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From: Ron Johnson on 5 Apr 2010 09:10
On 2010-04-04 23:28, Tech Geek wrote:
[snip]
>
> Based on my specs (800 MHz CPU and 128 MB RAM) and [1], I still should be
> able to operate GNOME and some of the apps. However even opening gedit
> brings the system to crawl which is so surprising. I will add some swap and
> see if that makes a difference although I am not counting on it based on my
> past expereince.
>
> [1] http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.0/#performance
>

Except that Gnome 2.0.2 is really, *really* old. Ubuntu 9.04 on a
laptop with an 1800MHz CPU and 256MB RAM is dog slow.

It's all about the RAM, really.

--
"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak
or the timid." Dwight Eisenhower


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From: Mark on 5 Apr 2010 12:00
>
> On Sun, Apr 04, 2010 at 08:33:05PM -0700, Tech Geek wrote:
> > Anybody's input who has expereince running GNOME on a low end system like
> > this would be helpful.
>

FWIW, here are my experiences running Lenny w/Gnome on a few old machines
(all using IDE hdd that are really old):

Machine #1:An old Mac G4 with 1 GB RAM but only a 400 MHz PPC processor.
Also have 1 GB of swap space although it's basically never needed. This
machine is painfully slow, maybe it's the PPC architecture version of Debian
that is slower but I doubt it.

Machine #2: An old Gateway x86 with 512 MB RAM and a 700 MHz P3 processor is
noticeably faster than Machine #1, although definitely not snappy by any
stretch of the imagination.

Machine #3: An old HP x1100 Workstation with 768 MB RAM and P4 1.9 GHz
processor. This machine is really fast with Lenny/Gnome.

All machines are at least 7 years old.

HTH.

Mark
From: Tech Geek on 5 Apr 2010 12:40
Hi,

So I did get a chance to add swap to my system and guess what it made a
significant difference. I had two instances of iceweasel, one instance of
gedit, 3 gnome-terminal window open and the system is still running pretty
decently. I know there is always the debate between how much Swap is
sufficient - for my purpose, first I added 256 MB of swap file on the
installation partition and then I reduced to 128 MB of swap and the system
was still responsive. I don't know how far low I can go but for now it looks
it will do the trick. I am so relieved that swap solution worked out pretty
fine. I did not want to move to another distro because I like Debian a lot!

I wonder if there is a way by which the swap dynamically grows in size as an
when required?

Thanks for everybody's input!
From: Ron Johnson on 5 Apr 2010 13:30
On 2010-04-05 11:36, Tech Geek wrote:
> Hi,
>
> So I did get a chance to add swap to my system and guess what it made a
> significant difference. I had two instances of iceweasel, one instance of
> gedit, 3 gnome-terminal window open and the system is still running pretty

You'd save a good amount of RAM by using rxvt and vim-gtk, also by
moving to XFce.

Since the default rxvt font is so small, this is what I have in my
panel launcher:
urxvt -sl 10000 -font -*-fixed-medium-r-*-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-*-r

> decently. I know there is always the debate between how much Swap is
> sufficient - for my purpose, first I added 256 MB of swap file on the
> installation partition and then I reduced to 128 MB of swap and the system
> was still responsive. I don't know how far low I can go but for now it looks
> it will do the trick. I am so relieved that swap solution worked out pretty
> fine. I did not want to move to another distro because I like Debian a lot!
>
> I wonder if there is a way by which the swap dynamically grows in size as an
> when required?
>

Do you mean "size of the swap *file*", like what Windows does? No.

Both swap partitions and swap files are fixed size; you can, though,
at any time dynamically add more swap files.

--
"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak
or the timid." Dwight Eisenhower


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From: Mark Allums on 5 Apr 2010 17:30
On 4/4/2010 10:33 PM, 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.
> Thanks

GNOME is not your friend, here. Try LXDE, which is a lightweight KDE,
but uses GTK instead of Qt.

You *must* have more memory. If you are hacking a smartphone or Kindle
or other device, and there is no way of adding memory, then *do* add swap.

Use alternatives, such as Chrome instead of Iceweasel/Firefox, use
addons to block ads and scripts in whatever browser you use.

Try text mode (console), learn to love startx. Use text mode programs
like vi(m), nano, links, lynx, aptitude, etc., rather than gedit, Kate,
Firefox, Synaptic, etc.







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