[luau] My Current Linux Needs

Charles Lockhart lockhart at jeans.ifa.hawaii.edu
Fri Jan 17 09:28:00 PST 2003


Sorry, I haven't been following the entire thread, but, for what it's 
worth, I got pretty good performance running RedHat 5.2 on my junky old 
75Mhz Pentium with 16MB of memory.  It wasn't blazing, but it worked 
fine for what I wanted.  I don't know what apps you were planning to 
use, and there may very well be some compatability problems with the 
newer apps and the older os, but if you can get by with those older 
apps, you're probably fine.

Honnestly, I remember the system did everything I needed back then 
pretty well, and probably would still do most of the things that I'd 
want to do now, ie. compile code and run it.  It wouldn't be flawless, I 
seem to remember having problems getting Java running, a few other 
problems, but I think it'd be a great way of learning Linux.  I 
sometimes think about loading 5.2 on my current machine just to see if 
it'd really blaze, but no time.

But, as long as the system's got a web browser, vi, and a compiler, what 
else do you really need?

-Charles

demon_jr808 wrote:
> To everyone that responded to my previous post, thanks!
>  
> This is a more specific version of my previous question, but I hope 
> everyone doesn't mind.
>  
> I wish to learn and become profecient in using Linux, but at the moment, 
> the only thing holding me back are my hardware requirements and what I 
> will actually be using the Linux system for.
>  
> I am looking to purchase a laptop, but being very, very, very, poor, I 
> can not afford anything close to a modern system. As a result, I have 
> been looking for refurbished laptops at the very low end of the scale, 
> ranging around $100 to $200. As a result, the only laptops I have been 
> able to find are very low end, ranging from 486 to Pentium 133 and with 
> ram ranging from 8 MB to 16 MB, along with hard drives that barely reach 
> 1-2 GB.
>  
>  From my past readings regarding Linux, I have read that Linux requires 
> very little in the way of hardware to run fast and smoothly. Many of my 
> readings at the time, indicated that a 486 system with 8 MB was more 
> than sufficient to run a Linux system. From what I have read, a system 
> that would appear slow in Windows 95, as a result of old and dated 
> hardware, would become amazingly fast in Linux. This being the case, I 
> believed that Linux would be an excellent choice of OS to install on an 
> old and dated laptop.
>  
> I will be using the system for mainly two tasks: as a learning ground 
> for Linux and web page design. I am just a newbie when it comes to web 
> page design, however I can code very simple pages using HTML, CSS, and a 
> very simple text editor, such as Notepad on Windows. This being the 
> case, for a Linux system, I would need a text editor similar to Notepad 
> along with browsers, such as IE or Netscape. I have used Pico a great 
> deal in the past, however that was only in the shell. Since I wish to 
> practice making web pages in a graphical environment, believe I will 
> have to use the Linux GUI.
>  
> In regards to the Linux GUI, I really have no idea what the difference 
> is between X, KDE, and Gnome. However, I have read that running these 
> "applications" increases the hardware requirements on the Linux system.
>  
> Now taking into account the above, what kind of system would you recommend?







More information about the LUAU mailing list