Zinn wrote:

>> It's more than enough, but possibly not enough to run GNOME or KDE.
>
> Ah, now we're getting somewhere. A quick google search yielded the two
> things I've quoted at the bottom of the post, confirming that Linux
> (Fedora Core 2 with GUI) has out-of-control memory requirements,
> recommended at 512MB. It had not occurred to me to check the memory
> requirements of a Linux system. I just assumed that 384MB would be more
> than adequate for everyday tasks. I guess I'm from the old school. I
> remember when people grumbled that OS/2 had 4MB minimum and 8MB
> recommended for GUI work. Here we have 512MB recommended. That's
> outrageous. Utterly outrageous. Does anyone know what in the heck
> Linux/Gnome does with 512MB of memory? I see some icons and menus on my
> screen.
>
> One of the quotes I found was from Slashdot from just last Thursday!
> No doubt all Linux advocates here will see this as a troll. So be it.
> While you're at it, go harass Slashdot for running Microsoft FUD.
> Maybe I just got my check straight from Bill Gates this morning. Still,
> even if I'm a troll, and Slashdot has been taken over by Microsoft,
> Fedora still needs 512 MB recommended ram, and that's still outrageous.
> I'm surprised the Windows advocates didn't pick up on this immediately. I
> guess they're not doing their homework.
>
> Looks like I'm either going to have to chuck Gnome, or throw more
> hardware at this sucker.
>
> Case closed.
>

From your original message :

"I'm getting some rather poor performance out of a Red Hat 9
system with PIII 866 Coppermine,**and*384*MB*PC133*ram.**At*least
part of the problem seems to be memory related.**First*off,
the applications I'm using are sucking up enormous amounts
of ram.**All*the*apps*I*typically*keep*open*are:
**Mozilla
**XEmacs
**Pan
**Evolution
**Gnome-terminal
**Nautilus*(kept*open*by*Gnome)
"

I had problems with GNOME under RH 9.0 (system - 192 MB, 700 MHz Celeron).
Pan, for instance, used to lock up on me every now and then. I used emacs
instead of xemacs, and used Mozilla mail instead of evolution, so I cannot
say anything about those two.

Gnome terminal takes minimal amount of memory.

Nautilus - never bothered with that.

Now I use KDE 3.2.2 on Debian Sarge. Works like a charm (after chucking
Evolution that I tried for a week), though I will admit that my new laptop
is more powerful than the one I had earlier.

GNOME (especially) and KDE have become increasingly bloated over the years.
I can still remember the days when I used to use fvwm. X used to be nowhere
near as memory intensive.

Over the years (and different versions), I have found fewer problems running
KDE than with GNOME, though most people would tell you (with reason) that
KDE contains far more eye candy than GNOME does.

Could be just me, but GNOME has always involved some sort of trouble or the
other. But I always try GNOME every two years or so, just out of curiosity.

As regards Fedora, I would sooner stop using computers than use that. Its a
constant bug release by RH, which has given up on its loyal core users. No
wonder they are shifting to Mandrake, Suse, or Debian variants in droves.
My desktop still runs RH 9.0, but it will have a Slackware install before
this summer is out.

Zinn wrote:

> Ah, now we're getting somewhere. A quick google search yielded the
> two things I've quoted at the bottom of the post, confirming that
> Linux (Fedora Core 2 with GUI) has out-of-control memory requirements,
> recommended at 512MB. It had not occurred to me to check the memory
> requirements of a Linux system. I just assumed that 384MB would be
> more than adequate for everyday tasks. I guess I'm from the old
> school. I remember when people grumbled that OS/2 had 4MB minimum and
> 8MB recommended for GUI work. Here we have 512MB recommended. That's
> outrageous. Utterly outrageous. Does anyone know what in the heck
> Linux/Gnome does with 512MB of memory? I see some icons and menus on
> my screen.

Of course, if you actually *read* the article, it says "192 Meg" for Fedora
Core 2, not 512. 512 may well be recommended, especially if you're rinning
honking mail servers and have every KDE widget and service running. You do
seem to be trying to do a subtle jub of trolling: not blatant lies, but
mis-stated enough to leave doubts in the minds of your readers.

Rip out nautilus, rip out mc, and toss out every GNOME and KDE widget you
don't need, and you're in business. The amazing plethora of overlapping
tools for email handling, CD burning, etc. are pretty ridiculous: pick one
or two and dump the rest. And pull out all the damn web web servers except
maybe the one you want, and all the FTP and email and print and file
servers.

And rip out *every* multi-lingual dictionary or language service: very few
of them are any good, and they are invariably bloatware on a lightweight
system and bulk the hell out of your disk usage. The KDE fonts, for example,
are a good place to start even if you want to keep other KDE utilities.

On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 16:52:17 -0400, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:

> Zinn wrote:
>
>> Ah, now we're getting somewhere. A quick google search yielded the
>> two things I've quoted at the bottom of the post, confirming that
>> Linux (Fedora Core 2 with GUI) has out-of-control memory requirements,
>> recommended at 512MB. It had not occurred to me to check the memory
>> requirements of a Linux system. I just assumed that 384MB would be
>> more than adequate for everyday tasks. I guess I'm from the old
>> school. I remember when people grumbled that OS/2 had 4MB minimum and
>> 8MB recommended for GUI work. Here we have 512MB recommended. That's
>> outrageous. Utterly outrageous. Does anyone know what in the heck
>> Linux/Gnome does with 512MB of memory? I see some icons and menus on
>> my screen.
>
> Of course, if you actually *read* the article, it says "192 Meg" for Fedora
> Core 2, not 512. 512 may well be recommended, especially if you're rinning
> honking mail servers and have every KDE widget and service running. You do
> seem to be trying to do a subtle jub of trolling: not blatant lies, but
> mis-stated enough to leave doubts in the minds of your readers.

To a Linux advocate the truth is a "subtle job of trolling." Of course,
what I say is "not blatant lies" (i.e. it's the truth), it's just not
what you want to hear.

As for misstating things, first you misquote the article, then the
article misquotes the Fedora website.

The article
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=7324 says:
"Consider these memory requirements for Fedora Core 2, as specified by Red
Hat: Minimum for graphical: 192MB and Recommended for graphical: 256MB
Does that sound any alarm bells with you? 192MB minimum? I've been running
Linux for five years (and am a huge supporter), and have plenty of
experience with Windows, Mac OS X and others. And those numbers are
shocking -- severely so. No other general-purpose OS in existence has such
high requirements. Linux is getting very fat."

You quote the article ambiguously as "192MB for Fedora Core 2." However,
this article states that 192MB is *minimum*, not recommended. It also
uses the word "shocking" and "severely so" to describe these memory
requirements. Like me, the author of the article has experience with
Windows, Mac OS X and others, and like me he is severely shocked by
Linux's memory requirements. Aren't you shocked by them? Don't you find
it a little disturbing that Fedora Core 2 recommends 64 times as much
memory as OS/2 did? If you love Linux, and you believe that open source
people listen to users, I suggest you petition the Gnome people, or
Fedora people, or whoever, to cut the crap and put an end to this out of
control bloatdown.

But it's actually worse than this. Not only have you misquoted the
article, the article misquoted the Fedora website. At the Fedora
release notes page
http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/
it states, as I quoted:

Memory Requirements
This section lists the memory required to install Fedora Core 2.
Minimum for text-mode: 128MB
Minimum for graphical: 256MB
Recommended for graphical: 512MB

So the 192MB quoted by the article as a minimum for graphical was
wrong. The *minimum* for graphical is 256MB. The recommended is 512MB.


To tell you the truth, I'm not only shocked, I'm pissed off. I've
got to upgrade from 384 fucking megs of memory just to get my Linux
box to stop swapping and freezing? What in the fucking hell is this?
I've got a 300 mhz machine with 128mb ram running Win2000 Pro fine.
I notice the disk requirements have also ballooned out of hell. They
require between 900mb and 7.5 gigs hard disk space! This is out of
control. This is insane. The Gnome desktop doesn't even do all that much.
To think I'd been ditzing around wondering what *I'd* been doing wrong.

> Rip out nautilus, rip out mc, and toss out every GNOME and KDE widget you
> don't need, and you're in business. The amazing plethora of overlapping
> tools for email handling, CD burning, etc. are pretty ridiculous: pick one
> or two and dump the rest. And pull out all the damn web web servers except
> maybe the one you want, and all the FTP and email and print and file
> servers.
>
> And rip out *every* multi-lingual dictionary or language service: very few
> of them are any good, and they are invariably bloatware on a lightweight
> system and bulk the hell out of your disk usage. The KDE fonts, for example,
> are a good place to start even if you want to keep other KDE utilities.

Nautilus is useless and idiotic, but I tried ripping it out of Gnome once
and had bad results. Gnome didn't like it at all. I hate it but I leave
it there so Gnome doesn't have a melt down.

Most of the stuff you speak of is disk space, not memory. The
bloatdown of mail tools and whatnot sit on my hard drive but I don't think
they ever get loaded into memory. If they do, Linux is more hopeless
than I thought.

A few years ago I tried installing Red Hat on a laptop with a 1 gig drive.
I wasted hours and hours trying to coax the installer into believing that
it could do without things like Japanese fonts for apps I wasn't
installing. After all of this, I never got a usable installation. It
might have been possible with another distro, but I don't have time in my
life to try every possibility. I suspect that trying to coax the Fedora
installer into leaving out most of the crap I don't need is a losing
proposition. I'm guessing I'll be fighting with it for hours and it won't
cooperate.

If you really love Linux (why you do, I can't say), then my advice is to
complain to the Gnome and Fedora people and whoever else is screwing up
the system so badly. That way, the system will get better rather than
worse all the time, and you'll be able to help people like me, rather
than just accusing them of a "subtle job of trolling."

Zinn wrote:
> Memory Requirements
> This section lists the memory required to install Fedora Core 2.
> Minimum for text-mode: 128MB
> Minimum for graphical: 256MB
> Recommended for graphical: 512MB
>
> To tell you the truth, I'm not only shocked, I'm pissed off.

Get a fucking grip, snotfuck:

http://www.compusa.com/products/prod...210&pfp=BROWSE

512 MB = $119

Fedora isn't meant to be an OS from floppy, Zippo. There are other Linux distros
that specialize in being small, you twit.

Hamilcar Barca wrote:

> [SNIP]
> ...and one of the low-life, Microsoft sock-puppet trolls.
>
>> A PIII 866 with 384 MB ram isn't cutting edge, but it's plenty
>> good enough todegradationbrowser and a text editor, isn't it?
>
> It's more than enough, but possibly not enough to run GNOME or KDE.
>

I don't know...I'm running those on an identical system and it works fine
for me. It's highly responsive and I'm able to load and run just about
anything with little performance degradation. (The only exception seems to
be Quanta, which gets really sluggish when large files are loaded.)

>
> Trollitis?

In comp.os.linux.misc Zinn <zinn@spam.all.people> wrote:
> > It's more than enough, but possibly not enough to run GNOME or KDE.
>
> outrageous. Utterly outrageous. Does anyone know what in the heck
> Linux/Gnome does with 512MB of memory? I see some icons and menus on my

Nothing. I have plenty of machines with 40MB of memory. This portable
has 256MB. My servers tend to have 128MB.

betty:/tmp% pstree
init-+-aio/0
|-apmd
|-atd
|-automount
|-cardmgr
|-cron
|-cron.wrapper---sleep
|-dictd
|-dnsmasq
|-events/0
|-famd
|-6*[getty]
|-icmplogd
|-inetd
|-kapmd
|-kblockd/0
|-kdeinit-+-Eterm---tcsh-+-3*[less---tcsh---vim]
| | |-less
| | |-pstree
| | `-4*[rlogin]
| |-Eterm---tcsh-+-2*[rlogin]
| | `-2*[vim]
| |-Eterm---tcsh-+-kdvi---kviewshell
| | |-2*[rlogin]
| | `-soffice.bin---soffice.bin---5*[soffice.bin]
| |-kdeinit---kdeinit
| `-kdeinit
|-9*[kdeinit]
|-kdeinit---tcsh---mozilla-bin-+-mozilla-bin-+-2*[mozilla-bin]
| | `-mozilla-bin---acroread
| `-netstat
|-kdeinit---cat
|-kdesud
|-khubd
|-3*[kjournald]
|-klisa---2*[klisa]
|-klogd
|-kmix
|-knotes
|-kseriod
|-ksoftirqd/0
|-kswapd0
|-lpd
|-migration/0
|-nasd
|-ntpd---ntpd
|-omniNames---omniNames---3*[omniNames]
|-2*[pccardd]
|-2*[pdflush]
|-portmap
|-rpc.mountd
|-rpc.nfsd
|-rpc.rquotad
|-rpc.statd
|-rplayd
|-rwhod
|-slapd---slapd---slapd
|-spamd
|-sshd
|-startx---xinit-+-XFree86
| `-kde2---ksmserver
|-syslogd
|-tproxy
|-uml_switch
|-watchdog---watchdog
|-xfs
|-xfstt
|-xntpd
`-ypbind---ypbind---2*[ypbind]
betty:/tmp% free
Unknown HZ value! (86) Assume 100.
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 254660 251212 3448 0 10232 55420
-/+ buffers/cache: 185560 69100
Swap: 530136 177184 352952


Peter

In comp.os.linux.setup Swampee <swampee@florida.org> wrote:
> On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 00:49:47 -0600, Hamilcar Barca wrote:
>
>
> > It's impossible: Swampee is a troll. Its only purpose on Usenet is to get
> > the attention it doesn't get elsewhere.
>
> But yet not a single one of you linux lunatics has been able to help this
> guy with the exception of Nico.

He doesn't have a problem, except with himself. If he misinterprets
what he sees as "memory problem", that's his problem.

Peter

On 2004-06-14, Zinn <zinn@spam.all.people> wrote:

> I've got a 300 mhz machine with 128mb ram running Win2000 Pro fine.

And I have a 300 MHz machine with 192mb ram running MDK9.1 fine. You
don't have to use KDE or Gnome if your hardware is not up to the task.

> I notice the disk requirements have also ballooned out of hell. They
> require between 900mb and 7.5 gigs hard disk space!

MDK9.1 minimum installation was 140 megs. Why should I install gigs of
crap I don't use. Do the minimum installation and add the stuff you need
later.


--
A. Talsta

General Schvantzkoph <schvantzkoph@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<pan.2004.06.13.15.53.58.942371@yahoo.com>...
> On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 11:16:26 -0600, Zinn wrote:
>
> > I'm getting some rather poor performance out of a Red Hat 9
> > system with PIII 866 Coppermine, and 384 MB PC133 ram. At least
> > part of the problem seems to be memory related. First off,
> > the applications I'm using are sucking up enormous amounts
> > of ram. All the apps I typically keep open are:
> > Mozilla
> > XEmacs
> > Pan
> > Evolution
> > Gnome-terminal
> > Nautilus (kept open by Gnome)
>
> I never figured out what was wrong with RH9 but the performance is awful.
> I used to run RH7.3 which was fine. When I installed RH9 I noticed that it
> was really sluggish on my 512M 500MHz PIII system. I did some benchmarking
> and it confirmed what I had noticed, launching Xemacs 10 times took 4x as
> long on RH9 as on 7.3. I've since switched to Mandrake. MDK9.2 is even
> faster than RH7.3 was and MDK10.0 is faster still. I recommend MDK9.2 over
> 10.0. Although 10.0 is pretty good for a .0 it's definitely not as stable
> as 9.2. The only caveat on MDK 9.2 is to make sure that you have 9.2.1 or
> that you don't have an LG CDROM. MDK9.2 had a bug that fried LG CDROMs
> (it's strictly an LG problem, all others are fine). They fixed it in 9.2.1
> but you can only download that one if you are a MandrakeClub member
> ($120/year). MDK10.0 has no known fatal problems but it does have a few
> rough edges and the 2.6 kernel in it is early (2.6.3) so it's not as
> stable as you would like.

The issues raised by these threads are real and important, IMO. I,
too, was unhappy with the performance of RH9.0 when I upgraded from
RH7.3. I run a small shop with 5 machines, and I had to buy extra
memory for 4 of them. These now work with Gnome, but the response is
not exactly snappy, and inparticular, it's not as good as with RH7.3.
The fifth machine is an old one that maxes out at 128M, on which RH9.0
with Gnome is not satisfactory. I tried to install icewm, on this
one, but didn't have time to figure out how to do it.

Sure, I could install different distros on different machines or go
through the list and try to figure out what components to leave out,
etc. But this takes a lot of time, more than I've got.

Since M$ is forcing people to upgrade hardware, there must be a lot of
really cheap, older machines out there that would work just fine with
some version of Linux, either lying in someone's closet or for sale.
These could be an avenue for getting more Linux on the desktop, if
there were a slim distribution with user-friendly installation that
would give desktop users what they need.

Nessuno

On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 10:30:34 -0700, nessuno wrote:


>
> The issues raised by these threads are real and important, IMO. I,
> too, was unhappy with the performance of RH9.0 when I upgraded from
> RH7.3. I run a small shop with 5 machines, and I had to buy extra
> memory for 4 of them. These now work with Gnome, but the response is
> not exactly snappy, and inparticular, it's not as good as with RH7.3.
> The fifth machine is an old one that maxes out at 128M, on which RH9.0
> with Gnome is not satisfactory. I tried to install icewm, on this
> one, but didn't have time to figure out how to do it.
>
> Sure, I could install different distros on different machines or go
> through the list and try to figure out what components to leave out,
> etc. But this takes a lot of time, more than I've got.
>
> Since M$ is forcing people to upgrade hardware, there must be a lot of
> really cheap, older machines out there that would work just fine with
> some version of Linux, either lying in someone's closet or for sale.
> These could be an avenue for getting more Linux on the desktop, if
> there were a slim distribution with user-friendly installation that
> would give desktop users what they need.
>
> Nessuno

Unless you are prepared to move to Redhat AS then you have to change
distributions anyway. I've found the performance of Mandrake much
better than any of the later Redhat releases. I've also given SUSE 9.1 a
quick look and found it to feel very sluggish but I haven't taken the
time to quantify it. The downside of Mandrake is that their quality
control is much worse than Redhat's. However the distribution is very full
featured and the performance is pretty snappy on older hardware (I'm
using it in a 500MHz PIII). As I said earlier, I'd stay away from 10.0 for
now and stick with 9.2.1 but when 10.1 comes out I'd certainly give that a
look. 10.0 is even faster than 9.2, unfortunately it has a few to many
bugs.