[ILUG] Old PC and gentoo

[Timothy Murphy]

On Tue 03 May 2005 17:47, fuzzix wrote:

> Jason Corcoran wrote:
> > I have a PIII 475 MHz machine with 256 MB of RAM. I upgraded to
> > Fedora Core 2 a while ago and noticed my machine slowing down.
> > Recently went to Fedora Core 3 and it slowed down again.

I have a similar machine (Asus P2B motherboard)
and didn't notice any slowing down going from RH-9 to Fedora-1
or going from Fedora-2 to Fedora-3.
Why would it slow down?

> > I was wondering would it be worth giving Gentoo ago? I have a good
> > cable connection and the machine is basically used for some
> > sourceforge project work, email sending and web browsing, so no biggy
> >  if the install gose west. I also have our home accounts on a
> > different machine so theres no data loss.
>
> I'm not convinced compiling every app has that large a performance
> benefit,

I must be missing something here.
Why would it do any good at all to re-compile an application?

> but I know an appropriately compiled kernel can make a world of 
> difference. Compiling Gentoo on a 475MHz x86 box would also be painful,
> I reckon :)
>
> Not sure how suited Fedora is to user-compiled kernels but I think it's
> worth a shot before spending the time on Gentoo.

I'm not sure what this means, but compiling a kernel under Fedora
is exactly the same as compiling it under any other distribution.

I'd be surprised if changing the distribution would have a noticeable effect.

I bought some memory for my machine (128MB to 384MB)
and this has made it much less "sticky".
So why not treat yourself to some RAM?

I bought mine from http://www.shop4memory.com which is in Kildare, I think.
I was very impressed with them, as I had tried some other RAM in this machine
and it did not work, but I told them the motherboard,
and they sent me appropriate RAM which works well.

On the whole, I am surprised how little effect a faster CPU has.
Of course it depends on the application,
but my impression is that memory and disk speed
are likely to have a much bigger effect than CPU speed.

-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland