On 15 May 2006, at 20:46, PJ Wall wrote:
> The disk is 6gb, and I have 128mb ram (and I also have a spare
> 256mb chip which I might squuze in if this would make a difference?
Tripling the memory from 128MB to 384MB (or even less, if you have to
remove say 64MB to fit the 256MB in) will make all the difference in
the world, because laptop disks are SLOW as swap. In general terms on
a Linux box which is low in RAM, adding more will make a much bigger
difference in performance than increasing processor speed. (And Linux
is not the worst here - OS-X wants RAM like an addict wants heroin. I
recently had to use an OS-X box with ONLY 512MB of RAM for a couple
of days, and it was a painful experience even switching between two
applications)
I wish you every success with the RAM upgrade though - IME Thinkpads
are VERY fussy about the memory they will accept, so unless the spare
you have was supplied specifically for that vintage of Thinkpad, you
may have problems. Mind you, they're very polite about it. At boot
time, if you've installed incompatible memory, you get a message
informing you that "you have incompatible memory installed, in order
to continue please take it out and don't let it darken my door again"
or words to that general effect.
Niall
Maintained by the ILUG website team. The aim of Linux.ie is to
support and help commercial and private users of Linux in Ireland. You can
display ILUG news in your own webpages, read backend
information to find out how. Networking services kindly provided by HEAnet, server kindly donated by
Dell. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds,
used with permission. No penguins were harmed in the production or maintenance
of this highly praised website. Looking for the
Indian Linux Users' Group? Try here. If you've read all this and aren't a lawyer: you should be!
