Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (929 mails)
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Re: [opensuse] installing openSUSE on an older pc
- From: Anton Aylward <opensuse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2011 09:32:45 -0400
- Message-id: <4E5A437D.6060604@antonaylward.com>
Insomniac said the following on 08/28/2011 08:49 AM:
IMNSHO late model kernels are worth using for a number of reasons - fixes, reliability, functionality. Its not about "sooper-dooper-most-up-to-date-version" -itis, but about integrity. As a side effect its also about performance.
KDE4 is much, much better than KDE3. Much easier, more intuitive, so long as you haven't been brainwashed by some defective desktop manager, perhaps out of Redmond :-) And its faster than KDE3.
Is KDE3 more 'stable'? Of course it is! Comparing KDE3 and KDE4 is like comparing Latin and and English. There vocabulary and grammar of Latin is stable; that of English is changing. But how many people speak Latin?
I have a number of older PCs. I use them for things like firewalls and low-load things like NTP, LDAP and so on. They all run versions of Linux from the last couple of years, Mandriva, Fedora, derivatives. I picked them up as junk-ware from the Salvation Army thrift store for less than a meal for the family at McD's would cost. They ran W/95. They wouldn't run XP/Home or Vista/Home. They do run Linux.
Linux seems to run on just about any hardware I've used. A CD reader helps. You might not be able to run a LiveCD on some low-memory systems and might have a problem installing on the same, and of course the more you're running (background processes like NTP, SAMBA, XFS) the more you're loading the system.
WYSISYG, and a large, capable desktop manager is going to need more memory. But if it comes to that, why do you need a GUI interface? We coped or decades without? Has Microsoft brain-washed you all to think that a computer HAS to have a GUI? My firewall, mail-hub, file-server: all headless. That firewall and the mail-hub: only 256K.
Now my dial core laptop has a couple of G of memory, runs KDE4 FAST! Of course a good ATI card helps :-) What makes it swap/page, what can drag it down, is starting Firefox with 40-80 tabs ... but that's nothing to do with it being 11.4/KDE4.7 and everything to do with lots of tabs....
What does memory cost? Well its not worth buying memory for the firewall. its old. DDR3 is cheaper than DDR2 is cheaper than PC133 or PC100. For the cost of 512K ore PC100 for the firewall I can get a SallyAnne Special that uses DDR2 -- I *DID* and found out its actually an AMD-64. Somewhere along the line those older machines are not worth maintaining. Treat them like toilet paper: discard when used up and get a new one out of the closet (the closet being your local Thrift Store).
If this were 'corporate', then the value of my time reading the thread and replying would exceed the cost of new machine. But it isn't, its 'home' and I like tinkering. But somewhere along the line its not worth the frustration.
My workstation - now that's a different story: this is a high end "desktop replacement" laptop, loaded but not quite gamer-quality.
This has to keep working! This is not a toy, this is not for tinkering.
So make your mind up. I you want to play and learn then expect to spend a little. But if its 'corporate', don't faf-around.
--
Think then act - There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all
- Peter Drucker.
--
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On Saturday, August 27, 2011 01:29 George OLson wrote:
Ok, next problem. I have an older pc for my kids that was running
windows xp on it. It is an old Dell desktop with a dual core (I think)
Intel Pentium 4 processor and 256MB of RAM.
I completely removed XP and installed 32bit OS 11.4 and it is now up and
running. However, it runs really, really slow. Basically it is unusable.
I kind of expected that, but I wanted to try it out anyway. I assume the
problem is not enough memory, right?
So what is the best course of action to get it usable for my kids? Is
the problem with KDE? Does KDE take up too much RAM to run in the new
4.6? Should I try and downgrade to an earlier version of KDE? If so, how
do I get the older KDE packages and install them?
Or is the problem with the whole distribution? I have disks for OS 11.1
and OS 9.3. Should I install one of those instead of 11.4?
IMO, 7.3 and 9.3 were the best versions SuSE has ever put out. KDE screwed up
going to KDE4 and all the moronic eye candy garbage and not-intuitive-anymore
ways of getting to anything done and taking a *LOT* of control away from the
user - it's not much different in look and feel from M$ anymore. Unfortunately
it seems Linux in general is going the way of M$, when you come to linux forums
or mailing lists and you hear the excuses M$ users used 10 years ago for it not
running well on their systems - ie: not enough RAM, reboot to fix it, the 'oh
you need the sooper-dooper-most-up-to-date-version of that to work' excuse, ad
nausea.
IMNSHO late model kernels are worth using for a number of reasons - fixes, reliability, functionality. Its not about "sooper-dooper-most-up-to-date-version" -itis, but about integrity. As a side effect its also about performance.
KDE4 is much, much better than KDE3. Much easier, more intuitive, so long as you haven't been brainwashed by some defective desktop manager, perhaps out of Redmond :-) And its faster than KDE3.
Is KDE3 more 'stable'? Of course it is! Comparing KDE3 and KDE4 is like comparing Latin and and English. There vocabulary and grammar of Latin is stable; that of English is changing. But how many people speak Latin?
I have a number of older PCs. I use them for things like firewalls and low-load things like NTP, LDAP and so on. They all run versions of Linux from the last couple of years, Mandriva, Fedora, derivatives. I picked them up as junk-ware from the Salvation Army thrift store for less than a meal for the family at McD's would cost. They ran W/95. They wouldn't run XP/Home or Vista/Home. They do run Linux.
Linux seems to run on just about any hardware I've used. A CD reader helps. You might not be able to run a LiveCD on some low-memory systems and might have a problem installing on the same, and of course the more you're running (background processes like NTP, SAMBA, XFS) the more you're loading the system.
WYSISYG, and a large, capable desktop manager is going to need more memory. But if it comes to that, why do you need a GUI interface? We coped or decades without? Has Microsoft brain-washed you all to think that a computer HAS to have a GUI? My firewall, mail-hub, file-server: all headless. That firewall and the mail-hub: only 256K.
Now my dial core laptop has a couple of G of memory, runs KDE4 FAST! Of course a good ATI card helps :-) What makes it swap/page, what can drag it down, is starting Firefox with 40-80 tabs ... but that's nothing to do with it being 11.4/KDE4.7 and everything to do with lots of tabs....
What does memory cost? Well its not worth buying memory for the firewall. its old. DDR3 is cheaper than DDR2 is cheaper than PC133 or PC100. For the cost of 512K ore PC100 for the firewall I can get a SallyAnne Special that uses DDR2 -- I *DID* and found out its actually an AMD-64. Somewhere along the line those older machines are not worth maintaining. Treat them like toilet paper: discard when used up and get a new one out of the closet (the closet being your local Thrift Store).
If this were 'corporate', then the value of my time reading the thread and replying would exceed the cost of new machine. But it isn't, its 'home' and I like tinkering. But somewhere along the line its not worth the frustration.
My workstation - now that's a different story: this is a high end "desktop replacement" laptop, loaded but not quite gamer-quality.
This has to keep working! This is not a toy, this is not for tinkering.
So make your mind up. I you want to play and learn then expect to spend a little. But if its 'corporate', don't faf-around.
--
Think then act - There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all
- Peter Drucker.
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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