M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 2:56 PM, Thomas Schulte wrote:

...

At the last IRC meeting (on Saturday, October 31) we talked about the minimum hardware requirements for openSUSE:

http://www.novell.com/en-us/products/opensuse/sysreqs.html

We agreed that the current reqs are not that appropriate anymore. Refilwe Seete had the idea of splitting the definitions into different parts like "GUI-based" and "CLI-based" requirements. That's basically a very good idea but we have to keep in mind that GUI shouldn't be generalized because IceWM or LXDE are not as consumptive as KDE4 or GNOME. And, of course, we shouldn't blow up the definition too much because of the needed clarity.

I've successfully installed both Gnome and KDE desktops from the 11.2 RC1 DVD on a 512 MB laptop. The LiveCDs don't really work - they thrash around on the CD drive. The resulting system from a DVD comes up fine, and as long as you only have one Firefox tab up, or a small OpenOffice doc, it is usable. I have not tested the XFCE desktop - the non-starting window manager issue is a show-stopper for my use cases, and XFCE is off my list of potential desktops for the future.

I have now installed on my i586 (AMD K6 CPU) with 256 Mb using the NET install mini-CD. That is the only form that runs on i586 - the others need at least i686. This installation originally failed, but worked when I selected "Text Mode" at boot time. This is selected with the F3 key. I had filed a Bug report on the failure, but after finding a work around, it has been changed to an enhancement for 11.3 so that text mode will be selected automatically if the memory is less than 512 MB. This machine is only used with a CLI, thus the heaviness of the GUI is irrelevant. Larry -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-testing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-testing+help@opensuse.org

IMHO most of users use GUI with KDE4 or GNOME, so default requirements should reflect those. But there should be also advanced view showing text based requirements and requirements for minimalistic GUI. This is not applicable for most of people, because vast majority just accept defaults... :-) Regards, Vojtěch Zeisek Dne Po 2. listopadu 2009 23:56:31 Thomas Schulte napsal(a):

At the last IRC meeting (on Saturday, October 31) we talked about the minimum hardware requirements for openSUSE:

http://www.novell.com/en-us/products/opensuse/sysreqs.html

We agreed that the current reqs are not that appropriate anymore. Refilwe Seete had the idea of splitting the definitions into different parts like "GUI-based" and "CLI-based" requirements. That's basically a very good idea but we have to keep in mind that GUI shouldn't be generalized because IceWM or LXDE are not as consumptive as KDE4 or GNOME. And, of course, we shouldn't blow up the definition too much because of the needed clarity.

There could be a basic overview, just splitted into the mentioned two base parts and a more detailed view for advanced users. Another chance would be to ask the community via the forums about their hardware experiences.

Finally we thought that it would be a good idea to bring the discussion to this mailing list to get more opinions and proposals.

What do you think about this topic? Any suggestions?

Thomas -- Vojtěch Zeisek http://www.natur.cuni.cz/~zeisek/ Jabber: vojta.sc@njs.netlab.cz ICQ: 273-557-509 Skype: vojta.sc

Rasmus Plewe a écrit :

Then there is the "theoretically absolute minimum installation, using all the tweaks you can get". That would be the 512/256MB installations, probably running out of disk space as soon as the user tries to save his .bash_history, and having no graphical resolution to speak of (why should they? The system is not usable for someone sitting in front of it anyway).

sorry to say, but this is plain ridiculous. I have right now a server running very well and serving mailing lists and a wiki with only 128Mb ram and 20Gb HDD. I know of many people that can't afford to buy a computer and are very happy to get for free a 256Mb ram 20Gb HDD PIV (I can spread many of them, from company renewing program) and openSUSE, even kde, runs on these machines jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.org http://news.opensuse.org/2009/04/13/people-of-opensuse-jean-daniel-dodin/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-testing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-testing+help@opensuse.org

Rasmus Plewe a écrit :

Of course they do. But users normally[0] don't want to run openSUSE or KDE. They want to run firefox, kmail, acrobat reader and openOffice. Did you try to start OOo on a machine with 256MB? And then work with it?

of course it works

What I, probably[1] not too well, tried to point out is that the expectations need to be set correctly. If all you've got are 512MB, you can make do with it and work around the limits. But "minimum hardware requirements" imply to me that there is no limit for normal use.

if so we should be more precise. For internet use, mail, most office work, these machines are plain good (and I did these works few time ago with much less powerfull computers) but, of course if you want to compile Hight Definition video or 15Mpix images this can be short. I already have 160Go photo repository (but on USB drive) but the question is: why should we ask for more than what is really necessary? these are not maximum requirements, but minimum ones! jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.org http://news.opensuse.org/2009/04/13/people-of-opensuse-jean-daniel-dodin/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-testing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-testing+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Am 2009-11-03 09:58 schrieb Rasmus Plewe:

On Tue, Nov 03, 2009 at 09:44:17AM +0100, jdd wrote:

...

I know of many people that can't afford to buy a computer and are very happy to get for free a 256Mb ram 20Gb HDD PIV (I can spread many of them, from company renewing program)

and openSUSE, even kde, runs on these machines

Of course they do. But users normally[0] don't want to run openSUSE or KDE. They want to run firefox, kmail, acrobat reader and openOffice.

Not Acrobat Reader and OpenOffice - some PDF viewer and some office suite. Those people jdd wrote about are usually willing quite to accept suggestions of less heavyweight alternatives if it is pointed out to them that their first choice requires a machine they would actually have to spend real money for. Firefox and Kmail shouldn't be a problem. Of course people who cannot afford a Real Computer are a niche market. But I think Linux in general, and openSUSE in particular, would be well advised to cater for them.

What I, probably[1] not too well, tried to point out is that the expectations need to be set correctly. If all you've got are 512MB, you can make do with it and work around the limits. But "minimum hardware requirements" imply to me that there is no limit for normal use.

For the normal mainstream PC user trained on products of You Know Who, "minimum hardware requirements" implies "you might be able to install it, but you won't enjoy using it". - -- Tilman Schmidt E-Mail: tilman@imap.cc Bonn, Germany Diese Nachricht besteht zu 100% aus wiederverwerteten Bits. Ungeöffnet mindestens haltbar bis: (siehe Rückseite) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.4 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFK7/dRQ3+did9BuFsRAhknAJ9IyesPk7GNlpe25IopPeIr4+DNMwCcDw9Q hy04I3x7hQGVrxiOg0GCO2Y= =NJCU -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-testing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-testing+help@opensuse.org

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 1:26 AM, Tilman Schmidt wrote:

Not Acrobat Reader and OpenOffice - some PDF viewer and some office suite. Those people jdd wrote about are usually willing quite to accept suggestions of less heavyweight alternatives if it is pointed out to them that their first choice requires a machine they would actually have to spend real money for.

Firefox and Kmail shouldn't be a problem.

Of course people who cannot afford a Real Computer are a niche market. But I think Linux in general, and openSUSE in particular, would be well advised to cater for them.

...

What I, probably[1] not too well, tried to point out is that the expectations need to be set correctly. If all you've got are 512MB, you can make do with it and work around the limits. But "minimum hardware requirements" imply to me that there is no limit for normal use.

For the normal mainstream PC user trained on products of You Know Who, "minimum hardware requirements" implies "you might be able to install it, but you won't enjoy using it".

I just gave away a 512 MB (448, actually - 64 goes to video) 60 GB HD Athlon XP laptop with a 1024x768 screen to someone who can't afford to buy a new computer. It ran XP Professional for a number of years (came with XP Home) and has run every distro of Linux up through openSUSE 11.2 with one of the two major desktops (KDE or Gnome). I did run Gentoo with WindowMaker on it for a few years just because KDE 3.x was a pig, but it's running fine now with 11.2 and either Gnome or KDE. In any event, if the memory requirements of KDE or Gnome are too high, I also loaded IceWM, WindowMaker and FVWM on it, and will probably also load LXDE. When all is said and done, I think Firefox (and Acrobat Reader) are bigger memory hogs than the desktop, especially if you have a lot of tabs open or download big PDFs. I haven't done memory usage comparisons of Okular, Evince and Acroread yet, but it's probably worth doing now that both Okular and Evince are actually usable PDF readers. They weren't not too long ago. -- M. Edward (Ed) Borasky http://borasky-research.net "I've always regarded nature as the clothing of God." ~Alan Hovhaness -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-testing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-testing+help@opensuse.org

Some days ago i've installed openSUSE 11.1 on an HP notebook with only 190 MB of RAM but with a good processor (Pentium 4-M 2.2 Ghz). The system find all hardware configuration except for integrated wireless card that i've installed apart. For the test i've installed GNOME and it runs a bit slow, it lags in fact but it's still a bit usable. Now i'm going to test the latest RC with XFCE. So IMHO, according to Rasmus Plewe, it's better to make different "degrees" of system requirements. Bye hawake -- Linux user number 433087 Linux registered machine number 351448 http://counter.li.org/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-testing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-testing+help@opensuse.org

jdd wrote:

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky a écrit :

...

I've successfully installed both Gnome and KDE desktops from the 11.2 RC1 DVD on a 512 MB laptop. The LiveCDs don't really work

I could install on a 256Mb ram computer from the live cd (not going live, of course) and it worked - 2 hours works though :-)

not recommanded, but it didn't work with 11.1

Good to hear that it now works. One important point is that you need an i686 to boot the LiveCD. To add my $0.02 to the discussion on usability. I would not dream of using my laptop with 256 MB and an AMD K6-450/2 (i586) for any real work; however, it is my only machine with a PCMCIA adapter. For that reason, it serves a very important testing niche for certain devices that use the b43 or b43legacy drivers. Upgrading to 11.2 makes it easy to get the latest versions of all the userland tools that are needed to make my testing realistic. That machine already has a 2.6.32-rc5 kernel - kernel upgrades are easy. Obviously, the question of minimum requirements is not simple, but I would like to see some resource that covers both what it takes to run Gnome or KDE, as well as what it takes to get a light-weight GUI or a CLI system onto minimal hardware. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-testing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-testing+help@opensuse.org

Testing Team, Sorry to have helped kick off this discussion but not be in the thick of it, still getting my internet service up. Anyway, Thomas Schulte communicated my thoughts exactly. I think we should take a look at the system requirements and perhaps have two sets so the absolute bare is known, but otherwise realistic requirements are published for openSUSE 11.3. There are two ways to get this done: A. Work ourselves to find specs that fit the distro B. Work with the developers to set specs that the distro will be required to work within If we decide to find specs that fit the distro we definitely need some standards, otherwise we'll end up not much better off in the end due to our different views on performance. A few ideas: 1. Length of install if the user accepts all defaults - What's the maximum acceptable time? 60 minutes? 90 minutes? 120 minutes? 2. A standard set of apps and activities done simultaneously to simulate 'multitasking' - People can be taught to do one thing at a time, but should our specs be designed around the assumption that they won't multitask? 3. Using popular software in certain ways - such as OpenOffice Writer with a large MS Word file; Firefox on Youtube or Flash-based games; PDF reader with a large file. - Does it work? What is the minimum performance - say rendering time when scrolling, or some other measure We could also try to simply find the bare minimum that works, no matter how slow it happens to be. For 11.2 we are certainly too late, but for 11.3 having a good set of minimum requirements would be great. The current requirements seem to be a mix of CLI (Pentium 1) and GUI (512MiB RAM recommended). I think we should have more explicitly delineated specs, that will better serve both new users - who will blame us if the system is too slow despite what we say are the minimums - and experienced users who know how to shimmy the system into lower specs. Refilwe -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-testing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-testing+help@opensuse.org

Refilwe Seete wrote:

I think we should take a look at the system requirements and perhaps have two sets so the absolute bare is known, but otherwise realistic requirements are published for openSUSE 11.3.

Yes, I think that's a good idea.

There are two ways to get this done: A. Work ourselves to find specs that fit the distro B. Work with the developers to set specs that the distro will be required to work within

I think the minimum specs are quite well known, although mostly determined empirically. A Pentium CPU, 256M RAM (during installation at least) and 4Gb disk/ssd/whatever space. [big snip about what (not) to run etc.] It would probably be useful to decide on the environment for "realistic requirements", but let's not turn it into a major exercise, I tend to think in terms of a PC for standard office-type work, so I suggest the following simple spec for a useful/recommended setup: 1Gb RAM, 2GHz CPU, 80Gb harddisk space, monitor with SVGA 1024x768 resolution. /Per Jessen, Zürich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-testing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-testing+help@opensuse.org

jdd wrote:

Per Jessen a écrit :

...

1Gb RAM, 2GHz CPU, 80Gb harddisk space, monitor with SVGA 1024x768 resolution.

I don't see the reason to do so.

any new computer is best than that,. openSUSE can install and work (slow) in any minimal config as you said.

That any new machine is better is irrelevant, IMHO. It is only meant as a hint: "to get a decent/useful/reasonable experience with this openSUSE release, we recommend the following as a minimum". I have an elderly P4 1.8GHz with 512Mb here next to me - it was CHF40 on ebay about a year ago. With the recommended minimum spec, this is clearly in the right range, although a little on the low side. /Per Jessen, Zürich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-testing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-testing+help@opensuse.org