Hi

So, wth is "extra' memory? I've been mucking around with a pair of Toshiba Portege PIII 600MHz laptops. Original mfr info states that upper RAM limit is 192MB (64MB on m/b + 128 in expansion slot). That puts these boxes into the bare minimum category for Etch (164MB to run, 192MB to install).

Being an optimist, I installed Etch Xfce4 just to see what would happen. Well, a look at processes on a basic desktop install shows that memory usage is up around 90% even in an idle state. It's a no-go.

Here's the rub. One of these boxes has a 256MB module in the expansion slot. I didn't expect Etch to recognize it because of the stated memory limit. However, I ran Puppy Linux and it recognized all 312MB during the liveCD boot and it ran like a greased weasel.

The chase Can I get Debian to address the memory above the machine's stated 192MB limit, as Puppy seems to do?

I'm a wee bit past the total noob stage, but not much, so please dumb it down as much as possible.

TIA

Ian G

You could try one of the installers at the link below with a newer kernel as I would image that the Puppy is using one or try editing your /boot/grub/menu.lst file and on the kernel boot line add mem=312M to it eg.

Change to.

Then you make sure that you select the kernel that you added the mem= too when you boot.

http://kmuto.jp/debian/d-i/

I'm kinda curious where you got those numbers, since I've installed Etch on a P133 MMX system that had 32MB RAM total. I think someone is pulling your leg.

I'm not going to try and claim my old systems won any performance records, far from it, but Etch did install and it did run with xfce.

Hi

I think I could be confusing Etch Xfce4 with Xubuntu requirements in this case - probably am, sorry bout dat. I've been shopping a lot of distros lately.

I copied this from the debian.org site - it's not specific to Xfce4, so I guess you should assume that it's for Gnome.

A Pentium 4, 1GHz system is the minimum recommended for a desktop systems.

Table 3.2. Recommended Minimum System Requirements

+-------------------------------------------------------+
|Install Type|RAM (minimal)|RAM (recommended)|Hard Drive|
|------------+-------------+-----------------+----------|
|No desktop |64 megabytes |256 megabytes |1 gigabyte|
|------------+-------------+-----------------+----------|
|With Desktop|64 megabytes |512 megabytes |5 gigabyte|
+-------------------------------------------------------+

To my homey here in Nova Scotia, I added the "mem=312M" to the entry for 2.6.18-5 (which "ships" with Etch) and had an immediate increase in performance... himem must have kicked in.

Not knowing when to leave well enough alone, I decided to upgrade the kernel, mostly to get kernel support for my Broadcom based wireless cards.

Compiling the new kernel kept my CPU working near 100% for a couple of hours or so, then the install failed

I think I'll have to take a look at unstable or (shudder) testing and see where they are kernel-wise.

That which does not fry my computer only serves to make me stronger (if more frustrated). I had never attempted a kernel upgrade before, so I managed to learn a thing or two.

Thanks everyone, I'll report back if I find a Debian solution that works for me.

Ian G

Try www.backports.org they have newer packages built for Etch that you can install you should be able to get newer kernel there.