Re: Minimum specs, "funky" defaults, and old machinery

[Vladimir Vukicevic <vladimir ximian com>]

On 11 Mar 2001 18:14:46 +0000, Telsa Gwynne wrote:
> Just for reference: three takes: 
> 
> 1: Eazel do indeed have a FAQ which includes minimum installation 
> requirements and recommendations: 
> 
>    For a machine running Nautilus, we recommend an x86 (Intel or
>    compatible) processor, 32MB RAM (64MB preferred), 60MB hard disk space
>    (500MB during build), Red Hat 6.2, GNOME 1.2, Mozilla-4.0-M18-4. GNOME
>    requires 300MB; Mozilla requires 30MB.
> 
> (Off http://support.linuxcare.com/knowledgebase/eazel?faq -- the
> 'real' url is one of those two-line impossible-to-paste ones :))
> 
> 2: My RH 7.0 boxed set suggests a minimum of x68 with 32megs RAM and
> half a gig of hard disk: for a full workstation (which is what
> GNOME comes on), it thinks pentium-class or better with 64 megs RAM
> and 1.2gigs hard drive. That's for GNOME plus all the other things
> a workstation would need. So GNOME shouldn't be needing all of that.
> 
> 3: We (Alan and I) put together a machine for my sister's birthday with a 
> pentium (II?), 64 megs and lots of disk space and I'm now wondering whether 
> she'll have to upgrade it almost immediately 1.4 is out. That machine was
> specifically for learning Linux-with-Gnome on it. 


The Eazel recommendations sound mostly sane to me, especially the "64MB
preferred" part -- I'd probably list it as "64MB preferred (32MB
minimum)" instead of the other way around.  I'm confused about the hard
disk space section; is it saying that 60MB is a minimum for GNOME?  Or
300MB?  Or is that to build?  I'm not exactly sure what the minimum hard
disk usages are...

As far as memory goes, mozilla is probably going to be the worst culprit
-- it tends to suck up a lot of memory.  Using the GtkHTML component
instead of Mozilla within Nautilus would probably help quite a bit with
the memory requirement there.  I run (and develop) on a laptop with
392MB memory -- I had to upgrade from 256MB because mozilla tends to
start out with sucking in 15-20MB and eventually ends up with about 70MB
as the cap.  When I was running my hacked antialiased version, it was
upwards of 120MB (probably due to various leaks, but still...)

So, I guess my overall suggested "comfortable" requirements for usage
are Pentium II-class or better, 64MB RAM, 100-200-300MB (not sure how
much? 200MB for a basic install?) free disk space (for GNOME only),
1024x768 or higher display resolution, 16-bit (or better) preferred.
The memory/disk numbers change for development, I would guess double as
minimums...

My $0.02.


    - Vlad