drive out (or creating a full dd image of it, prior to wiping) and attempting an install, regardless.  If successful, the machine may then be more useful - whereas if not, then the original drive may be easily restored (either physically, or from an image) and nothing would be lost.  If the system memory in that unit is of the SDRAM form-factor, then you would be able to expand it with 256MB 'low-density' PC-100 SDRAM modules; if on the other hand it is older SIMM memory instead, then 32MB modules are actually still available - and if you could be so fortunate in obtaining such, there were once 64MB modules that would function as well.  Avoid the 128MB SIMMs, however; those do not function in most older 'desktop' mainboards, as they were manufactured for use in server units instead.

[gseaman]

If the system memory in that unit is of the SDRAM form-factor, then you would be able to expand it with 256MB 'low-density' PC-100 SDRAM modules; if on the other hand it is older SIMM memory instead, then 32MB modules are actually still available - and if you could be so fortunate in obtaining such, there were once 64MB modules that would function as well.

Thanks for the suggestions, however, I am not attempting to run Linux on this machine. (My wife really does not like change. ) I am just reporting what happens when I try, in order to provide feedback to those that are trying to use this old of a machine. My 'old' machine has 384mb of ram and is much more upgradeable. But for the price of memory sticks, you are almost halfway to a new machine. I just saw machines with a monitor selling for just over $400 USD. There is no point in upgrading anything at these prices.

Galen

[vc]

But for the price of memory sticks, you are almost halfway to a new machine. I just saw machines with a monitor selling for just over $400 USD. There is no point in upgrading anything at these prices.

Prices?  Sorry; I hadn't thought of that - I simply salvage such from discarded machines directly; price has never been a consideration.  Still, though; as you say, no installation into that machine is intended - so there is no point, accordingly.

Please disregard suggestion.  I merely become slightly irked when people misunderstand the capabilities of 'older' hardware.

[gseaman]

I think the original question is a good one. What is the usable minimum ram for each desktop? There should be a recognition of some differences. That's why I reported that 128 is not usable for me as livecd, even with LXDE.

My wife doesn't trust me to open her machine and remove and reinstall her harddrive (or anything else). I can't imagine why.

I had a friend who went to school auctions and had dozens (maybe as many as 100) of older machines. He had about 10 networked computers throughout his house. He didn't need more than 1 or 2, he just like playing with swapping parts, installing OS's, etc. I don't know if he does that anymore, but I've moved away, so shipping would outweigh the advantage of being free.

Galen

[vc]

I think the original question is a good one. What is the usable minimum ram for each desktop? There should be a recognition of some differences. That's why I reported that 128 is not usable for me as livecd, even with LXDE.

I have seen such comparisons made on various websites; however, they tend to consider only the 'major' window manager environments and usually overlook the so-called 'lighter' ones entirely.  The comparison I had made (and referenced to, earlier) was for a completely different purpose altogether; yet, the memory usage data listed in that comparison result is nevertheless interesting.

I had a friend who went to school auctions and had dozens (maybe as many as 100) of older machines. He had about 10 networked computers throughout his house. He didn't need more than 1 or 2, he just like playing with swapping parts, installing OS's, etc. I don't know if he does that anymore, but I've moved away, so shipping would outweigh the advantage of being free.

I am currently in a similar position, although I may yet be forced to 'downsize' soon enough.  It pains me... I have some unusual machines in my collection, and do not wish to see them scrapped.

[T6]

"What I have done is take the HD out of a Toshiba Portege 3490CT. It is maxed out at 256M ram and has a 600Mhz P4"

there is not a P4 at 600 mhz, maybe 1600mhz

doing a search on your laptop, i found it has a pentium III at 700mhz, slow would define it(for today's standards)  

lxde or puppy linux are options for this slow speed cpu

i have used pclinux 2009.1 in a PIII at 650mhz and it was slow but in livecd most systems are like that, slow

in the model you mention the maximum of ram allowed is 256 but sometimes the system will take more, you will have to try with another module to see if it accepts it

i know that some users want to use as long as possible the hardware they have but sometimes the problems that creates this kind of attempts are more than the benefits it offers

this one looks like it should keep running win 98 or xp with all set to minimum

[--Ed--]

Oop's you are correct. It is a 700 Mhz PIII. As for ram, 256M is the max.  I have looked for a 256 or 512 stick, however I believe that the ram for this notebook is a Micro-DIMM format and 128 is the largest stick available or a least the largest I have been able to find so far.

For the most except for the video I am satisfied with the performance of LDXE on this notebook.

As I asked initially, I was just curious that all flavors seem to have the same system requirements. Logically I would have thought that running a LDXE desktop would not be as demanding on system resources as say KDE so less ram would be needed.  I guess that the pages of the various flavors is mostly a copy and paste from the original (KDE?).

Thanks