Re: Planning: Minimum System Requirements
> > It seems that a good place to start for this project is defining what the
> > minimum system requirements for running the Debian-Win32 should be. Here
> > is what I propose:
> >
> > CPU: Pentium. Setting this as high as is reasonable makes for better
> > optimization of the generated code. While I think Pentium-II
> > would be an even better choice, I assume it includes instructions
> > not available on other high-end CPUs of today, such as the AMD
> > Athalon.
>
> Maybe require the MMX instruction set? MMX helps most for multimedia
> stuff, but also for big memory copies. SSE (aka KNI (on PIII and
> P4), aka 3dNow professional (on AMD K7 Palomino and later, and K8, see
> http://www.sandpile.org/impl/k7.htm)) is too high a requirement. It is
> great for FP math, esp. on P4 (with SSE2). Requiring 3dNow doesn't make
> sense, because that's AMD-only.
Yeah, I agree that requiring a P-III is a bit much. We could probably move
to this requirement at some point in the future. Since this system will
be an add-on on top of another OS, it's likely to need less legacy support.
So, "Pentium with MMX" instruction set? Is there anything in the P-II
instruction set also common with competetive AMD chips? (I'm afraid I'm
a bit out of touch on all this -- most of my work lately is on an 8051.)
> > OS: Windows 2000 or XP. Since 95/98/ME/NT are obsolete by MS standards,
> > I don't think we need to support it. Let's make use of the abilities
> > of the newer operating system versions rather than try to be
> > compatible across all of them.
>
> Unix on Win32 is hard enough as it is, so yeah, good idea. People with
> older systems can use ordinary cygwin, or if they really want GNU/Linux,
> install it natively :)
Which is one of the reasons why I think we'll have fewer problems with
having to support legacy systems. A combined system is only likely to
be used on workstations where people do development and those get replaced
every few years. There won't be many back-room servers running a set-up
like this.
> > RAM: 128MB. This is already a requirement of Windoze.
> >
> > DISK: 1GB. This is also a requirement of Windoze. Perhaps it should
> > be 2GB to be able to hold both systems?
>
> Disk requirements are best specified in terms of free space
> remaining/needed, not total size of disk. (RAM and CPU use are scheduled,
> so one process can use all of either while running, but disk space is not
> like that.) 1GB of free space sounds sensible, if maybe a bit high for a
> minimal setup.
Okay. I guess we'll get more info on that as we get some packages together.
It gives us a target to stay within, though.
Brian
( bcwhite@precidia.com )
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Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy!"... until you can find a rock.
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