Re: Red Hat On Yesterday's Hardware

[Gordon Pritchard <gordonp sfu ca>]

On Sat, 2003-06-28 at 21:15, Robert L Cochran wrote:

> I see from the release notes for Red Hat 9 that the minimum CPU is a
> Pentium class and the minumum memory is 64 Mb, rock bottom. 
> My question is, what is the lowest-end system that one can get
> realistically decent graphics performance from with Red Hat 9? Including
> internetting and office management tasks? A Pentium 90? Pentium 66? How
> low can I go before the hardware chokes the OS performance-wise? 

	I ran a P-166/64MB with RH8.  Out-of-the-box, it was very slow doing
anything in X (1024x768, 16bpp).  I was not happy with it (but that
unhappiness ultimately led to a new machine :-) ).

	The only way I could get reasonable performance was to change
window-managers.  First, I tried the very-minimalist one that was
included (twm???).  Later, I installed and tried iceWM.  Now, I was
happy with iceWM:  the machine seemed snappy and responsive.

	I never tried it with office-type apps, but browsing (Galeon was my
choice, after watching system-resource-consumption with alternatives)
was fine.  I also used a number of ham-radio applications, and they too
were fine (but not graphically-intensive).

	So, my bottom-line suggestion is that X and in particular the WM will
dictate largely how satisfied you will be.  Out-of-the-box, I don't
think RH9 is very usable on the low-end Pentium stuff you're suggesting,
for the apps you're considering.

	My $0.02,
	-Gord

-- 
Gordon Pritchard, P.Eng.         | Institute of Electrical and
Research Labs Manager            |      Electronics Engineers
Simon Fraser University, Surrey  | Quarter Century Wireless Ass'n
gordonp sfu ca                   | Telephone Pioneers of America
phone:  604.268.7509             | Amateur Radio:  VA7SFU, VA7GP