Good morning, I've inherited an old laptop from my wife that I'd like to use when I travel (it's fairly small with a 12" screen). The bad part is that it is maxed out on memory with 384MB. Has anyone played with using Centos5 on systems with little memory? Ideally, I don't need too much - Firefox, Openoffice, a little Perl/Python/C here and there. I was thinking about using either XFCE or Icewm as the window manager. I'd also like it to work with the existing wireless card (Dlink DWL-G650). Any thoughts or recommendations? TIA! Jeff
IMO, CentOS is not a good choice for old hardware with small amounts of ram, esp since the apps you want to use (Fx2 and OoO) are notorious for being profligate with ram. If no-one here can point you to a Redhat-based distro with modest requirements, you could check out Zenwalk, which uses XFCE. It is a slackware-based distro and is famous for including only one app for each task and running like the blazes on old hardware. It is not a cutdown semi-useable distro like DSl and puppy.
On Thursday 29 May 2008 12:31:17 Jeffrey B. Layton wrote:> Good morning, > > I've inherited an old laptop from my wife that I'd like to > use when I travel (it's fairly small with a 12" screen). The > bad part is that it is maxed out on memory with 384MB. > Has anyone played with using Centos5 on systems with > little memory? Ideally, I don't need too much - Firefox, > Openoffice, a little Perl/Python/C here and there. I was > thinking about using either XFCE or Icewm as the window > manager. I'd also like it to work with the existing wireless > card (Dlink DWL-G650). Any thoughts or recommendations? >For a time I ran FC6 on a laptop with only 256MB RAM, and I ran kde! It was slow, yes, but quite usable as long as I did one thing at a time. Considering the similarity between FC6 and CentOS5 I would think you'd be OK, using it with care. ISTR that Firefox occasionally caused runaway cpu, but I doubt if the same problem exists in the current CentOS version. Anne -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20080529/851e0adf/attachment-0005.sig>
On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 07:31:17AM -0400, Jeffrey B. Layton wrote:> Good morning, > > I've inherited an old laptop from my wife that I'd like to > use when I travel (it's fairly small with a 12" screen). The > bad part is that it is maxed out on memory with 384MB. > Has anyone played with using Centos5 on systems with > little memory? Ideally, I don't need too much - Firefox,I was running FedoraCore6 (very close to CentOS5) on a P4 box with 256MB of RAM, using KDE. OpenOffice (word, calc) was usable once it started, startup was rather slow. yum update was painful, I had to run it from text mode sometimes. With 384MB and IceWM or XFCE you should be OK (although I am not sure if Firefox and OpenOffice at the same time will be possible ...) One problem with old firefox is that it is (said to be) leaking memory so restarting it every few hours of so might be useful. I seem to remember that opera was advertised as being less memory hungry than firefox.> Openoffice, a little Perl/Python/C here and there. I wasNo eclipse, of course.> thinking about using either XFCE or Icewm as the window > manager. I'd also like it to work with the existing wireless > card (Dlink DWL-G650). Any thoughts or recommendations?No idea here.>Good luck, Wojtek
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Jeffrey B. Layton wrote:> I've inherited an old laptop from my wife that I'd like to > use when I travel (it's fairly small with a 12" screen). The > bad part is that it is maxed out on memory with 384MB. > Has anyone played with using Centos5 on systems with > little memory? Ideally, I don't need too much - Firefox, > Openoffice, a little Perl/Python/C here and there. I was > thinking about using either XFCE or Icewm as the window > manager. I'd also like it to work with the existing wireless > card (Dlink DWL-G650). Any thoughts or recommendations?If you don't have to have a Red Hat based distro for this installation, perhaps look at DSL. http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ You can do an installation to hard drive and it takes very little resources. It's Debian based, not my preference, but perfect for these types of situations. It's supposed to run on memory as low as 128Mb and still be fast. As far as your wireless, from what I read you have to use the ndiswrapper to get cards to work under it, configuring it with wlanconfig. I've never done it. Anyways, hope this helps. Not that I like suggesting non CentOS products, but it's a suggestion. Regards, Max - -- # find . "*imbecile" -exec sed -ie "s/stupidity/commonsense/g" '{}' \; -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFIPqC3IXSX/6LmsXkRAvKHAKCG/j/xu+CLGw2Yrttki3zEKZgfMACfauEA 7DexMfRU0Wf7dE/KVeZGcjk=MbcR -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Jeffrey B. Layton wrote:> Good morning, > > I've inherited an old laptop from my wife that I'd like to > use when I travel (it's fairly small with a 12" screen). The > bad part is that it is maxed out on memory with 384MB. > Has anyone played with using Centos5 on systems with > little memory? Ideally, I don't need too much - Firefox, > Openoffice, a little Perl/Python/C here and there. I was > thinking about using either XFCE or Icewm as the window > manager. I'd also like it to work with the existing wireless > card (Dlink DWL-G650). Any thoughts or recommendations?I have a number of 256Mb Centos installs here with Gnome. I shut off as many services as possible, and it runs. I made the swap partition (Yes I manually create a separate swap partition instead of running it in LVM) at least 512Mb if not more. Firefox 1.5 works fine. Watch yourself with OpenOffice, don't have too much running. One trick I do with Centos servers running with only 256Mb, is run VNCserver and then from my notebook access with Gnome. This works great, only a one line change in the vnc files to have Gnome as your GUI on the server.
Jeffrey B. Layton wrote:> Good morning, > > I've inherited an old laptop from my wife that I'd like to > use when I travel (it's fairly small with a 12" screen). The > bad part is that it is maxed out on memory with 384MB. > Has anyone played with using Centos5 on systems with > little memory? Ideally, I don't need too much - Firefox, > Openoffice, a little Perl/Python/C here and there. I was > thinking about using either XFCE or Icewm as the window > manager. I'd also like it to work with the existing wireless > card (Dlink DWL-G650). Any thoughts or recommendations? > > TIA! > > Jeff >As others have said, you should be fine with 384MB RAM. One thing to note - I think the graphical installer requires 512MB to run (check the release notes) so you would need to perform a text mode install. Do a fairly minimal install and add whatever you want afterwards with YUM.
Jeffrey B. Layton <> scribbled on Thursday, May 29, 2008 1:31 PM: I use CentOS 5.1 with 256M RAM (incl X, Gnome, Firefox etc and the proprietary Nvidia 3D gfx drivers. Yes I know it's overkill, but it's so much nicer and easier to move around stuff using a file manager instead of doing it on the CLI) in a web server scenario (single family site with lots of pics). Works very well and I haven't had any problems, except for that yum maxes out the CPU (Amd Duron/750) occasionally. This is a stationary computer, and an old one at that. Portables however have a history of being slower generally (especially older ones), so you might want to inform us on what other hw you have in yours. XFCE is nice, fast and slick. Good choice. You might want to shut down most daemons you don't have a need for. I've been running CentOS 5 on a P3/500 with 256M as well (It's a Best Okechobee). Works fine, but some hardware might need some tweaking. I run X, Gnome, Firefox and OpenOffice et all on this one. CentOS even found my obscure noname USB-to-Ethernet adapter too! This machine runs fine and I haven't run into anything strange or difficult to resolve. Life is good. HTH.> I've inherited an old laptop from my wife that I'd like to > use when I travel (it's fairly small with a 12" screen). The > bad part is that it is maxed out on memory with 384MB. > Has anyone played with using Centos5 on systems with > little memory? Ideally, I don't need too much - Firefox, > Openoffice, a little Perl/Python/C here and there. I was > thinking about using either XFCE or Icewm as the window > manager. I'd also like it to work with the existing wireless > card (Dlink DWL-G650). Any thoughts or recommendations?-------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature Size: 5118 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20080529/91cea634/attachment-0005.bin>
On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 4:31 AM, Jeffrey B. Layton <laytonjb at charter.net> wrote:> Good morning, > > I've inherited an old laptop from my wife that I'd like to > use when I travel (it's fairly small with a 12" screen). The > bad part is that it is maxed out on memory with 384MB. > Has anyone played with using Centos5 on systems with > little memory? Ideally, I don't need too much - Firefox, > Openoffice, a little Perl/Python/C here and there. I was > thinking about using either XFCE or Icewm as the window > manager. I'd also like it to work with the existing wireless > card (Dlink DWL-G650). Any thoughts or recommendations? >I have an old Toshiba Tecra laptop with a P3 running 600MHz and 256MB of memory. I installed CentOS 5.1 with the graphical installer, and it runs GNOME fairly well. It's slow (compared to my main desktop, but that's an AMD 64x2 4200+ with 4GB of memory), but I expect that with an older, slower CPU like this (as opposed to a molasses crawl /old/ CPU :-). I use OOo 2.4 on it, and that is also slow, but it runs, and I always use the command line interface whenever I can, but that's 'cuz I'm more comfortable there, and it works nicely all around. YMMV mhr
On Thu, 2008-05-29 at 07:31 -0400, Jeffrey B. Layton wrote:> I've inherited an old laptop from my wife that I'd like to > use when I travel (it's fairly small with a 12" screen). The > bad part is that it is maxed out on memory with 384MB. > Has anyone played with using Centos5 on systems with > little memory?We have CentOS 5 running on one Desktop with 384 MB of RAM. Our other 2 Desktops have 512 MB. It runs OK. I doubt that you running it on a Laptop with 384 MB would be any different. Obviously, it will run more slowly, but, it_will_run. I have installed GNOME/KDE and a LOT of stuff, on all 3 boxes and the box with 384 MB does not seem to have any issues.