On Sat, 2003-06-28 at 21:15, Robert L Cochran wrote: > I see from the release notes for Red Hat 9 that the minimum CPU is a > Pentium class and the minumum memory is 64 Mb, rock bottom. > My question is, what is the lowest-end system that one can get > realistically decent graphics performance from with Red Hat 9? Including > internetting and office management tasks? A Pentium 90? Pentium 66? How > low can I go before the hardware chokes the OS performance-wise? I ran a P-166/64MB with RH8. Out-of-the-box, it was very slow doing anything in X (1024x768, 16bpp). I was not happy with it (but that unhappiness ultimately led to a new machine :-) ). The only way I could get reasonable performance was to change window-managers. First, I tried the very-minimalist one that was included (twm???). Later, I installed and tried iceWM. Now, I was happy with iceWM: the machine seemed snappy and responsive. I never tried it with office-type apps, but browsing (Galeon was my choice, after watching system-resource-consumption with alternatives) was fine. I also used a number of ham-radio applications, and they too were fine (but not graphically-intensive). So, my bottom-line suggestion is that X and in particular the WM will dictate largely how satisfied you will be. Out-of-the-box, I don't think RH9 is very usable on the low-end Pentium stuff you're suggesting, for the apps you're considering. My $0.02, -Gord -- Gordon Pritchard, P.Eng. | Institute of Electrical and Research Labs Manager | Electronics Engineers Simon Fraser University, Surrey | Quarter Century Wireless Ass'n gordonp@xxxxxx | Telephone Pioneers of America phone: 604.268.7509 | Amateur Radio: VA7SFU, VA7GP
