So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

[Charles Curley]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 01:24:04PM -0400, Michael Wiktowy wrote:

> The amount of RAM seems to be the biggest issue with running distros
> on older systems. ...

> 
> I have found that you need at least 256 MB of RAM. I think the stated
> minimum is 192 MB or something like that...

That sounds about right.

In addition, there is also the minimum amount of RAM necessary to
install, which may be higher. I was able to install Xubuntu on a 68 MB
machine some years ago by using the text installation and installing a
command line only system. I went to that the first time Fedora wouldn't
install on it.

There was a nasty problem with RPM a few years ago that only shows up
in a low memory situation: if RPM fails to install a apackage because
it runs out of memory, it returns a value which Anaconda and yum
interpret as sucess. So it is possible to complete the process and
reboot to a corrupted sytem.

-- 

Charles Curley                  /"\    ASCII Ribbon Campaign
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