Re: Small footprint window manager
On Mon, 2002-05-13 at 01:27, Miroslav Mazurek wrote:
> 12 May 2002 23:55:36 -0500 "Ron Johnson" <ron.l.johnson@cox.net>:
>
> > On Sun, 2002-05-12 at 19:42, Sean 'Shaleh' Perry wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Isn't this all rather academic, since Miroslav has a _386_ with
> > > > only SIXTEEN MB RAM? Running X would be folly!! Not only is the
> > > > CPU old and slow, but so is the RAM, HDD, video card, etc. And
> > > > the HDD will tiny!!!
> > > >
> > >
> > > sufficient X to have multiple term windows open at once. He won't be running
> > > KDE or what not, but that is not a requirement. Web browsing, simple file
> > > editing, etc can be done there. My first Debian machine was a 486 dx2 66 with
> > > 16 megs of ram and a 800mb (top of the line for the time) hard drive.
> >
> > Your CPU was _much_ faster, you had 2x as much RAM, and I bet your
> > HDD was faster than Miroslavs. And, as I question in another post,
> > you were probably running the 2.0 (or lower?) kernel, and libc5,
> > both of which are much smaller than kernel 2.2 with libc6 2.2.x.
> > Don't forget the really old versions of XFree86 and gcc.
> >
> > In other words, RedHat 5.2 or what ever Debian was out then. He'd
> > have to find binaries from back then, since newer s/w assumes libc6
> >
> > What would you _do_ with it, nowadays?
> >
> > The 2.2 kernel and apps like elvis and links or lynx in virtual
> > terminals would be great (well, adequate) though.
[snip]
>
> First of all, disk is IBM SCSI 2GB that seems pretty fast to me
> and provides enough space.
> The idea is to find how useful is such old box. If it can do some
> web browsing, mail and some simple word processing I'd be satisfied.
> No KDE or Gnome. Think of putting few such boxes in some public area
> and enable people (students) check their mail and surf. I don't want
> to pay M$ licenses. I thought, if it runs almost smoothly win95 (or
> 3.11) why not Linux.
It's the 8MB RAM that concerns me. Can you upgrade the box to
24MB?
Remember, Win95, Win3.11 & older versions of the linux kernel and
libraries were a _lot_ smaller than they are now.
> Secondly, I'm terrified when I see that people are using PIII/Athlon
> with 128MB and Win XXX for such simple tasks as POS. I don't think
> that you need GUI to run such SW and I hope that Linux is not going in
> that direction, too.
I totally agree with you!
> Thirdly, is there a way to use that box as X terminal?
Sure... The 8MB of RAM will still _severely_ limit you. With 24MB
or 32MB RAM, you could easily run kernel 2.2, libc6, and dillo, a
lightweight GTK-based web browser. (If all that is allowed is web
browsing, then no need for a window manager. Check a long thread
in the regarding this subject in the debian-user archives from
approx. 2 months ago.)
--
+------------------------------------------------------------+
| Ron Johnson, Jr. Home: ron.l.johnson@cox.net |
| Jefferson, LA USA http://ronandheather.dhs.org:81 |
| |
| "I have created a government of whirled peas..." |
| Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 12-May-2002, CNN, Larry King Live |
+------------------------------------------------------------+
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