Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Vlad Dogaru <ddvlad@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Suggestions for a minimalistic system
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 10:50:37
Message-Id: bf0e048a0701200245y2db7150dn5e571ebd93915f80@mail.gmail.com
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] Suggestions for a minimalistic system by Uwe Thiem
1 On 1/20/07, Uwe Thiem <uwix@××××.na> wrote:
2 > On 19 January 2007 23:46, Vlad Dogaru wrote:
3 > > On 1/19/07, b.n. <brullonulla@×××××.com> wrote:
4 >
5 > > > Buy a couple spare RAM modules. Surely I agree with your will to build a
6 > > > minimalistic system, this will help anyway and it's a nice experience,
7 > > > but RAM is quite cheap and is the magic elisir that allows outdated
8 > > > machines to be still usable -the CPU is rarely a problem, unless you
9 > > > often do something quite computationally intensive.
10 > >
11 > > I have 384 megs of RAM and no imediate possibility of buying more. I
12 > > realise it is arguably sufficient for many lightweight applications, but,
13 > > as I mentioned, it is becoming increasingly frustrating, even with the real
14 > > power of Gentoo and Fluxbox (the two have changed my life -- literally).
15 >
16 > This is odd.My main workstation also has 384MB of ram. I run a full KDE
17 > session and do not experience any slow down. Right now, I have open: 9
18 > konqueror windows (not tabs), kmail, kmahjongg, konsole with 3 sessions,
19 > noatun, kcalc. My background is a 1024x768 photo which also takes some
20 > memory. Switching between virtual desktops is instantaneous, all apps are
21 > very responsive.
22
23 My current Fluxbox session uses 26% of 384 MiB of RAM, with 6 firefox
24 tabs, Gaim, Eterm, Conky, mpd and other mostly insignificant
25 processes. But I still experience a serious drop in responsiveness
26 when opening, say, 3 Slashdot tabs at once, or when starting
27 linuxdcpp.
28 > One good thing (among others) of using a real desktop environment is that all
29 > apps share the vast majority of libraries which are loaded into memory just
30 > once. When you mix environments or use an eclectic collection of unrelated
31 > apps, they all draw in different libraries and memory usage goes up.
32
33 I've tried to keep most things down to GTK and X. For instance, I
34 haven't even installed qt.
35 --
36 How's my English? How about my Netiquette?
37 Do mail me if something is wrong with my behaviour. Thank you.
38 --
39 gentoo-user@g.o mailing list