On Sun, Nov 30, 2003 at 08:02:50PM -0600, Jim Taylor wrote:
> I live in a rural area and am getting people interested in Linux. We're
> thinking of starting up a Linux club, and I'd like to know of the
> experiences of others in sizing a system to run Fedora -- that is, the
> LOW END starter system suitable for a start-up Linux club.
>
>[snip]
>
> I have a used PC available for this purpose, but it has only 64MB RAM
> and will barely boot the install CD in graphics mode, and it is VERY
> SLOW, slow enough to discourage people from giving Linux a try.
Yeah, it seems that the most critical issue is the amount of memory,
especially running XFree86 + GNOME or KDE. I have an old Celeron 500 MHz,
10 GB disk, integrated (i810) audio and video, and the only thing I
had to do to get it running FC1 quite useably was upgrading the memory
to 192 MB (from 64 MB). (In fact the root partition is only about
4 GB, albeit a little stripped down.) I think you need at least
128 MB of RAM to run GNOME or KDE without significant swapping.
(Probably more now, since I was running RH 7.0 when I last checked.)
I have noticed that the Intel onboard graphics (i81x) do have some
trouble running some of the GL programs in the latest xscreensaver
(they can't load textures large enough or something) so if you want
decent 3D graphics you might want to think about a slightly better
videocard but otherwise what you've got should work great.
--
Matt
Matthew Zimmerman
Interdisciplinary Biophysics, University of Virginia
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~mdz4c/
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