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From: Tech Geek on 4 Apr 2010 23:40
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
From: Nuno Magalhães on 4 Apr 2010 23:50
On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 04:33, Tech Geek <techgeek12345(a)gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.

There usually are minimum system requirements, gnome's are easily
found[1] if you had used a search engine. That said, despite what
might be the official minimum, gnome, like kde, are hogs. If it
requires, at least, 128MB, you're gonna need more to run apps, so if
you want a decent desktop experience i'd go for 512BM at the very
least. For the hardware you described i'd use a lightweight window
manager - there are many: xfce, fluxbox and windowmaker are a few
examples. Heck even for highend i don't use big desktop environments,
but that's me.

> Anybody's input who has expereince running GNOME on a low end system like
> this would be helpful.

I don't normally use "low end and "gnome" in the same sentence, sorry.
However, you could just install gnome-base or gnome-core or whatever
the base packages are, abd build up from there, only installing what
you really need. Last time i installed gnome (the virtual package), it
took 1GB of hard disk space. Plus it's a nuissance to uninstall.

Consider lightweight apps, firefox is growing every day and you can
already find alternatives and forks.

And yes, for a 128MB desktop a swap partition is always welcome and
even if you upgrade your RAM you still have the CPU bottlenecking the
system.

HTH

[1] http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.0/#systemrequirements

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From: Stan Hoeppner on 5 Apr 2010 00:20
Tech Geek put forth on 4/4/2010 10:33 PM:
> 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.

You can try adding swap but I doubt it will help much as the disk is so old
and slow. Adding another 128MB or 256MB of memory would probably help the
most with that system, but given that it has a sub 200MHz 486 class
processor, you really need a more modern system if you want decent GUI
performance with modern GUI apps like FireFox, ThunderBird, Opera, etc.

I haven't tried running a full Linux GUI desktop on really old x86 hardware,
but my gut instinct tells me you'd really need at _minimum_ a 200-300Mhz P6
class machine (anything Pentium Pro or later but no cacheless Celerons) with
at least 256MB RAM, preferably 384MB or more. A 200MHz Pentium Pro has
about 4 times the integer throughput and 6 times the floating point
throughput of a 133MHz 486 clone such as the AMD, Cyrix, or TI chips. And a
200MHz PPro isn't going to be super responsive with a modern Linux GUI
desktop either, though it wouldn't be as frustrating as your 486 class system.

If you can, get a newer system. If that's not a possibility, try to get
more memory for this one. Oh, and with only 128MB and no swap, I'd
definitely add some swap, at least 256MB, just to stave off the OOM killer.

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Stan


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From: Tech Geek on 5 Apr 2010 00:30
>You can try adding swap but I doubt it will help much as the disk is so old
and slow
The hard drive is quite recent and supports up to UDMA2 speeds although I
too think that adding swap space won't make a difference.

>Adding another 128MB or 256MB of memory would probably help the most with
that system
Unfortunately there is no option to upgrade the memory on the system. Also I
forgot to mention that it is a 800 MHz system:
debian:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : Vortex86 SoC
cpu family : 5
model : 2
model name : 05/02
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 800.041
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu tsc cx8
bogomips : 1600.08
clflush size : 32
cache_alignment : 32
address sizes : 32 bits physical, 32 bits virtual
power management:

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
From: Greg Madden on 5 Apr 2010 01:30
On Sunday 04 April 2010 08:28:53 pm Tech Geek wrote:
> >You can try adding swap but I doubt it will help much as the disk is so
> > old
>
> and slow
> The hard drive is quite recent and supports up to UDMA2 speeds although I
> too think that adding swap space won't make a difference.
>
> >Adding another 128MB or 256MB of memory would probably help the most with
>
> that system
> Unfortunately there is no option to upgrade the memory on the system. Also
> I forgot to mention that it is a 800 MHz system:
> debian:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo
> processor : 0
> vendor_id : Vortex86 SoC
> cpu family : 5
> model : 2
> model name : 05/02
> stepping : 2
> cpu MHz : 800.041
> fdiv_bug : no
> hlt_bug : no
> f00f_bug : no
> coma_bug : no
> fpu : yes
> fpu_exception : yes
> cpuid level : 1
> wp : yes
> flags : fpu tsc cx8
> bogomips : 1600.08
> clflush size : 32
> cache_alignment : 32
> address sizes : 32 bits physical, 32 bits virtual
> power management:
>
> 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

XFCE, Fluxbox, et. al. are a better way to do a gui system with specs like that
Don't install anything with 'Gnome' in the package name, or "K/KDE'. Apps that
use GTK libraries without the Gnome stuff maybe.

'Damn Small Linux' does minimal installs., which are hard to duplicate with more
mainstream distro's.
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Peace

Greg Madden


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