KDE and Harware Requirements?
 

I'm working on an old Pentium Pro 200 Mhz system with ~96 MB RAM (correct, not the box in my sig). I purposefully kept KDE out of the installation on this box, figuring there's no way it would run at a tolerable speed. Am I right, or can KDE deal with this dinosaur?

There are some useful hints on tweaking KDE for lower-end systems at Human Readable. I'm not sure if they will be of much help in your case, though.

KDE on a 200 MHz system
 

Probably not. I have an old eMachine with a 433 MHz Celeron processor and 192 Mb RAM. It barely runs KDE 3.4.2 (Slackware 10.2) at an acceptable speed, but runs XFCE 4.2 just fine. A 200 MHz system with half that much RAM probably won't run KDE at all.

Around 2 years ago (I think) I was able to run Slackware (version 9 maybe?) and KDE on a 486. I didn't use it for anything, I was just messing around. It ran, albeit slowly.

My guess is that the pentium pro will also run, but you need a lot of patience. Maybe a large swap space will help load more programs at once.

Remember, "running" is a personal opinion, and you should not expect a speed demon. But I wouldn't be surprised if you could surf the web and use Koffice etc.

Hey! That's me! :D

I run KDE on beloved older hardware, but your hardware specs might be pushing the tolerance envelope. Might.

In one of my boxes I have 256MB of RAM, I replaced the 233 MHz Pentium MMX with a 400 MHz K6-III+, and I use ATA-33 hard drives that use DMA. I also have a 350 MHz PII Deschutes box with the same hard drive specs and an early generation AGP video card. Neither box is a speedster but I am content using KDE on that hardware. My NT4 OS remains my speed champ, but I easily work with KDE on a daily basis. I'm looking forward to Slackware 11.0, so I can update to KDE 3.5.4, which is supposed to be faster than the 3.4.3 I am using. How much faster remains to be seen. ;)

With that said, about 10 days ago I ran a low memory test to see how Slackware 10.2 and KDE 3.4.3 would run. (I manually added the mem=16m kernel option at boot time.) Without X/KDE, Slackware ran just the same as always and I noticed no difference. I was able to start X/KDE with the 16 MB simulation, and by golly everything ran that I tested, but s-l-o-w was the name of the test. I tried with a simulation of 32 MB and things were a teeny bit faster, but not much.

A few days ago, in response to a similar thread, I simulated a 128 MB box and X/KDE started and initially ran just as though I still had 256 MB of RAM. However, I could experience an eventual slow down by running a half dozen apps concurrently.

So will KDE run on your hardware? Yes. Will you be happy? Don't know. If you prefer KDE as your GUI---and I certainly do---my first suggestion would be to bump the RAM to at least 128 MB. Next would be to ensure you have, minimally, ATA-33 hard drives with DMA. The Pentium might bite you, but if you essentially are a single-tasker---a person who opens and runs only one or two apps concurrently (discounting underlying OS services, etc.)---the Pentium could very well suffice. I still have my old Pentium MMX, but I don't have the energy to open my box to swap CPUs and provide you a more quantitative answer.

If you are building this box, say for your mom or pop, and they intend only to use email and browse a wee bit, or some similar use, consider installing KDE and seeing what twirls. Disabling the eye-candy will help, of course.

BTW, I do need to update that mini how-to with some additional specifics about KDE eye-candy. So feel free to ask away here. :)

I hope this helps.

My view is that realistically a Pentium 200Mz with 96Mg is inadequate to support a modern release of KDE (unless I suppose you are exceptionally patient :) As Woodsman mentioned, Yes, KDE will run on a box with those specs, but performance likely would be too slow compared to a modern PC to make it worthwhile. To use an analogy, it might be a little like asking "Can I download the ~3.8G DVD ISO image of <distro> with a 14.4 or 28.8 modem?" The answer is Yes, but the amount of time it takes could easily drive you to seek alternatives. The bottom line I think is that once you get accustomed to a PC operating at a certain speed, taking a step (or more) backwards is almost impossible to adjust to.

That said, if the box is otherwise in good working order, perhaps there are other uses it coud be put to, and that it would be really well suited for, eg a firewall, print server, etc. Good luck with it either way

xfce, windowmaker or fluxbox for that computer.
since you have more that 64 mb of ram, xfce might do nicely if you need a more "featurefull" environment.

Thank you all for your replies. I have decided to continue not including KDE, and going with XFCE for both of these boxes (they're twins).

As far as the application, yes, I could take out X itself and devote them to print servers, firewalls, etc., but that would negate the purpose I've destined them for, which is to supplement our office with some additional workstations, mainly used to interact with our prehistoric WANG based accounting system, and maintain our databases.

I think XFCe and probably Fluxbox would fly on such a system. Flux isn't that hard to learn. Just right click for the menu and you're away. It's one of the most easy-to-use WMs I've come across.

yep, fluxbox is nice and higly customizeable.
the menu is driven by a script, so if you add any programs to your system, you will have to add menu entries yourself. this is not hard at all.
just open the ~/.fluxbox/menu file with your favourite editor and look at the script and how it works. just follow the pattern!

xfce also doesn't add new programs to the menu by itself, but you have a more friendly gui driven menu-editor called xfce4-menueditor (surprise!). :)

Either a lie, or I'm having a human computer. I just put X-Chat on board and it popped to the XFCE menu without asking me a thing..

Btw. if you've got a low-end machine, why not just use console? Most new users disagree, and some of the olders too, but in the end computer is used the fastest when it's used via a keyboard. Mouse means a loss of time in almost every aspect; if you don't have to deal with pictures and/or videos as your work, consider using console more than you do now. I've been using computers for quite some time now, seen and tried, and nothing equals (or outruns) the speed of console.

It is true, though, that for some things an X server is "required", and on your hardware a light window manager or a desktop system is needed. XFCE is cool, good-looking even, but it has some minor problems. The same goes for Fluxbox (but hey, nothing's perfect anyway). In my opinion, if you're used to a Windows-like desktop, I'd chose rather XFCE than Fluxbox, you need to take your time and get used to it before you'll like to work with it every day (but when you do, you really do).

KDE, and Gnome too, are huge resource hogs..they're good if you've got a 10x4GHz multi-processor system with a few petabytes of ram lying around with no use..but if you'd like to spare the processing power for some work, get rid of them.

i'm sorry, but are you using slackware? or the same version of xfce that slackware uses?
do you have any extra xfce-plugins.....

KDE and Harware Requirements?

I don't think ANYTHING is fast enough to run KDE at an acceptable speed. My theory is that KDE codes mutates in real-time to eat whatever cpu cycles & ram you have, so it's going to knacker you no matter what. At least, that is my experience after running KDE on everything from a P150 to a 2.2GHz Athlon 64.

@soggycornflake: Yeah, I agree, in general. For my other system, I'm using GNOME. I'm not a KDE fan, really.

@b0uncer: I don't use X when I don't have to. But I won't be the only one using these workstations, and some of the uses do require X.

@easuter: I'm using XFCE right now. Fluxbox is actually more slick, IMO, but XFCE is more GNOME like, which will help some of the users (including myself) transition.

Also, does anyone know how to make the XFCE panel take up the whole width of the screen? I can get the taskbar to do it, but not the panel... :\

When participating in this forum I strive to remain polite, cordial, and respectful of the opinions of others, but the two statements above are false.

I run KDE on boxes that most people today would sneer at, yet KDE runs just fine.

KDE provides some fine software and just as important, provides a consistent environment in which that software runs. To any future visitors to this thread, please visit my web site as one person's testimony that KDE can indeed run on older hardware---and run just fine.

Are there hardware limits to running KDE? Yes, and as a daily KDE user I willingly agree. Based upon the hardware specs described, I suspect the OP in this thread might be frustrated with KDE, but that does not mean KDE needs a super-charged hardware to run.

If KDE is not your cup-of-tea, then I accept that decision. Each of us has our own perspective about how we want to use computers as tools and play things. But please stop circulating myths and propaganda. KDE runs just fine on older hardware. My boxes are living proof. :twocents: