Re: Query

[David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>]

On Mon 07 Feb 2022 at 18:08:41 (-0500), Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> On 2/7/2022 4:36 PM, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > On Mon, Feb 07, 2022 at 04:31:51PM -0500, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > > On 2/7/2022 10:50 AM, William Lee Valentine wrote:
> > > > I am wondering whether a current Debian distribution can be installed
> > > > and run on an older Pentium III computer. (I have Debian 11.2 on a DVD.)
> > > > 
> > > > The computer is
> > > > 
> > > >     Dell Dimension XPS T500: Intel Pentium III processor (Katnai)
> > > >     memory: 756 megabytes, running at 500 megahertz
> > > >     IDE disc drive: 60 gigabytes
> > > >     Debian partition: currently 42 gigabytes
> > > >     Debian 6.0: Squeeze
> > > Based on what others are saying, it looks like a typical modern Debian
> > > desktop environment such as Gnome or Plasma KDE will not work well with such
> > > an old system. I suggest you look for a Distro that is tailored for old
> > > hardware.
> > Bah, silly.  Just use a traditional window manager instead of a bloated
> > Desktop Environment.  Problem solved.
> 
> Which windows manager for an extremely resource-limited system?

I had no difficulty running buster's fvwm on a Pentium III Coppermine
from 2000, until the PSU expired. 650MHz, and 512MB memory. Your
memory is probably more use that my speed. But 60GB might limit its
usefulness: my minitower would hold four PATA drives, and I have
three 500GB still left, and had a 200GB until it expired.

You have to have a reason to keep running it, of course. Mine was
that drive capacity, plus nostalgia: it was the desktop machine
I retained when I retired.

This run of "top" is from a modern system after a while reading
my email. To trigger fvwm into top place, I switched between
several of the open viewports. (Mutt is obviously sleeping.)

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND                       
 2730 auser     20   0  373960  67100  36148 S   5.6   0.8   0:03.20 Xorg                          
 2782 auser     20   0   84244  13084  11144 S   0.7   0.2   0:00.25 fvwm                          
 2790 auser     20   0   81296  12360  10704 S   0.7   0.2   0:00.16 FvwmPager                     
   10 root      20   0       0      0      0 I   0.3   0.0   0:00.15 rcu_sched                     
  614 nobody    20   0    5080   2820   2580 S   0.3   0.0   0:00.06 thd                           
    1 root      20   0   22276  10304   7748 S   0.0   0.1   0:01.01 systemd                       

> Debian's wiki page on window managers lists more than 30
> possibilities. Its not silly to take a look at a distro based on
> Debian that is tailored for low resources as a starting point to try
> and build a Debian 11.2 system that will work OK on a Pentium III with
> less than 1 GB of memory. Debian provides so many packages, and such
> distros like antiX can give one an idea about which packages to use
> when trying to build a Debian 11.2 system that will work well on an
> older system with such a small amount of memory and such an old CPU.

I install all the software that I do on any other machine, I just
don't run it if the machine's not up to it. (It had the disk space
not to worry, of course.) So I wouldn't open libreoffice or firefox,
for example. Speed wasn't an issue (/home was encrypted), just memory,
even with 1GB swap (encrypted).

> > But the *real* problem will come when they try to run a web browser.  That's
> > where the truly massive memory demand is.
> > 
> > 756 MB is plenty of RAM for daily use of everything except a web browser.
> > 
> 
> Yes, it will be important to try to find a web browser that is the
> least bloated as possible. Again, looking at the browser choices of
> distros tailored for old hardware can help build a Debian 11.2 system
> that will work well on old hardware.

So that I could read email, I used lynx (with -localhost) for HTML.
Mind you, I do that on all my current machines too.

> In any case, it will need to be a carefully crafted selection of
> Debian 11.2 packages to have a decent experience, and most definitely
> start with a small netinst installation with only the text console to
> start, and then build the GUI environment carefully from the ground
> up.
> 
> Again, good luck to the OP in trying out Debian 11.2 on his system.

One exception: I do run firefox on a 1.5GHz 500MB laptop, which is
painful. When I installed bullseye, it took 3 minutes for FF to
display the (empty) startup page. But it's useful to have a system
with zero monetary worth that I could trash or lose without worrying
about it.

Cheers,
David.