How many arch users are on older hardware?

mcover · 2007-04-10 05:29:19

My main machine has an Athlon XP 2200+. That is, for me, pretty fast. Then I have a Laptop with PIII 800 (512 mb ram though). On both machines I'm running KDE and its pretty fast and responsive.

But well, in the near future I am going to install Arch on a Laptop with a PII 233 + 128mb ram. I am planning on using XFCE as my DE. I think Arch is perfect for use on such a machine. Arch is optimized for i686 and lightweight, which should give me the best results. I'll see how that works out.:rolleyes:

Husio · 2007-04-10 07:21:37

Actually I'm using only old PCs, but only my laptop with Arch (PIII 500, 200Mb ram).

babypuncher · 2007-04-10 10:36:03

[mike@ghettobawx ~]$ cat /proc/cpuinfo 
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 7
model name      : Pentium III (Katmai)
stepping        : 3
cpu MHz         : 448.887
cache size      : 512 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 2
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse up
bogomips        : 898.36

Hence the hostname

Running xfce4.

STiAT · 2007-04-10 10:48:13

I got such a very nice pII 250 mhz around here, with unbelieveable 196 MB ram. It runs arch, and it's one of my servers. Oh, of course, it runs fluxbox . I like forwarding my X using SSH .

My main machine(s) of course, 3 ghz amd64 (1 gig mem) waste-machine (don't know how often i formatted that one already ), core 2 duo notebook (1 gig mem), core 2 duo (2 gig mem) main machine.

Last edited by STiAT (2007-04-10 10:55:20)

wroot · 2007-04-10 10:51:38

For two years i was running Openfire (former Wildfire (former Jive Messenger)) IM server on PIII 500Mhz and 64MB of RAM old IBM desktop. Arch base install, cmd only, mc, ssh, iptables. I had xfce only at first, when first testing this IM server, now it's removed. This IM server is written in java, so jre is installed and you may suppose it was very sluggish. No. With userbase growing from 50 to 150 it was working pretty well. Sometimes there were freezes for a secs or minute, administration console was a bit slow. But in overall it was doing its job perfectly. My uptime record was 28 days. Now i've moved it to P4 with 256MB of RAM, same setup. And now it works as a lightning Though i have some problems with swap currently.

iphitus · 2007-04-10 12:16:22

main machine is my laptop, 1.4ghz pentium M.

mainly because it's small and portable. It rums dwm perfectly, and does everything it needs. It doesnt take much to run firefox, raggle, IM and gvim.

Any intensive or compilation work is done via ssh on my desktop machine, a pentium D 2.8ghz.

James

Last edited by iphitus (2007-04-10 12:21:13)

KerowynM · 2007-04-13 02:10:50

Athlon XP 1666Mhz 640MB RAM, GeForce 6200 256MB AGP

I most often use ratpoison, because I grew up with screen and it just feels right to me.

I load KDE for my wife tho, she doesn't even know what CLI means. I can log both of us in with Swiftfox loaded with tabs and running rtorrent in the background, in KDE both with panels full of garbage and hover at 353 MB used, and no swap, according to KDE's memory display applet (I'm looking at it now.) with just one logged in it's typically a cool 140 or so. Screensaver kicks in on the off terminal, which is why it goes so high. Annoying but if I'm doing any real work I head to runlevel 3 anyway

I fully agree with being closer to the hardware. To me all this GUI garbage gets in the way. Digging thru dialog after dialog to change a simple setting gives me fits. I'd rather hit -v or -f or -abcdefg.

crouse · 2007-04-13 04:47:28

I guess ALL my machines are on older hardware lol.

My Oldest .....

1- 500 mhz Compaq Armada laptop with 192 Mb's ram. Runs KDE. (Soon Fluxbox just to speed it up a bit)

Speed is definately bearable, and for $50 for the lappy, I couldn't resist

byte · 2007-04-13 10:18:30

My current Arch machines (soon to be more):

1) Slot1 P3-650 (6.5x133MHz -> 866MHz), 768MB ECC RAM, Abit BE6-II-rev2 board, ATI Radeon 32 SDR, SB Live, USB2/FW controller ... some hard drives and more stuff. Newest addition: LG GSA-H42L dvd burner.
Runs KDE, mostly.

2) Acer TravelMate 512T: Mobile Celeron 366MHz, 256MB RAM, 2.5MB Neomagic VGA chip, 12.1" TFT, 24x CD-ROM, 4.3GB harddisk.
Running (<- nice pun) Xfce.

byte · 2009-03-04 12:29:18

The Acer laptop above finally fell apart after 9 years, so now I'm the proud owner of a Compaq Armada E500:
P3-650, 512 MB RAM, 8 MB ATI Rage Mobility (Mach64), 14" TFT (1024x768), 8x DVD-ROM, 20GB HDD, WinModem/FastEthernet combo, Multibay floppy drive, 2nd battery (-> 8h idle runtime but ridicilously heavy)

Hrod beraht · 2009-03-04 14:38:58

Kenetixx wrote:

In older i mean around the p4 2gig era no HT.
As i see alot of arch users using light WM and light and fast apps, so i figure alot of users must be on older hardware, thus the need for less resource intense programs.

A 2 gig machine? That's crazy talk
My two machines are:
1. 850 MHz Pentium III, 256 MB RAM
2. 900 MHz Athlon, 512 MB RAM

And yes, I use a light wm (evilwm) and mostly light apps, but it's not because my hardware won't run something more, it's because I prefer the light stuff. I'd still run evilwm even if I had some new state-of-the-art machine. Although I keep holding off buying new hardware, because despite the age of my current machines, they honestly don't seem slow. Now if I only had FIOS internet access

Bob

andre.ramaciotti · 2009-03-04 14:51:01

I'm on a P3 with something around 700MHz and 320MB of RAM and I use XMonad, but it's because I really like tiling WMs.

I've just bought a core 2 duo notebook, I'm waiting for it do arrive, but I'll keep using XMonad.

Lux Perpetua · 2009-03-04 19:08:48

I have a T43p Thinkpad, with a 2 GHz Pentium IV typically forced to 800 MHz and 2 gigs of RAM. The graphics card is an ATI Mobility Firegl V3200 (basically an X600, I believe). It runs KDEmod 4 with no trouble; even with compositing enabled, it's quite responsive (except for the random display freezes, which are due to a bug in the driver and not directly the hardware's fault).

Regarding tiling WMs: I like the concept of tiling WMs, but I've yet to find one that I really like. Maybe it's just a matter of spending the time to configure one to my liking, though.

ebano · 2009-03-04 19:26:01

Until out/2008 i was using arch on a p2 300mhz with 128mb ram. I was using it as a router at my mom's house, but now she bought a real router. )

So far it was the only xp i had with arch on old specs.....

Zariel · 2009-03-04 21:01:24

I have an athlon 64 3200 with 1gb of ram as my main pc. Works well

cerbie · 2009-03-05 04:57:02

Thinkpad T20 P3 1.13, 384MB RAM, 4200 RPM 30GB HDD (if I start getting HDD thrashing, it's quicker to reboot and trust the FS journal than let it get done). One of these days I'll give it some RAM. It runs Openbox+XFCE, 'cause I'm too lazy to fully configure Openbox+stuff on it.

My E6750, 2.4GHz to 3.2GHz (it undervolts well with only minor underclocking), 7300GT video (Gigabyte passive), with 8GB RAM, 80GB 5400 RPM / and 750GB 5400 RPM /home, also gets the minimal treatment. It's not so much about performance.

Hmm, necromancy strikes again...

Last edited by cerbie (2009-03-05 05:00:03)

Inxsible · 2009-03-05 05:41:23

I run Arch on a 9 yr old Dell Latitude C810 --- P3 - 1.1GHz 256MB RAM, 30GB HDD.

I have no intentions of adding any new hardware to it. There are some issues like the battery just cannot hold more than 10 mins of charge and the CPU fan kicks up making a lot of noise at odd hours of night. I use Openbox and a couple other WMs on it. Will use Openbox even on a new machine- whenever I get it. Will let it run till it dies.

fumbles · 2009-03-05 07:15:27

This computer is the newer one, but I do run Arch on my laptop, PIII 500Mhz 128MB RAM 10GB hdd. Flux|Open|blackbox - yes, Xfce - yes with a umm, Gnome - no... I use slim, mainly because it looks pretty.

Kirurgs · 2009-03-05 08:24:25

I have the following:
1. Celeron 1.2, 128M RAM, 1Gb Flash card, integrated NIC, graphics + additional NIC in PCI, no gui, boots and runs from flash, that's my firewall/router
2. Athlon 2500XP, GF6600GT or Radeon 9600, 1.5G RAM, 250+160Gb HDD's, Gnome, that's my TV station, xvid/divx/avi player, file server, web surfing etc. machine
3. Celeron 333, 320Mb RAM, 4Gb HDD, GF2 MX400, Gnome (didn't want to complicate things for people), this one I brought to kindergarden for kids to watch cartoons, slow as hell, but movies on xv work kinda nice...

brazzmonkey · 2009-03-05 09:16:20

I recently upgraded an Athlon 750 to a Duron 1300. This computer has 768 Mb RAM and a 7200 rpm HD. XFCE is installed and even though it's my daughter's computer, my girlfriend likes to use it because it's snappy and very fast to boot.
I also have a Celeron 600 + 64 Mb RAM which is used as a print server. But no GUI here.

droog · 2009-03-05 09:46:51

Kirurgs wrote:

I have the following:
2. Athlon 2500XP, GF6600GT or Radeon 9600, 1.5G RAM, 250+160Gb HDD's, Gnome, that's my TV station, xvid/divx/avi player, file server, web surfing etc. machine
movies on xv work kinda nice...

i have almost exactly the same as yours
desktop, 2500xp. 6600gt, 2g ram 250+80+80 hdd.
and 2 broken laptops

cywhale · 2009-03-05 17:30:07

1)Portable: Acer Travelmate C110 TabletPC, 1Ghz Celeron ULV (no fan ), 10.4", 1,5Gb RAM, Intel GMA945 - perfectly running with Arch Linux/Gnome (including tablet functionalities).

2)Portable but heavy: Thinkpad A31p 2Ghz Pentium4 mobile, 1.5Gb RAM, ATI FireGL7800 64Mb, 15" 1600x1200 (love it) - old but beautiful. Running Arch Linux/Gnome there are just two minor problems:

- Suspend/resume sometimes (1 of ~4) results in garbled screen, HAL-quirks and "vbetool post" do not work (using radeon driver, EXA)
- Xorg/radeon seems to be quite slow (redrawing desktop, windows, resizing,...) compared to old WindowsXP. Could not find a solution for this...

Last edited by cywhale (2009-03-05 17:33:33)

toxygen · 2009-03-06 02:38:18

my 2ndary computer (file server/music player) is an nforce2 based motherboard with athlon xp 2500 (should be 3200+ but the cpu is bad, but it runs well at lower clock). running kdemod3 on it. main reason for having it is the nforce soundstorm live dolby digital encoding

Fingel · 2009-03-06 02:57:04

I think a lot of Arch users, myself included, like to squeeze as much power out of their machines no matter if they have 512mb of ram or 6gb. I have a 2gz dual core with 2gb of ram and I run AwesomeWM with as many console apps as possible. Not because I cant run gnome or KDE, but because I dont want to.

JazzplayerL9 · 2009-03-06 06:35:40

I'm running a PIII 500MHz, ~300mb ram IBM ThinkPad 600X CLI only with arch (my pride and joy), a VIA Artigo 1GHz, 1gb ram server with ubuntu (arch kept working and then not working depending on the update and networking was a nightmare), a Celeron 2ghz, 512mb ram Dell D610 with arch, an Eee PC 901 with arch, a Pentium Dual Core 2ghz, 4gb ram desktop with arch, a P4 2.66ghz, 1gb ram desktop with ubuntu, and a P4-mobile Toshiba Satellite A75-S213 with WinXP. So yeah...each has it's use and each one gets used. The newest one I have, I still don't see much difference in what I do other than I can have a window pop up a couple seconds faster or finish an analysis just a little quicker. Old computers ROCK!

To tell the truth, the P4 3GHz XP machine and the PIII 500MHz Arch are about the same sluggish response despite the CPU in the XP machine being 6 times the clock speed of the latter.

Last edited by JazzplayerL9 (2009-03-06 06:37:17)

Arch Linux

#26 2007-04-10 05:29:19

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#27 2007-04-10 07:21:37

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#28 2007-04-10 10:36:03

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#29 2007-04-10 10:48:13

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#30 2007-04-10 10:51:38

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#31 2007-04-10 12:16:22

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#32 2007-04-13 02:10:50

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#33 2007-04-13 04:47:28

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#34 2007-04-13 10:18:30

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#35 2009-03-04 12:29:18

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#36 2009-03-04 14:38:58

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#37 2009-03-04 14:51:01

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#38 2009-03-04 19:08:48

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#39 2009-03-04 19:26:01

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#40 2009-03-04 21:01:24

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#41 2009-03-05 04:57:02

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#42 2009-03-05 05:41:23

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#43 2009-03-05 07:15:27

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#44 2009-03-05 08:24:25

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#45 2009-03-05 09:16:20

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#46 2009-03-05 09:46:51

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#47 2009-03-05 17:30:07

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#48 2009-03-06 02:38:18

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#49 2009-03-06 02:57:04

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

#50 2009-03-06 06:35:40

Re: How many arch users are on older hardware?

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