Re: An old box running Debian 8
On Wed, 11 Nov 2020 17:40:50 +0100
Miroslav Skoric <skoric@uns.ac.rs> wrote:
> I have an old comp (CPU Pentium II Celeron 400 MHz, 224 MB RAM)
> running ham radio server in Debian 8. It works well in CLI, but very
> slow after starting GUI. I wonder whether it would be worth to try
> (if possible at all) to upgrade it to Debian 9. Any experience with
> such old boxes?
You are trying to do what we call in the US, a Fool's Errand, that
is, a fruitless undertaking. If you could upgrade the RAM to 512MB or
even 1 GB, you might get usable performance with Debian 8 and a
lightweight GUI environment or, better yet, a window manager, but
certainly not with GNOME or KDE. Let me give you an example:
About 10 years ago, I installed Debian 7 on an Asus EeePC 900 with a
900MHz Celeron and 512MB RAM. I tried GNOME first, but even then it was
too much a resources behemoth to even work. LXDE was lighter;
however, even with only a browser running, system performance was
slow, but usable, if you were patient. Upgrading RAM to 1GB made all
the difference in the world turning a barely usable system into one
that while not screaming fast was adequate for simple web browsing,
video streaming, email, etc. which was what it was intended for.
So, first, before changing anything else, see if upgrading RAM does any
good with 8.
B
Reply to: