Re: Debian install for beginners?
Brian Nelson wrote: Simon Hepburn [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Brian Nelson wrote: Those old (FX chipset?) motherboards only have a cacheable area of 64MB, so using more than 64MB can actually reduce performance, though I think this effect would be less significant on Linux. That would be the TX chipset. I dont think that the FX,VX Chipsets had this limitation. All the triton boards except the HX had a cacheable limit of 64MB. The problem with these chipsets in their day was that linux 2.2 had pretty simple memory management - it just loaded as high as possible, regardless of whether the memory was cacheable or not. Does anyone know what the state of play is with 2.4 ? Is the memory management smart enough to always use cached ram in preference to uncached ram? -- Simon Hepburn.
Re: Debian install for beginners?
Simon Hepburn [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Brian Nelson wrote: Simon Hepburn [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Brian Nelson wrote: Those old (FX chipset?) motherboards only have a cacheable area of 64MB, so using more than 64MB can actually reduce performance, though I think this effect would be less significant on Linux. That would be the TX chipset. I dont think that the FX,VX Chipsets had this limitation. All the triton boards except the HX had a cacheable limit of 64MB. The problem with these chipsets in their day was that linux 2.2 had pretty simple memory management - it just loaded as high as possible, regardless of whether the memory was cacheable or not. Does anyone know what the state of play is with 2.4 ? Is the memory management smart enough to always use cached ram in preference to uncached ram? Actually, it was closer to the 1.2 and 2.0 era kernels. IIRC, Win9x had the largest performance degradations when using more than 64MB ram (10-20%). The degradation on Winnt and Linux was less pronounced (5-10%). I'm not sure how 2.2 or 2.4 kernels would compare. -- Brian Nelson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian install for beginners?
#include hallo.h Simon Hepburn wrote on Fri Mar 08, 2002 um 08:53:50PM: this effect would be less significant on Linux. That would be the TX chipset. I dont think that the FX,VX Chipsets had this limitation. You err. FX, VX and TX had this limitation, and HX could work with small TAG-RAM (64meg cacheable area) or big TAG-RAM (512meg CA). Many mainboard developers did not use the big TAG-RAM though, because of costs. Gruss/Regards, Eduard. -- Q: How does a spoilt rich girl change a light bulb? A: She says, Daddy, I want a new apartment.
Re: Debian install for beginners?
On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 02:57:58PM +, Karl E. Jorgensen wrote: - Icewm - not gnome. (it seems lightweight) Alternatives welcome. Try fluxbox. It is fast and light. I particularly like its tabbed window arrangement. For a file manager, use rox. If your friend is comfortable with a text interface, emelfm should be very good. - Mail client - sylpheed? (there was a discussion on debian-user about this recently. I need to read up on that) Why not mutt? - Gnumeric - Abiword: I think staroffice will be too much for the machine. Any alternatives? Should be good. - Browser? Will mozilla be too heavyweight? I like mozilla myself... Try galeon. - FreeAmp xmms could be choice. Again, mp3blaster in an xterm would suck less. I'd like to install gtcd as well (part of the gnome-media package), so they can turn CDs into MP3s, but that will pull in most of the gnome libraries. You do not need gtcd to rip cd's. Install cdparanoia and lame (unofficial package). That should do the trick without pulling in the gnome libs. Regards, -- Sridhar M.A.mas at uomphysics dot net A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation. -- H.H. Munro, Saki
Re: Debian install for beginners?
On Fri, 8 Mar 2002 14:57:58 + Karl E. Jorgensen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Has anybody else had experience with setting up a Debian GNU/Linux box for friends who wants to get started with computers? If so then I'd appreciate your comments/input. I plan to use: - Debian GNU/Linux (off course!) install minimal potato, set up apt to point to woody (with preferences for security updates from potato). I've most most packages in my apt-proxy cache anyway. - hand-rolled 2.4.17 kernel Basically a kernel-package job, probably with tmpfs for /tmp and /var/run - XFree 4.1.0 - xdm (anything small will do) - Icewm - not gnome. (it seems lightweight) Alternatives welcome. - Mail client - sylpheed? (there was a discussion on debian-user about this recently. I need to read up on that) - Gnumeric - Abiword: I think staroffice will be too much for the machine. Any alternatives? - Browser? Will mozilla be too heavyweight? I like mozilla myself... - Any progs/applets available for controlling pppd? - Some games That's probably what they will mostly use the machine for. ace-of-penguins looks nice. gotta have tetris too. Ideas? - Gimp - FreeAmp - mgetty so I can dial in if needed. Should also be usable for fax. You have basically described my laptop setup. Except for the following differences: GQmpeg instead of FreeAmp. gqmpeg uses mpg123/mpg321 to actually play music. It's small, it's light, it's themeable beyond recognition(way more so than XMMS, though I believe FreeAmp is about on-par here). Galeon instead of Mozilla. Okay, I actually use Netscape 4.xx on my laptop :) But it's only got 32M of memory, while you have 64M. Given the environment you're looking to run, I would suggest you give Galeon with tabs a go. There's a fair bit of overhead in creating new windows, and if you take the time to learn how to use the tabs to your advantage(say, maybe a week of normal browsing without using anything *but* tabs), they'll probably grow to like 'em. I use WDM instead of XDM. No big difference. I use Sylpheed as well. I strongly recommend it in this case with not much in the way of CPU power. Sylpheed is, if not *the* fastest, one of the fastest MUAs out there. (Yeah. And this is despite the fact that it's not a console-based client. Just goes to show that it doesn't mean it's fast if it's text :) I don't use pppd, but I *do* use gkrellm. It's got lots of blikenlights, your friends may like having it on their desktop for the cool factor. It also has what's called a Timer button or net button or somesuch. Configure gkrellm to monitor ppp0; if it's up and they hit the button, it executes one command. If it's down and they hit the button, it executes a different command. KDE stuff should run reasonably well on this machine, if you don't have much else running when you use it. So, for instance, you could probably use KOffice as the office suite. I agree that Open Office is probably too large. Obviously the bottleneck on this machine is the CPU. Stuff like Open Office, Mozilla, and fancy mail clients are really gonna bog it down. But the alternatives are great :) -- \ David B. Harris, Systems administrator | http://www.terrabox.com / / [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://eelf.ddts.net \ \==/ / Clan Barclay motto: Aut agere, aut mori. (Either action, or death.) \ pgp2O6UJvUM0N.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian install for beginners?
On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 09:27:47PM +0530, Sridhar M.A. wrote: On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 02:57:58PM +, Karl E. Jorgensen wrote: - Icewm - not gnome. (it seems lightweight) Alternatives welcome. Try fluxbox. It is fast and light. I particularly like its tabbed window arrangement. Hadn't heard of that one. I'll study that. For a file manager, use rox. If your friend is comfortable with a text interface, emelfm should be very good. Which package is rox in? An apt-cache search turns up lots of proxies and the roxen challenger webserver, but nothing that looks like a file manager. packages.debian.org doesn't seem to know either. - Mail client - sylpheed? (there was a discussion on debian-user about this recently. I need to read up on that) Why not mutt? I love mutt. But I don't think it will be suitable for somebody who wants to learn to use computers - especially unattended. I suspect that mutt will be too daunting. [[snip]] - Browser? Will mozilla be too heavyweight? I like mozilla myself... Try galeon. I've avoided it so far, but it might just do for this one. Time to study again. [[snip]] You do not need gtcd to rip cd's. Install cdparanoia and lame (unofficial package). That should do the trick without pulling in the gnome libs. Is there a GUI for that? So far I've been running gtcd + cdparanoia + blade myself, with gtcd providing the GUI. Regards, -- Sridhar M.A.mas at uomphysics dot net Thank you - quite a few things for me to look into. -- Karl E. Jørgensen [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.karl.jorgensen.com Today's fortune: Between infinite and short there is a big difference. -- G.H. Gonnet pgpkALBHyPIIY.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian install for beginners?
Karl E. Jorgensen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [snip] Hardware: - Motherboard. Carbon-16 didn't work, so it must be old. - 133 MHz Pentium (probably MMX) Probably not. I believe 166 MHz was the slowest Pentium-MMX chip. - 64 Mb memory - no free memory slots :-( Those old (FX chipset?) motherboards only have a cacheable area of 64MB, so using more than 64MB can actually reduce performance, though I think this effect would be less significant on Linux. - 3 Gb IDE disk - should be enough - ATAPI CD-Rom drive - 3.5 floopy (two of them actually!) - 3com Etherlink III ISA (they won't need it, but handy while setting the box up) - Modem (not sure what type, but not a winmodem. Easy) - Creative SB 16 Pnp - S3Virge PCI(325) video card The box is a salvage-job. My budget for all of this is non-existent. I even managed to salvage an old monitor and keyboard (without the Windows key!). Unfortunately I will have to go over budget when it comes to getting a mouse though... -- Brian Nelson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian install for beginners?
On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 11:05:29AM -0800, Brian Nelson wrote: Karl E. Jorgensen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [snip] Hardware: - Motherboard. Carbon-16 didn't work, so it must be old. - 133 MHz Pentium (probably MMX) Probably not. I believe 166 MHz was the slowest Pentium-MMX chip. There were 133 Mhz Pentium-MMX chips, I have one. :-) $ cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 5 model : 4 model name : Pentium MMX stepping: 3 cpu MHz : 132.633 fdiv_bug: no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug: yes coma_bug: no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 mmx bogomips: 264.60
Re: Debian install for beginners?
You do not need gtcd to rip cd's. Install cdparanoia and lame (unofficial package). That should do the trick without pulling in the gnome libs. Is there a GUI for that? So far I've been running gtcd + cdparanoia + blade myself, with gtcd providing the GUI. grip, tends to do a good job and is but gtk+. works well, and does cddb, is configurable in nearly every concievable way too. It can use many different encoders and rippers, including cdparanoia and blade. It also grabs stuff from freecddb so that you don't have to type in all those tracknames! Hope that helps, Brett Parker pgpBtouAlH7bs.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian install for beginners?
Brian Nelson wrote: Those old (FX chipset?) motherboards only have a cacheable area of 64MB, so using more than 64MB can actually reduce performance, though I think this effect would be less significant on Linux. That would be the TX chipset. I dont think that the FX,VX Chipsets had this limitation. -- Simon Hepburn.
Re: Debian install for beginners?
On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 08:42:43AM -0800, Karl E. Jorgensen wrote: On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 09:27:47PM +0530, Sridhar M.A. wrote: On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 02:57:58PM +, Karl E. Jorgensen wrote: - Mail client - sylpheed? (there was a discussion on debian-user about this recently. I need to read up on that) Why not mutt? I love mutt. But I don't think it will be suitable for somebody who wants to learn to use computers - especially unattended. I suspect that mutt will be too daunting. Nah. It's fine. -- Share and Enjoy.
Re: Debian install for beginners?
On Fri, 8 Mar 2002 21:27:47 +0530 Sridhar M.A. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Try fluxbox. It is fast and light. I particularly like its tabbed window arrangement. I have this one installed. Somehow I don't know how the tabs work. Are they just fancy decorations? Are they anything like Galeon's or Opera's tabs?
Re: Debian install for beginners?
On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 11:05:29AM -0800, Brian Nelson wrote: Karl E. Jorgensen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [snip] Hardware: - Motherboard. Carbon-16 didn't work, so it must be old. - 133 MHz Pentium (probably MMX) Probably not. I believe 166 MHz was the slowest Pentium-MMX chip. I realise now that I mislead you (I really should have had the box next to me when I wrote the mail). It's an old Dell Dimension XPS M166s (I assume that the 166 refers to CPU clock frequency, so I was wrong about the 133Mhz). And the case as a couple of pesky stickers: Intel Inside - Pentium MMX processor (not II or III or IV), as well as the mandatory Designed for GuessWhat 95. The most serious problem with the box seems to be: - The plastic bit of the power button has broken off. For now I have to press it with a screwdriver (!). I guess if it locks up, I'll have to get a locksmith! - The BIOS battery has given up the ghost. At every reboot the settings get reset. Along with date and time :-( A replacement was easily obtainable from BQ (yep: they sell 3V lithium batteries!) - 64 Mb memory - no free memory slots :-( Those old (FX chipset?) motherboards only have a cacheable area of 64MB, so using more than 64MB can actually reduce performance, though I think this effect would be less significant on Linux. Don't know which chipset is in it, but I'll take your word for it. Not too much of an issue since I cannot put more memory in anyway. I'll just have to be careful in the choice of applications. -- Karl E. Jørgensen [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.karl.jorgensen.com One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond where the shadows lie. -- The Silicon Valley Tarot Henrique Holschuh pgpGV47fhlfXI.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian install for beginners?
James Mayer [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 11:05:29AM -0800, Brian Nelson wrote: Karl E. Jorgensen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [snip] Hardware: - Motherboard. Carbon-16 didn't work, so it must be old. - 133 MHz Pentium (probably MMX) Probably not. I believe 166 MHz was the slowest Pentium-MMX chip. There were 133 Mhz Pentium-MMX chips, I have one. :-) $ cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 5 model : 4 model name : Pentium MMX stepping: 3 cpu MHz : 132.633 fdiv_bug: no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug: yes coma_bug: no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 mmx bogomips: 264.60 Weird. Is it a laptop CPU? or underclocked? -- Brian Nelson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian install for beginners?
Simon Hepburn [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Brian Nelson wrote: Those old (FX chipset?) motherboards only have a cacheable area of 64MB, so using more than 64MB can actually reduce performance, though I think this effect would be less significant on Linux. That would be the TX chipset. I dont think that the FX,VX Chipsets had this limitation. All the triton boards except the HX had a cacheable limit of 64MB. -- Brian Nelson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian install for beginners?
Weird. Is it a laptop CPU? or underclocked? Laptop CPU. Intel's developer documentation agrees with you, though regarding the desktops... -- Excellent day for putting Slinkies on an escalator.
Re: Debian install for beginners?
On Sat, Mar 09, 2002 at 06:18:20AM +0800, csj wrote: I have this one installed. Somehow I don't know how the tabs work. Are they just fancy decorations? Are they anything like Galeon's or Opera's tabs? Let me elaborate. Under Fluxbox - Configuration, Enable Sloppy Window Grouping. I also found setting Click to Focus. Sloppy focus irritates me. If you have three button mouse (you can get the behaviour of the middle button by pressing the two simultaneously), press and hold the middle button on the tab of a window, drag it on and drop on the title bar on another window. Now, both of them are of same size and tabbed. As an additional benefit, you can switch between them using alt+tab as in icewm. The dropped window is resized to the size of the window on which it was dropped. Regards, -- Sridhar M.A.mas at uomphysics dot net Conscience doth make cowards of us all. -- Shakespeare
Re: Debian install for beginners?
On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 04:42:43PM +, Karl E. Jorgensen wrote: For a file manager, use rox. If your friend is comfortable with a text interface, emelfm should be very good. Which package is rox in? An apt-cache search turns up lots of proxies and the roxen challenger webserver, but nothing that looks like a file manager. packages.debian.org doesn't seem to know either. No. You cannot find it in official debian repository. Go to http://rox.sourceforge.net and download the debs from there. You do not need gtcd to rip cd's. Install cdparanoia and lame (unofficial package). That should do the trick without pulling in the gnome libs. Is there a GUI for that? So far I've been running gtcd + cdparanoia + blade myself, with gtcd providing the GUI. Grip does provide a gui for cdparanoia + lame. Lame cannot be distributed by debian. Get the debs from http://marillat.free.fr/dists/stable/main/binary-i386/ I avoided mentioning grip because the question was to have a light system. Using cdparanoia and lame is trivial. Lame is _supposed_ to be a better encoder than blade. I was using blade earlier, switched over to lame. It is much faster. Regards, -- Sridhar M.A.mas at uomphysics dot net While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.
Re: Debian install for beginners?
Karl E. Jorgensen, Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 02:57:58PM +: Hi Has anybody else had experience with setting up a Debian GNU/Linux box for friends who wants to get started with computers? If so then I'd appreciate your comments/input. Have done this as well for family. It really saves time on maintenance. I plan to use: - Debian GNU/Linux (off course!) install minimal potato, set up apt to point to woody (with preferences for security updates from potato). I've most most packages in my apt-proxy cache anyway. I don't think potato security updates apply to woody systems. - hand-rolled 2.4.17 kernel Basically a kernel-package job, probably with tmpfs for /tmp and /var/run Don't forget autofs! You'll need that to automagically mount floppies and cdroms. Very useful tool and easy to configure. - XFree 4.1.0 - xdm (anything small will do) - Icewm - not gnome. (it seems lightweight) Alternatives welcome. - Mail client - sylpheed? (there was a discussion on debian-user about this recently. I need to read up on that) mozilla-mail? Works ok. - Gnumeric - Abiword: I think staroffice will be too much for the machine. Any alternatives? - Browser? Will mozilla be too heavyweight? I like mozilla myself... I like mozilla as well. - Any progs/applets available for controlling pppd? I think there are some in gnome-applets. - Some games That's probably what they will mostly use the machine for. ace-of-penguins looks nice. gotta have tetris too. Ideas? gnome-games. - Gimp try gthumb or gqview to browse images. eeyes is a good simple image viewer. - FreeAmp xmms. - mgetty so I can dial in if needed. Should also be usable for fax. I'd like to install gtcd as well (part of the gnome-media package), so they can turn CDs into MP3s, but that will pull in most of the gnome libraries. I fear that the memory usage may cause the machine to collapse. Somebody else must have done this before - any ideas/concerns will be appreciated. Note that you can also install yahoo messenger or aim. Agsatellite is also available, although you have to tie it to some buttons on the panel. I used gnome and elightenment and made it look like to the win32 that had died on the same box. The only trouble I am having is finding a graphical file manager that can open files in SO when clicked (gmc can't) or works well with autofs (nautilus doesn't). Other than that, the only real issue is managing fonts - the fonts always seem to get screwy after an upgrade. Haven't figured out why. Also, remember that most people don't like really high resolutions. 1024x768 or less should be ok. g -- Brought to you by Debian 3.0 Linux took 2.4.16 #1 SMP Sat Jan 5 12:52:24 EST 2002 i686 unknown pgpFaYnfo82kI.pgp Description: PGP signature
