Re: is Sarge much slower than Woody on old hardware?
On Thu, 19 May 2005 20:13:19 +0800
Paolo Alexis Falcone <pfalcone@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/19/05, Nacho <listasdecorreo@lascartasdelavida.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have doubts about upgrading to Sarge (when it's stable) because my
> > PC is about 6 years old, and actually with Woody it's not slow, this
> > is the hardware:
> >
> > - CPU AMD K6-2 400 Mhz
> > - 224 Mb RAM
> > - 180 Gb HD
> >
> > The problem is that I use it for lots of things:
> >
> > - Long queries to postgresql which can last between 5 to 30 minutes
> > - Web development
> > - Multimedia (divx, mp3...)
> > - desktop applications: firefox, staroffice, gimp...
> > - Execute remote X applications (more firefox, staroffice, gimp...)
> > - Several Gb encrypted directories
> > - Many more things...
That machine seems pretty capable for most tasks you mention, however if I
used a machine so intensively I would think about getting some hardware
upgrades in terms of a better motherboard and dito memory/cpu ;)
> > And I'm worried that if I upgrade to Sarge I could feel that it's
> > slower for making the same amount of job... what do you think about
> > this?
Some applications will be significantly faster, like KDE, and most likely
the media player you are using. Most will also consume more memory, but if
I am not mistaken, if you are blessed with 224 MB, I don't see a problem
there.
> If it works, why fix it? :D
>
> > Also, I'm using kernel 2.2.26, it supports all the hardware I have so
> > I haven't upgraded... could I run Sarge without upgrading my kernel?
> > is really an advantage to upgrade kernel in such old hardware as this?
>
> A dist-upgrade would never force you to upgrade to a new kernel.
>
> That being said, the 2.6 kernels do have better support for desktops
> that it's got good performance even on older hardware. The bad news is
> it does this at the expense of being bigger in size compared to a 2.2
> kernel. Yet again, YMMV.
A well-compiled 2.6 kernel will give better performance, period. It's
maybe a MB bigger then a 2.2 kernel, but again, the memory the kernel
takes is the least of your worries. Openoffice eats a 20 times more ;-)
--
Frank Van Damme
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