[conspire] (forw) Re: Advice on 300 MHz Armada

[Rick Moen]

----- Forwarded message from Brian Good <snug.bug at hotmail.com> -----

Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 13:09:43 -0700
From: Brian Good <snug.bug at hotmail.com>
To: rick at linuxmafia.com
Subject: RE: Advice on 300 MHz Armada



Hi Rick,

   Sorry about the slow reply.  I wanted to have something to report before I
did, but it was a very busy time in my life, your advice to use the interactive
startup solved my immediate problem of getting the machine running, 
I didn't have time to investigate further than that, and I felt bad that
you had put so much effort into writing a detailed reply to my question.

   Later I tried Xubuntu and Puppy and found both of them to be excruciatingly 
slow on that system.  Basically I maintain the machine because it has some
old Win 98 programs I may want to use again.

  Thank you for your advice.  I am troubled that there seems to be no viable
support for still-functioning legacy machines, but I understand that it's not
the glamor end of the free software world.  Maybe in time some highly 
motivated Africans or Asians would get on the project in a systematic way.

   Brian 


[snip the entire previous thread, which he quoted]


----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 17:39:28 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: Brian Good <snug.bug at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Advice on 300 MHz Armada
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

Quoting Brian Good (snug.bug at hotmail.com):

Hi, Brian!

> Later I tried Xubuntu and Puppy and found both of them to be
> excruciatingly slow on that system.  Basically I maintain the machine
> because it has some old Win 98 programs I may want to use again.
> 
> Thank you for your advice.  I am troubled that there seems to be no
> viable support for still-functioning legacy machines, but I understand
> that it's not the glamor end of the free software world.  Maybe in
> time some highly motivated Africans or Asians would get on the project
> in a systematic way.

I'm afraid I could have predicted both of those results (and
more-or-less did so).  Short version: Those were the wrong choice of
Linux distribution, as they are too RAM-hogging.  There are better ones.


Longer version:  

1.  The problem with Xubuntu:

Xubuntu is based on the XFCE4 Desktop Environment
(the 'X' in Xubuntu).  Unfortunately, XFCE4 is just about as bad a
RAM-hog as GNOME and KDE.  Only one Desktop Environment for Linux and
the X Window System isn't:  LXDE.  (Important:  Even better for
RAM-savings is no DE at all.  More on that later.)

I actually warned you about all of these things, and particularly about
XFCE4, in my prior response.

2.  The problem with Puppy Linux:

Puppy Linux is designed to be small, _but_ the term 'small' in this 
context refers to disk footprint, i.e., it's designed to fit on a tiny
100MB of space on a USB flash drive or similar.  Upon booting, it runs
_entirely in RAM_, allocating a pretty big RAMdisk in order to do that.
This can be a serious problem on a 1998 Pentium II laptop that came with 
only 64MB by default.

3.  How much RAM total in your Compaq Armada 7800?

You never mentioned whether your machine has more than the default 64
MB.  Again, the machine has two slots for 144-PIN SODIMM sticks.  Each
stick may be up to 128 MB, and the machine _usually_ shipped with a 64MB
stick in slot zero and the other empty.  Maximum capacity can be thus 
achieved (if you have the default amount of RAM) by removing the
existing 64 MB SODIMM and inserting a pair of replacement 128 MB
SODIMMs.

Here's the main point:  With maximum RAM (256 MB) _and_ with careful
choice of Linux distribution _and_ some attention to keeping one's
configuration lean and not running bloated code, it is _definitely_
possible to make a 13-year-old computer like that one useful and
productive using Linux.

My user group, CABAL, is one of the many that can help you, in-person 
at one of our meetings, in doing that.  The last criterion I mentioned,
'keeping one's configuration lean and not running bloated code',
implicitly means this is not a novice project.

Novices to Linux are by far happiest if they start with machines no more
than, say, 4 years old with no less than, say, a gig of RAM.

Getting back to the Compaq Armada 7800:  Let's assume for the sake of
discussion that it has 64 MB total RAM.  Let's say you attend this
Saturday's CABAL meeting, and I sit down to help you with it.

I would use the Debian GNU/Linux distribution.  Two reasons:  (1)
Extremely low minimum hardware for installation.  See:
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch03s04.html.en  (2)
I know Debian extremely well.

We would do a sparse installation, and then I would spend maybe an extra
1/2 hour additionally configuring the installation to be as tightly
pared down as possible, examining the process list and shutting off
anything not absolutely necessary.  We would use a very minimalist
'window manager' such as Icewm or Blackbox or Fluxbox (and, again, no
Desktop Environment).

For more on WMs and DEs, please see:  http://xwinman.org/  (Screenshots
of typical appearance heavily featured.)

Within about an hour, we would have a setup that would be very
functional, and reasonably fast.  Here is what it would not have:
1.  Any of the most popular desktop productivity software, because 
those just cannot reasonably run on a 64 MB RAM machine.  No LibreOffice
(until recently called OpenOffice.org).  No Firefox.  No Thunderbird.
Not even KWord.  _Maybe_ we would be able to run the AbiWord graphical
word processor, but that would be tight.  We'd have to look hard for a
graphical Web browser in place of Firefox that would be sufficiently
functional but not huge.  Maybe BrowseX would do it.  If AbiWord 
proves too big in RAM, there are several less featureful alternatives
we could try, including some graphical text editors that at least can do
RTF format.

If, on the other hand, you (either now or in the future) got the Armada
7800 maxed out at 256 MB total RAM, all of those things would become
feasible, although LibreOffice would be a bit slow.

I hope this clarifies things, and I hope you are free to join us on
Saturday.

 		 	   		  

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