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lava420 02-27-2005 04:25 PM

Pentium 2 400 - will it handle linux
 
Hi all,

Thinking of scrapping off windows, because I'm sick of the sight of it.

Been working as a visual foxpro developer for the last 6 years or so, and i wouldn't mind having a go at a *bit* of linux development, plus it would be nice not to look at a windows system when I get home from work.

**when I say bit - I mean "hello world" - bit, might give me the taste to learn.

Been having a quick look round and that mandrake 10.1 seems to be the easiest to get started with, correct me if im wrong.

The problem I think is my machine, is it going to be able to cope ?

its a pentum2 400 with 256 ram with a 40 gig HD

got a 1 meg broadband cable internet connect (and it is fast!, too fast)

some old dell thing I scavenged from work when I burnt out my p3 800

Had a good look round on the web but cant find any minimum system requirements ?

Any help much appreciated.

Thanks.

:newbie: :study: :Pengy:

Tino27 02-27-2005 04:35 PM

The nice thing about Linux is that you can customize the various pieces (kernel, window manager, desktop) to suit your exact needs. While the kernel is designed to run on any computer, regardless of speed, in your case I would look at some of the "lighter" window managers/desktops. You may sacrifice some of the "eye candy" appeal of KDE or GNOME, but you can still build a fairly responsive setup. I'd look into FluxBox or XFCE. And if you're really looking minimal impact, check out Blackbox. I set up my aunt on a P2 350 Mhz running XFCE and while Fluxbox or Blackbox might be more responsive, it is too minimal for my aunt. XFCE fits in just perfectly.

titanium_geek 02-27-2005 04:45 PM

should. A P2 is not THAT old. ;)
if you have any hardware problems, I would look at your other stuff before the processor.

Mandrake 10.1 should be very easy to learn. It is a nice mix of newbie and advanced, and while the Slackware guys may laugh at me, I really like Mandrake (I'm running 10.0 community) I can still mess with stuff as I feel like it, but for most of the time it "just works" It has some annoying things that require fixing (like the 1st CD drive bug) which they might have fixed in 10.1, I don't know. But overall, a nice distro, I really like the install, it is very easy to understand.

have fun, and remember to keep using the forum to ask questions. :)

titanium_geek

chris318 02-27-2005 05:13 PM

I've run kde and gnome on a 500Mhz P II with no problem at all, with a cheap intergrated graphics card. It's really not that slow at all, much faster than you would think actually. Linux will be faster on your hardware than windows by the way. You don't need a top of the line comp to run linux, unlike windows.

piscikeeper 02-27-2005 05:16 PM

i'm running a p2-266,256mb of ram,3gb hdd........and libranet 2.8.1 --it'll run no problem.

amosf 02-27-2005 05:17 PM

I have mandrake 10.1 on P2 and p3 boxes (and less) with KDE. You may just need to trim some of the eyecandy if it looks sluggish. You have enough ram, which is a key issue....

synaptical 02-27-2005 05:27 PM

no problem.

Code:

jeff@moe:~ $ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor      : 0
vendor_id      : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model          : 3
model name      : Pentium II (Klamath)
stepping        : 4
cpu MHz        : 299.334
cache size      : 512 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug        : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu            : yes
fpu_exception  : yes
cpuid level    : 2
wp              : yes
flags          : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov mmx
bogomips        : 596.37

jeff@moe:~ $ uptime
 18:22:47 up 101 days,  1:59,  2 users,  load average:  0.20, 0.17, 0.16

:D

Basslord1124 02-27-2005 05:35 PM

Yes it'll run...I had Linux on a 266 machine before with maybe 190some megs of RAM...kinda slow but ran just fine.

Motown 02-27-2005 09:30 PM

Mandrake was a decent intro to linux, but it's way too buggy for consistent use. Also, I might offer up that a lot of the user-friendly distros are actually slower than windows. Granted, they are more powerfull, but don't expect spare cpu cycles to rain down from the sky or anything. You will notice that the guy above who said "no problem" is running either arch linux, slackware or debian on that system (sez so next to his name). All three are fairly slim, do-it-yourself distros. If (when) you get sick of the big distros, try one of the above.

amosf 02-27-2005 09:41 PM

I do, however, have mandrake 9.2 currently running on a pentium 200mmx clocked at 188mhz with 64meg ram.

This is tweaked and trimed a little, but IS running KDE in a useable manner, tho obviously not quickly. It is still a useful email and browser desktop for my sister...

BTW, mandrake seems to be hardware dependent and is stable on some systems and unstable on others (mainly 10.0 version). I tend to use a kernel.org kernel on my production MDK box as it makes it totally stable.

synaptical 02-27-2005 10:59 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Motown
Mandrake was a decent intro to linux, but it's way too buggy for consistent use. Also, I might offer up that a lot of the user-friendly distros are actually slower than windows. Granted, they are more powerfull, but don't expect spare cpu cycles to rain down from the sky or anything. You will notice that the guy above who said "no problem" is running either arch linux, slackware or debian on that system (sez so next to his name). All three are fairly slim, do-it-yourself distros. If (when) you get sick of the big distros, try one of the above.
yep, that's a good point. that box is debian, from a very minimal install with no X. when i had X on it, it also ran fine with icewm and then fluxbox, both of which were faster than any windows could be on that hardware. flux seems so light it's almost transparent, like running a plain console, only with gui apps. :D

floppywhopper 02-28-2005 12:19 AM

My wife is currently running a P II 450 with 256 Megs and Mandrake 10.0. its got a 64Meg video card though and that makes a big difference.

If your video is not too great then dont expect much out of KDE and graphics etc etc, put simply don't bother with "Tux Racer"

but otherwise shouldn't have too many problems, Open office will take a while to load etc ... that sort of thing.

hope this helps
live long and prosper
floppy

marco_certelli 02-28-2005 03:04 AM

Hi

I'm running mandrake 10.1 community on a pentium MMX 200Mhz with 96 MB Ram + 20GB HDD (seagate, UDMA/66).

KDE works fine. Just configure the window looking light enough (no fancy effects). Open Office is a problem. Koffice is lighter. GNOME is heavier than KDE.

On my PC (chipset i430TX), the 2.4.27 kernel is faster than 2.6.8. I think 2.6 does not configure the disk access in an optimal way (hdparm gives me 18 MB/s with 2.4 and 11 MB/s with 2.6).

The key point for running Linux with a desktop manger is: >64MB RAM + fast&new HDD (HDD should be UDMA/66 capable, even if the chipset can only handle UDMA/33).

Just to know, on my PC it takes from 6 seconds to open a simple window application (a terminal) up to 15/20 s to open a complex one (koffice). Once the applications are opened, they are usable at a reasonable speed.

Bye Bye, Marco.

amosf 02-28-2005 03:23 AM

The ram makes the difference, that's for sure. Mandrake 10.1/KDE goes well on a p2-350 with 256meg ram... Will even run OOo...

pendulum 02-28-2005 05:27 AM

I'm surprised how well my old computer with a Pentium 200Mhz and 64mb ram handles Slackware. I'd written it off as too slow to be any use and put it in the loft for 2 years, brought it out to install Slackware and it's perfectly fine for browsing and word processing. One thing I notice after using it for a couple of weeks is that it sometimes takes a while to load a program, but once it's loaded it's always nice and quick, it's easy you forget your using an old and supposedly slow computer. :)

I bought a 128mb stick of ram off ebay to see if it helps with the program loading times, it probably will make a difference.

amosf 02-28-2005 05:34 AM

Yep. Linux is great on the old machines. As I say, I have a nice desktop box here that is just a P188MMX with 64meg ram. Runs quite okay... The swapping slows it down at times, but 128 would be a big help.

DeusExLinux 02-28-2005 09:56 AM

as others have said, I agree.. It will run.

But, I wouldn't put mandy on there. I have a 2.8 ghz system and Mandrake ran a bit slower than windows while loading programs (Open Office took about twenty seconds to load!!!!!!! As opposed to word at about 3 in Windows).

I switched to simplyMepis, which is a Debian based wonder, good for newbs (or people who don't want to configure everything all the time). It comes with good support for most hardware. If you like Gnome, you might also want to take a look at Ubuntu, it's rock solid, and pretty quick.

Vector is designed for older computers, so you could def. want to take a look into that.

Ultimately, I would recommend Debian, or Gentoo (although Gentoo's installer is quite a pain, it optimizes the system for YOU, gives you an infinate amount of choice, bit is a pain to install....and it would take quite a few hours for you to complile the needed programs, like X and whatever windowmanager you decided to use ..... XFCE...... :) )

Basslord1124 02-28-2005 10:40 AM

Yeah I forgot to mention...don't expect to run Tux Racer on that machine. My friend ran it on his which was almost the same specs as yours and it was choppy as hell. I run Fedora on a 1.5GHz AMD Athlon w/ 256MB RAM with a 32MB Video card....it handles Tux Racer fine but I think my CPU usages stays 100% all the time if I play it. But for basic word processing, net surfing you should be fine.

Motown 02-28-2005 12:19 PM

I preffer abiword over oo or koffice. Much lighter, and simple.

amosf 02-28-2005 03:44 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by DeusExLinux

But, I wouldn't put mandy on there. I have a 2.8 ghz system and Mandrake ran a bit slower than windows while loading programs (Open Office took about twenty seconds to load!!!!!!! As opposed to word at about 3 in Windows).

Actually I've put Mandrak/KDEe on boxes right down to P150's and it runs fine with some gui tweaks to reduce load. Up til a few years ago my main desktop was a P120 :)

But you are comparing apples and artichokes here. OOo is known to be slow to load, so how can you possibly compare loading OOo in linux to loading MSO in windows??? How about comparing loading OOo in both...

Also, as I have said many times, It is likely the linux desktop is doing a LOT more - services, gui enhancements, virtual desktops etc. And also likely that the linux desktop you are using is a CURRENT OS while the windows desktop is 4 YEARS OLD.

Comparisons like this are meaningless.

DeusExLinux 02-28-2005 08:23 PM

So how about this one:
Same machine
Linux, same kernel version (with a few mods here and there)
Same version of Open Office
Different distro
12 seconds for Mepis, 20 for Mandrake.

yes, I am aware that there a lot of serivces and whatnot running in Mandy, and that you really can't compare one OS to another, but when using a comparable program, it's nice to know the loadtimes.

amosf 02-28-2005 08:31 PM

That's fine, as long as you are comparing apples to apples... Even if they are different varieties of apples... ie which is better. Granny smith or pink lady?

It comes down to what you want and need. With PC's as huge as they are now, more resources can be and are used for extra features, which is fine by me. The beauty of linux is you can use those resources as you wish. If you have limitted resources you can trim down the features or even use a totally different distro.

chris318 02-28-2005 08:41 PM

I have a 2.8 ghz system and Mandrake ran a bit slower than windows while loading programs (Open Office took about twenty seconds to load!!!!!!! As opposed to word at about 3 in Windows).

Yeah Mandrake is definetely not a fast distro for sure. However, Comparing Open Office loading to Word is completely unfair. You see microsoft cheats. When windows boots it preloads a lot of the dll's and .exe in memory, along with word. Which is why it takes so long to boot and why it chews up your memory, that could be better used for things that you are actually doing.

For instance, it loads explorer and all it's dll into memory at boot. If you use opera or firefox, windows still will load explorer and all it's dll's at every boot weather you like it or not. That memory is basically just lost because windows will never give it back. Then eventually when you run out of memory, which doesn't take long in windows it starts to cache out that stuff to disk( which is why you hear the disk chugging all the time in windows). Then when you close that big app you were using windows caches it back in. All in the name of getting explorer, which one may never use to load fast. Linux on the other hand does not do that shi*&. If you wanted too, you could tell. Then you can compare the two.

amosf 02-28-2005 08:53 PM

When comparing any distro it is also worth remembering that they both probably use the same kernel, the same libs and the same software. The only way for a distro to be slower than another, or use more ram or whatever, is for it to be doing more, running more stuff or have extra eyecandy or features... They are otherwise too much alike...

DeusExLinux 02-28-2005 08:57 PM

How does one cache a program in Linux? wasn't aware one could do that.. sounds pretty cool.

And also, amosf, you are 100% correct. it isn't fair to compare the two. :) Didn't mean to come across as a jerk or anything. I also didn't mean to come across as saying that Mandy sucks, beleive me, it doesn't. It's a great distro, with wonderful support. Utimately, I felt I like a Debian (based) system better, but, that's me. Linux is all about choice, why else would there be enough distro's where you could try one everyday for the next 2 years and never try the same one twice. :)

When it comes down to it, I use Linux because of A. The community (which is great), and B. The choices!!!. The stability is great, adn the security is a good thing too, but I really enjoy tinkering with my system, and streamlining it to the best of my ability (always reading and looking up new things).

So, once again, sorry if I came across as short. :)

amosf 02-28-2005 09:31 PM

I don't mind the comparison. The good thing is that we have the various distros and some are heavily loaded with features and slower while others are leaner and faster. I was just clarifying. I don't deny mandrake is on the slow side, but I use it as it has a lot of features and nice easy gui tools - even tho I don't mind CLI. I also compile generic kernels with mandrake as the mdk ones can be unstable on some hardware. Each distro has it's good and bad side and I only stick with mandrake due to being used to it after many years...

As you say, it's the CHOICE that's the important thing!


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