On Mon, 2003-11-24 at 22:02, Elton Woo wrote: > ... er, did you *read* the Release Notes on Fedora Core? Didn't the author of said notes complain recently to this list that they were terrible? I happened to read through them however I'm stubborn and I don't believe everything I read. ;-) > The following information represents the minimum hardware requirements > necessary to successfully install Fedora Core 1: > ... > # Recommended for text-mode: 200 MHz Pentium-class or better > # Recommended for graphical: 400 MHz Pentium II or better > ... > Memory: > * Minimum for text-mode: 64MB > * Minimum for graphical: 192MB > * Recommended for graphical: 256MB I'd recommend a 3 GHz CPU with 2 GB RAM if I was making that list. ;-) The minimal _required_ system depends on how much you want to play around with the installed packages. Fedora runs very well (under GNOME) even on a Pentium 75 with 64MB RAM once you disable and remove all the software and services that are not required. I think 32MB RAM would even be fine. Nautilus, Gnumeric, Evolution, Abiword, GIMP (1.3), etc are all quite speedy. I didn't dare try OpenOffice, though. I'm sure there are other bloated applications which won't run well on such an ancient machine. Maybe, just maybe, Fedora could benefit from a "minimal desktop" installation option which is truly minimal and offers truly minimal hardware requirements. The current "minimal" install is pretty bloated compared to most other distros. I had to install "minimal" and remove a ton of stuff. Then manually install X, RHGB, and GNOME. Now I have a system that rivals Windows 98 in performance (on the same hardware) and comes with loads of useful software. I whittled Fedora's 3 CD set down to a single 325 MB bootable CD installation image. I'm still stumbling my way through getting Anaconda working with my custom comps.xml file but I think I'm close. Once the minimal system is installed it can utilize the full 3 CD set or repositories to install any other software that's required. And better, by pressing F10 at the login screen all of those 'sub-minimal' P75 machines can graphically login (via XDMCP) to a few of those 'recommended' 3 GHz machines and fully utilize all 3 CDs of software and the faster CPU. More importantly, for some people, the machines can still be used completely standalone. Why such a stripped installation when P75 machines aren't common these days? Well, because they are extremely common these days...in dumpsters and warehouses and closets and schools. These ancient Pentium systems are being donated by the thousands to schools and non-profits who can't even afford computers let alone proprietary software to use on them. Sure, they can get the machines preloaded with Windows 95 or 98 but then what? Then they have a calculator and notepad. If they manage to get any proprietary software donated to them it's usually nowhere near enough to (legally) install on all machines. So they'll end up with the "Word computer" and the "Paint computer" and so on instead of a heterogeneous environment. -- David Norris http://www.webaugur.com/dave/ ICQ - 412039 -- David Norris http://www.webaugur.com/dave/ ICQ - 412039
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