Minimum requirements for install? (Sorry if this is a dup)

[Aaron Konstam]

On Fri, Mar 19, 2004 at 10:54:55AM -0600, Rodolfo J. Paiz wrote:
> At 10:25 3/19/2004, you wrote:
> >I was feeling masochistic last night so I tried an install on a
> >machine with 32MB of ram. What a disaster. It depends on the speed of
> >the processor but I would not install FC1 on a machine with less than
> >256MB of ram, and I don't care what the requirements say.
> 
> You cannot make generalizations like that about Linux and not expect to get 
> shot down for it, since they simply *are not true*. It just depends on 
> matching the software to the hardware to the user. You were trying to load 
> a GUI, a graphical browser, and office apps on 32MB of RAM... please find 
> *ANY* operating system released within the last five years which will run 
> on that hardware and then come back to complain.
> 
> For example: I have 8 servers now running Fedora Core 1 on Pentium/166 
> chips, with 32MB of RAM, and 1GB hard drives. The smallest network has 
> three clients and the largest has about 30 clients. In all cases, the 
> server provides firewall/masquerading/gateway services, DHCP, DNS, NTP, 
> printer sharing with CUPS, and master browser/Netbios name resolution 
> service via Samba (no actual file sharing). Two or three of these servers 
> will also soon provide VPN connectivity to branch offices. Very useful 
> boxes, these... very successful implementation of the most up-to-date Linux 
> distro around on ancient and obsolete hardware.
> 
> Why does it work? Text mode (runlevel 3), minimal installs, all unnecessary 
> cruft removed, all possible services shut down save what is truly necessary 
> (kudzu, gpm, and others are shut down too), tight configuration, and... 
> most importantly... requirements which make sense.
> 
> You can make an excellent operating system, but it won't work miracles. 
> Expecting a 2004 operating system with a full load of applications, 
> including Evolution, Mozilla, and OpenOffice, to run on 1994 hardware is 
> just silly. That OS, and those applications, have been built and tuned for 
> what users require today, and most of those users have much faster 
> processors, better graphics adapters, more RAM, etc. and thus want more 
> features, more simultaneous tasks, and more eye candy.
> 
> Match the requirements to the hardware, and Fedora Core will do you right. 
> Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.
I agree with what is said above except that I made it clear I was
talking about systems with everything installed. In my experiment I
cut down on the installed packages and services it will work. But let
talk about how long did the install on a 32MB machine will take. In my case
about 8 hours. I agree it depends what you are doing . But the general
answer is that 64 MB is not sufficient to run fedora with its
improvements.
-- 
-------------------------------------------
Aaron Konstam
Computer Science
Trinity University
One Trinity Place.
San Antonio, TX 78212-7200

telephone: (210)-999-7484
email:akonstam at trinity.edu