Some questions about lxde release from PClinuxOS

[lookingaroundnix]

Have heard great things about this distro from people I trust and seen good feedback about it around the web. Wanting to try it for myself and in the process of choosing which release here to go with. My PC is low spec by todays standards 512mb/ram ddr2. Am new to gnu/linux and have spent most of my time exploring the light weight nix that's out there. Have found and installed many great nix distros. So based on low specs, leaning towards the lxde release here.

Had a couple of questions, what stats can someone expect at idle ? Would appreciate someone posting their feedback who has experience, a more or less stock lxde install and is willing to post the output of free -m.

Another question/concern I have. Am told PClinuxos, still uses grub legacy. Which I like and use myself. Would like to know if the installer gives the option of skipping the bootloader install or installing to pclinuxos's own partition instead of hda/sda etc ? The distro I use to boot everything on this comp is grub legacy. Atm ... thinking about replacing it with lxde. Just formatting and installing it over that OS's partition. Would like to know if editing lxde grub/menu.lst would be the same ? So can I just copy my current menu.lst over to PClinuxOS's and be done with it ?

Thanks for any replies and feedback.

[OMSkates]

I've had it running on a laptop with 256mb ram and idling at 65mb, with Chromium open 105mb. Apps opened instantly.

The latest PCLOS Pheonix with Xfce is worth a look for you too as configuration has less learning curve.

[tedlane]

Had a couple of questions, what stats can someone expect at idle ? Would appreciate someone posting their feedback who has experience, a more or less stock lxde install and is willing to post the output of free -m.

I had 512mb on a recovered machine until recently.  LXDE ran fine and fast.  I upped it to 1GB so I could run VMs.  
Not sure why you want free stats, as they are fairly meaningless, especially under some sort of "idle" condition.  For instance, if I am running 5 server apps (say 5 instances of postgresql) that grab loads of buffer space then free % will be 0, but that wont affect the performance of the machine unless the server apps are all suddenly contending for buffer space.  Even then it will sort itself out pretty quickly.

ted

[lookingaroundnix]

Thanks guys, free -m at boot up on a stock install was mainly my objective. Sixty-five mbs is awesome stats and seems to confirm what I was hoping for from PclinuxOs lxde release.

Did consider xfce and it's the second choice atm. Perhaps installing fluxbox if it's available in the repos. Like xfce ok and haven't had much opportunity to play with 2.8 yet. Though under the impression that xfce is tending towards getting as heavy in terms of sys overhead as gnome. Though realize that would depend on how it's been config'ed etc.

Still not sure which to try. Might have to install both and test em side by side. Love light weight linux distro's and WM's. They use so much less and eye candy isn't nearly as important as performance to me. Same time this PC can handle and run fine under a load much heavier than I've been going with. Does get old having to manually figure out what to edit to change this or that with a WM. Have had tweaked down full gnome distro's that ran well enough.

Resource miser in me just couldn't bare the stats. Probably silly I know ... just came to be my preference in software. Sure I could get the xfce release down into the 80's or 90's and this old PC would still run great. Perhaps it's time to try a middle weight distro with a full fledged DE again. Thanks for the info people. Any feedback on the bootloader situation would be appreciated too.

Am new to linux, not that new. Have been through 10/12 installs so far. Found 2 I can't stand to part with as think they are awesome examples of gnu/nix. Antix is on the chopping block though. Hoping to add PClinuxOS, as one of the must have/keep on this old dinosaur and replace antix with it.

[OMSkates]

Welcome to PCLOS lookingaroundnix!!  Good to have you here   Watch for the soon, to be released, PCLOS Bonsai with OpenBox WM.

[lookingaroundnix]

Thanks for the welcome, is appreciated. Seems we may have some similar tastes in terms of nix too. Will be keeping an eye out for the openbox release as advised. Judging from what I've seen and been told about this distro. The devs here do great things with software and take quality control and squashing bugs uber seriously.

Hoping to become a big time fan, long time user and promoter of PClinuxOs. Gawd ... wish someone more deserving of acclaim and credit would topple Narly Nachos.

Thanks again ...

[Just17]

Yes PCLOS uses Grub legacy (thankfully) and will include other OSs in its menu.lst file at install time.

I would let PCLOS install Grub to the MBR, and if I had any further edits I would copy them from the previous OS's menu.lst into the PCLOS one.

Yes you can choose to install Grub to the boot sector of a partition instead ....  I think it is under an Advanced button, but it has been a while 

Using the liveCD or LiveUSB have a look through the repository with Synaptic ......  there are quite a number of lightweight WMs & DEs available.
There are also meta packages called   task-<whatever>   which will bring in all that is needed to have alternative WM/DEs available for log in.

Examples of DEs are

task-fluxbox
task-gnome
task-lxde
task-openbox
task-xfce

In addition there are WMs in the repo, such as

icewm
awesome
dwm

and others.

So lots of choices 

Welcome aboard .....  have fun!   

regards

[lookingaroundnix]

Thank you much Just19, is appreciated. Agree to the thank goodness for grub legacy. Though never devoted much time to trying to digest grub2. Appreciate the welcome and the good tips.