Re: OTish: Which version of Linux for PC?
- From: Michael Shell <news1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2005 05:07:54 -0400
On Mon, 1 Aug 2005 18:30:40 +0100
Marc Cooper <spamfree@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I have a 'spare' PC (PIII 800) and I am contemplating trying Linux for
> the first time. (This is not completely OT, since other than
> exploration/education, I plan to use it for TeX.)
One comment that I'd like to add is that you have to watch out for the
minimal system requirements of the major distributions. IMHO, a major
mistake was made when they started requiring 256MB+ just for a graphical
interface. As far as I am concerned, that is just absurd and hurt Linux's
market with respect to older machines.
For example, see:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=7324
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/10/1246219&tid=166&tid=189&tid=106
Because of this, I decided to stop using the overbloated GNOME desktop,
etc., and just went with the simple, fast and clean ICE Window manager:
http://www.icewm.org/
and saved a ton of RAM and got a good speed-up too. Doing this, a 64MB
400MHZ K6-2 runs just fine - although RAM is a bit tight with only 64MB
when opening a number of GUI applications - upgrading to 256MB was well
worth the trouble/cost.
The Gentoo distribution builds everything from source and thus gives you
more control:
http://www.gentoo.org/
and is (supposedly) much easier to install than doing the whole thing
from scratch (which is a lot of work and for experts only) a la
"Linux from Scratch":
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
Also, because they build from source, these two distros/approaches
offer the very latest cutting edge versions of the applications - though
it usually takes longer to install due to the needed compilation step.
The above said, unless you are quite knowledgeable, I'd start with a
major distro like Red Hat or Suse, etc. Just be prepared to turn
off unneeded "junk" and use applications which are less bloated to lighten
the system load on your older machine. The great (and bad ;) thing about
Linux is that you have so many choices.
Cheers,
Mike Shell
.
- References:
- OTish: Which version of Linux for PC?
- From: Marc Cooper
- OTish: Which version of Linux for PC?
- Prev by Date: Re: A tricky basic-TeX-programming conundrum.
- Next by Date: Re: Can I use options in the tex-source?
- Previous by thread: Re: OTish: Which version of Linux for PC?
- Next by thread: xdvi doesn't show footer
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
