[ILUG] Linux, Arranmore Island, Co. Donegal

[Dermot McGahon]

On Mon, 17 May 2004 20:52:15 +0100, Timothy Murphy  
<tim at birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie> wrote:

> I'm running Fedora-1 on a 300MHz PII with 128MB RAM,
> and it works perfectly well.
> (I've actually had fewer problems compiling kernels
> on this machine than on other more modern computers.)

Glad to hear it but in my experience 128MB is not sufficient
to run Fedora Core 1 with X, desktop, and X applications.

Problems include:

  - Applications like mozilla, opera, oowriter taking
    too long to start up.

  - Series of increasingly smaller window outlines while
    minimising. It can take between 5-10 seconds for a
    proper rendered screen to reappear.

  - Occassional lack of mouse response and disappearing
    mouse pointers.

  - The list goes on.


Even upgrading to 256MB was not sufficient for my needs.

I kept an eye on memory usage. The 256MB was fully in
use within minutes after reboot. Starting Opera with
15-20+ saved tabs as the sole application on top of
X is enough to do that.

So what I would suggest for guideline ram requirements
for FC and similar distributions is 256/384MB for
lighter use, and a minimum of 512MB for developer or
other more intensive use.


Dermot.
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