Re: Running GNOME with 128 MB RAM - Painfully slow?
On Sun, Apr 04, 2010 at 08:33:05PM -0700, Tech Geek wrote:
> So I have a very low end system which has 128 MB of RAM and a 486 based x86
> processor. After installing GNOME on Lenny, as soon as I launch firefox,
> opera or any other relatively intensive application the system comes to a
> crawl and becomes slow and sluggish. The system load increase up tp 5, the
> CPU usage also shoots up to 25% and things become painfully slow to operate
> i.e. become less responsive.
>
> Is there some kind of min. system requirements for running GNOME? Are there
> any tricks to make the system more responsive? Would adding swap help? Right
> now my system does not have any swap partition.
>
> Anybody's input who has expereince running GNOME on a low end system like
> this would be helpful.
>
I've run GNOME on a P3 with 256 MB, and it was bearable. But these days
when I set up a low-end system like that, I run Fluxbox or LXDE. They
both give a great speed improvement over GNOME.
Generally I use Fluxbox for myself, and recommend LXDE for others. The
reason is that LXDE has some of the "right-click" functionality that
most mainstream users have come to expect, while Fluxbox does not (but I
like Fluxbox better for some more geeky reasons). Both of these systems
use somewhere around 50MB of RAM before loading any apps.
The window managers that others have mentioned in this thread are good
as well. But I think LXDE will be easier for most people. It also
comes with a lot of lightweight apps by default, so you don't have to go
searching for suggestions on the internet.
-Rob
Reply to: