Re: [CentOS] Low-memory Centos5?

2008-05-30 Thread Lanny Marcus
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. 

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[CentOS] Low-memory Centos5?

2008-05-29 Thread Jeffrey B. Layton

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

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Re: [CentOS] Low-memory Centos5?

2008-05-29 Thread D Steward
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.

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Re: [CentOS] Low-memory Centos5?

2008-05-29 Thread Anne Wilson
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



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Re: [CentOS] Low-memory Centos5?

2008-05-29 Thread Wojtek Pilorz
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 was
No 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

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Re: [CentOS] Low-memory Centos5?

2008-05-29 Thread Max Hetrick
-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


- --
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iD8DBQFIPqC3IXSX/6LmsXkRAvKHAKCG/j/xu+CLGw2Yrttki3zEKZgfMACfauEA
7DexMfRU0Wf7dE/KVeZGcjk=
=MbcR
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Re: [CentOS] Low-memory Centos5?

2008-05-29 Thread Anne Wilson
On Thursday 29 May 2008 13:22:15 Wojtek Pilorz wrote:
  I'd also like it to work with the existing wireless

  card (Dlink DWL-G650). Any thoughts or recommendations?

 No idea here.

I'm fairly sure I've seen a how-to for that, so it's worth googling.  I may 
have a printout with a url, but I can't look just now.

Anne


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Re: [CentOS] Low-memory Centos5?

2008-05-29 Thread Robert Moskowitz

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.



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Re: [CentOS] Low-memory Centos5?

2008-05-29 Thread Ned Slider

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.



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Re: [CentOS] Low-memory Centos5?

2008-05-29 Thread Wojtek Pilorz
On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 02:12:38PM +0100, Ned Slider wrote:
 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,
[...]
 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.
If no additional repositories are selected during installation,
384MB should be OK with graphical.
If you want to be sure, run it over vnc
(needs specifying vnc vncpassword=a_password when starting installer)
(and keep in mind vnc is unencrypted protocol;

Graphical installer tends to be more complete than text in later RedHat systems.


BTW. I am using CentOS 4.6 with KDE on P4 with 128MB RAM.
 Perhaps not stellar performance, but quite usable.
(And I do not run OpenOffice and firefox at the same time...)

Good luck,

Wojtek.
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RE: [CentOS] Low-memory Centos5?

2008-05-29 Thread [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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?


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Re: [CentOS] Low-memory Centos5?

2008-05-29 Thread Bob Taylor
On Thu, 2008-05-29 at 14:12 +0100, Ned Slider wrote:
 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?

 
 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.

I have been running FC 3 and now CentOS 5.1 on an old Gateway 2000 with
only 256MB RAM. Both installed with GUI. Only some editing of services.
I have 1 Gig of swap. I currently have 1 instance of emacs, Evolution,
CDDBSlave2, Firefox 2.0.0.12 and 2 Gnome terminals plus a whole lot of
services running most of which I *hope* I don't need. Screen refresh is
slow but not too much. The machine starts to *really* slow down after
about 15% swap. All I do is logout. Oh, this is my only computer. If
anyone wants to tell me to buy a new one, please send me the money.
Otherwise keep your silence. :-)

Bob
-- 
Bob Taylor

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Re: [CentOS] Low-memory Centos5?

2008-05-29 Thread MHR
On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 4:31 AM, Jeffrey B. Layton [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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
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