Howto install GNOME v 1.4 ?

Mindaugas · 2004-04-03 11:54:19

Hi, my brother have pc Pentium II 266Mhz 64 RAM
He curently using windows98.
And he wants to use archlinux with gnome 1.4 or something like that.
XFCE going too slowly. ICEWM blaxbox wmaker is not good for newbie he think.

What do you recomend for him?

Mindaugas

skoal · 2004-04-03 13:57:06

Mindaugas wrote:

Hi, my brother have pc Pentium II 266Mhz 64 RAM
He curently using windows98.
And he wants to use archlinux with gnome 1.4 or something like that.
XFCE going too slowly. ICEWM blaxbox wmaker is not good for newbie he think.
What do you recomend for him?
Mindaugas

Personally, I don't think any desktop environment like Gnome or KDE would be appropriate for that type of machine, but although I do not use KDE (and prefer Gnome), I think KDE would be an easier transition for him than Gnome.

If he's got the hard drive space, put KDE on there and give it a shot. The nice thing about AL's package management system is that you can easily remove the KDE stuff and try another DE if you want.

* Outside of that, I found that ICEWM was the fastest window manager I ever used. I never ran a DE like Gnome or KDE when I was using ICEWM exclusively, and I had all types of gizmos like a clock, file manager gui, etc. that I added on. If you have the time, you can configure ICEWM with all types of gizmos and apps, and I think you would have better performance with his system than running a DE.

Mindaugas · 2004-04-04 10:09:23

skoal, thanks for answer.
He starts using windowmaker, its working, but it seems RAM is needed, becouse HDD is working and working

M.

Bjørn · 2004-04-04 12:55:07

Well, with only 64 MB of RAM, I guess that'll be the case whatever WM you are using. Not using X at all would help...

I'm using GNOME and am running several services, a bit more than 100 processes at any time. It's quite stable on using ~250 MB of memory, and an additional ~250 MB of cache. I've got swap disabled, I hate that and 512 MB should be enough for anything I'm doing.

skoal · 2004-04-08 07:54:29

Mindaugas wrote:

He starts using windowmaker, its working, but it seems RAM is needed, becouse HDD is working and working...

By the way, a few years ago I had a similiar computer as your friends with only 64 MB. I had no problems running Gnome 1.4. 64 MB should be enough for atleast a window manager. When I had 32 MB of RAM on that same machine, then I had the same drive swapping problems you mention.

* If the hard drive keeps swapping (like it seems), maybe you need to free up some memory being used. One of the first things I changed when I installed AL was removing the "tmpfs" filesystem, mounted on /tmp. I just commented out the line in `/etc/fstab' as shown below:

none                   /dev/shm      tmpfs     defaults            0      0
#tmpfs                  /tmp          tmpfs     defaults            0      0
sysfs                  /sys          sysfs     defaults            0      0

You can see the difference it made with my memory usage below:

* The "<" entries are BEFORE, and the ">" are AFTER the change (by removing tmpfs).

< MemFree:        230792 kB
< Buffers:         76420 kB
< Cached:         264632 kB
< SwapCached:       4864 kB
< Active:         308196 kB
< Inactive:       121872 kB
---
> MemFree:        604764 kB
> Buffers:         10524 kB
> Cached:          86988 kB
> SwapCached:          0 kB
> Active:          85660 kB
> Inactive:        57744 kB

< LowFree:        230792 kB
---

> LowFree:        604764 kB

< SwapFree:       485944 kB
< Dirty:              24 kB
---
> SwapFree:       506036 kB
> Dirty:              68 kB

< Mapped:         120344 kB
< Slab:           100828 kB
< Committed_AS:   133760 kB
< PageTables:        880 kB
---
> Mapped:          68092 kB
> Slab:            14304 kB
> Committed_AS:    59668 kB
> PageTables:        752 kB

* I have 768 MB total, of which, only 87 MB is currently being used. And, that's running Gnome 2.6 with several applets running in background, plus my browser (firefox). When I remove all applets and disable Nautilus, Gnome 2.6 runs safely at ~60 MB. However, when I launch XMMS, firefox, or even a terminal, my memory usage shoots over 64 MB. I can't believe just running a window manager only, like ICEWM, FLUXBOX, or FVWM will keep your hard drive spinning like that. I can see that happening with Gnome or KDE though.

I'm not exactly sure of the relation between X, window managers, and DE's and how they manage memory. How memory resources get used and managed is not my field of experience. So, you may want to give it a shot and see if that helps.

forest76 · 2004-05-25 09:49:55

Mindaugas wrote:

Hi, my brother have pc Pentium II 266Mhz 64 RAM
He curently using windows98.
And he wants to use archlinux with gnome 1.4 or something like that.
XFCE going too slowly. ICEWM blaxbox wmaker is not good for newbie he think.
What do you recomend for him?
Mindaugas

I was the same problem. Try my Gnome 1.2 Arch packages
(Gnome 1.4 in progress) from:
http://www.republika.pl/forest_76/pakiety.tar.bz2
First install db1 and db2 packages (sorry, I don't prepare
right dependency check yet)

zeppelin · 2004-05-25 11:29:25

IceWM and Win98 look very the same.. try IceWM then

Arch Linux

#1 2004-04-03 11:54:19

Howto install GNOME v 1.4 ?

#2 2004-04-03 13:57:06

Re: Howto install GNOME v 1.4 ?

#3 2004-04-04 10:09:23

Re: Howto install GNOME v 1.4 ?

#4 2004-04-04 12:55:07

Re: Howto install GNOME v 1.4 ?

#5 2004-04-08 07:54:29

Re: Howto install GNOME v 1.4 ?

#6 2004-05-25 09:49:55

Re: Howto install GNOME v 1.4 ?

#7 2004-05-25 11:29:25

Re: Howto install GNOME v 1.4 ?

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