I was feeling masochistic last night so I tried an install on a machine with 32MB of ram. What a disaster. It depends on the speed of the processor but I would not install FC1 on a machine with less than 256MB of ram, and I don't care what the requirements say.
You cannot make generalizations like that about Linux and not expect to get shot down for it, since they simply *are not true*. It just depends on matching the software to the hardware to the user. You were trying to load a GUI, a graphical browser, and office apps on 32MB of RAM... please find *ANY* operating system released within the last five years which will run on that hardware and then come back to complain.
For example: I have 8 servers now running Fedora Core 1 on Pentium/166 chips, with 32MB of RAM, and 1GB hard drives. The smallest network has three clients and the largest has about 30 clients. In all cases, the server provides firewall/masquerading/gateway services, DHCP, DNS, NTP, printer sharing with CUPS, and master browser/Netbios name resolution service via Samba (no actual file sharing). Two or three of these servers will also soon provide VPN connectivity to branch offices. Very useful boxes, these... very successful implementation of the most up-to-date Linux distro around on ancient and obsolete hardware.
Why does it work? Text mode (runlevel 3), minimal installs, all unnecessary cruft removed, all possible services shut down save what is truly necessary (kudzu, gpm, and others are shut down too), tight configuration, and... most importantly... requirements which make sense.
You can make an excellent operating system, but it won't work miracles. Expecting a 2004 operating system with a full load of applications, including Evolution, Mozilla, and OpenOffice, to run on 1994 hardware is just silly. That OS, and those applications, have been built and tuned for what users require today, and most of those users have much faster processors, better graphics adapters, more RAM, etc. and thus want more features, more simultaneous tasks, and more eye candy.
Match the requirements to the hardware, and Fedora Core will do you right. Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.
-- Rodolfo J. Paiz rpaiz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.simpaticus.com
