Which Edition for very OLD hardware?

[pokemoncatdog]

Hi,

I first like to start by saying I will not be using kde or GNOME (To mush RAM needed)

My desktop is very old it had win2000 on it and then winXP. but winXP did not ran good. I have Linux Mint GNOME on my other 2 newer PCs. IF this was kde vs GNOME only, I would always go GNOME!

The hardware in this old pc is:
CPU: Pentium III 800MHz (x86)
RAM: 512MB
HDD: 17GB
VIDEO: on-board 32MB video ram
(Thats all I know about this old hardware.)

Fluxbox, Xfce, OR LXDE

Which Edition is most like GNOME and/or will ran the fastest on this hardware?
Which do you like best and Why?

[gychang]

think general consensus should be fluxbox...

gychang

[pokemoncatdog]

think general consensus should be fluxbox...

gychang

After testing in Vbox. I think I going to "X" fluxbox off the list. I don't like how the "start menu" works and how right click on the desktop is.

Now for LXDE or Xfce I could go ether way. What's faster? What makes one better then the other?

[Pierre]

CPU: Pentium III 800MHz (x86)
RAM: 512MB

gee:- that's almost modern

Very Old, for me would be less than 256Mb, maybe even 128Mb

Eg:- this box is running 512Mb, but has a 1700Mhz cpu.

[Aging Technogeek]

Xfce is more like Gnome than LXDE, but LXDE is lighter and will run faster on almost any hardware. It is easier to learn and use than Fluxbox, but almost as fast and easy on system resources.

LXDE, in my experience, uses less than 100 MB of ram when idle (typically on my systems 85-95 MB) and only 125-150 MB with Firefox and one other app open.

I have LXDE installed on a desktop, a laptop, and a netbook and have had no problems in any installation.

[axel668]

Think we can rule out KDE edition ...

Otherwise, there's always a tradeoff between "gnomishness" and resource usage, here's my personal list:

- Mint (100% Gnome, highest resource usage, slowest)
- XFCE
- LXDE
- Fluxbox (Not much like Gnome, least resource usage, fastest)

Think it would be best to try top down, even standard Mint might run OK on a machine with 512M RAM
(will leave you about 200M for browser or openoffice), just turn desktop effects off.

Personally, I have XFCE running on a last year's low end Notebook, and I'm very happy with it,
can do everything a desktop should do, while leaving out most of the clutter.

[Joylove]

think general consensus should be fluxbox...

gychang

After testing in Vbox. I think I going to "X" fluxbox off the list. I don't like how the "start menu" works and how right click on the desktop is.

Now for LXDE or Xfce I could go ether way. What's faster? What makes one better then the other?

Actually I'd recommend using a dock for Fluxbox if you hate the rightclick root menu. Although finding a low-resource AND attractive dock is quite difficult, you can try tweaking XFCE or LXDE's panel into one.

Personally found XFCE has the best balance vs performance when compared to using Main Ed/Gnome & Fluxbox.


Linux Mint 9 LXDE + XFCE Desktop Environment (for it's built-in Window Composting feature) with Cairo Dock and Tint2 Panel
vs
Linux Mint 9 XFCE with XFCE4 Panel & Tint2 Panel

Both installed on a system with only 512mb ram (minus 8mb for the onboard GPU) and a 1.5Ghz Celeron M.

[Inoki]

So you suggest the best would be Fluxbox? Does it install the same as normal Mint? My current setup with Mint 9 eats my CPU sometimes 100% that's why I would need the lightest distro there is. My config is Celeron D 3,06 GHz, 2 GB DDR RAM, nVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT 512 MB and Mint 9 consumes 100% CPU at times. And, is Fluxbox able to run Win games via Wine normally?

[Joylove]

So you suggest the best would be Fluxbox? Does it install the same as normal Mint? My current setup with Mint 9 eats my CPU sometimes 100% that's why I would need the lightest distro there is. My config is Celeron D 3,06 GHz, 2 GB DDR RAM, nVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT 512 MB and Mint 9 consumes 100% CPU at times. And, is Fluxbox able to run Win games via Wine normally?

You have a good spec'd machine and I'd believe Linux Mint 9 Main Edition or KDE would suffice for your system unless you plan on lowering RAM consumption by using XFCE/LXDE/Fluxbox.

You may need to tweak your wine via winetricks to be able to run somegames (basically winetricks is quite similar to Synaptic Package Manager except it download and install windows related patches (eg: I can't run Irfanview unless I use winetricks to install MFC42.dll)

Also I found that 100% cpu consumption to be quite suspicious. You may want to try throttling the processor down (used to install a Gnome applet that lowers another laptop's CPU from 1.6Ghz to 800Mhz). In addition you may want to look into existing bugs related to that problem

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/other- ... -mint.html

Have you installed Nvidia Graphics Driver through Hardware Drivers option in Administrative Menu?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1404979

[hinto]

I think it would be faster to throw it off the cliff;)
PC's are really dirt cheap these days. You can even get a P4 at Goodwill, Salvation Army or some other Thrift.


(I say that, but I keep holding out for a Linux distro for my Palm m515)

-Hinto

[Inoki]

So you suggest the best would be Fluxbox? Does it install the same as normal Mint? My current setup with Mint 9 eats my CPU sometimes 100% that's why I would need the lightest distro there is. My config is Celeron D 3,06 GHz, 2 GB DDR RAM, nVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT 512 MB and Mint 9 consumes 100% CPU at times. And, is Fluxbox able to run Win games via Wine normally?

You have a good spec'd machine and I'd believe Linux Mint 9 Main Edition or KDE would suffice for your system unless you plan on lowering RAM consumption by using XFCE/LXDE/Fluxbox.

You may need to tweak your wine via winetricks to be able to run somegames (basically winetricks is quite similar to Synaptic Package Manager except it download and install windows related patches (eg: I can't run Irfanview unless I use winetricks to install MFC42.dll)

Also I found that 100% cpu consumption to be quite suspicious. You may want to try throttling the processor down (used to install a Gnome applet that lowers another laptop's CPU from 1.6Ghz to 800Mhz). In addition you may want to look into existing bugs related to that problem

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/other- ... -mint.html

Have you installed Nvidia Graphics Driver through Hardware Drivers option in Administrative Menu?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1404979

Thank you for the advice. I did install the nVIDIA drivers from the driver package. It prompted me to install immediately after I installed Mint. So it shouldn't be the drivers. I use the recommended ones.

[Inoki]

The links in that post didn't help much. I think if that doesn't go better I'll just have to install Fluxbox.

[hinto]

I run the Gnome edition on a 1.6 dual core 2gig ram Mac Mini.
-Hinto

[Inoki]

I run the Gnome edition on a 1.6 dual core 2gig ram Mac Mini.
-Hinto

Yer, that's a dual core. I got single core.

[hinto]

Yep... but it's a 4-5 year old mac. A dinosaur by today's standards;)
In my daily usage (I have no bench marks), I didn't see a whole lot of difference on the Mac between Gnome, Fluxbox, XFCD, LXDE, (and yes KDE). Were they all slow? or were they all fast enough? I don't know. But since it's a Mac I went with a full DE. I felt like I was missing something otherwise. That being said, I'm running PeppermintOS on an AMD Athlon X2 5000 (5-6 years old). PeppermintOS (LXDE and PAE kernel) kinda steps out of the way while I run an XP VM. That is, it does seem lighter in the case of the constant load on the system a VM puts. I did replace OpenBox with Metacity so I can fully enjoy the Nimbus theme on it;)
-Hinto

[viking777]

Personally I don't think I would use any of them. I think you would be better off with a real lightweight like Crunchbang Lite [url](http://crunchbanglinux.org/)[/url]. I have an old machine like yours and it is the only thing I can run on it, none of the Mint versions work (nor anything else for that matter). However my machine only has half the ram that yours has so you may get more mileage from Mint than I do on old hardware.

[hinto]

I think on real old hardware, you're gonna be waiting quite a while for that liveCD to boot (or the usb 1.0 drive to boot). I did get Puppy to run on a Pentium 200mmx, but it took a while. (due to the aforementioned reasons)
-Hinto

[Inoki]

Thank you guys for the answers. So I'll just maybe stick with Mint until I get a better computer.

[jeffreyC]

I run FLuxbox on a 700mhz PIII with 512mb ram and 9gb hdd. If you have a hard time with Fluxbox then LXDE is your best choice.

[foonil]

I'm giving my vote for Fluxbox because it seems to use less ram:

(Taken from a finnish Linux Mint info site: http://linuxmint-fi.info/category/mint- ... sennukset/)

All 3 systems tested with the same hardware (computer 384MB RAM).

RAM usage while idle:

* Fluxbox: 131MB
* LXDE: 141MB
* Xfce: 154MB

Max RAM usage during installation:

* Fluxbox: 235MB
* LXDE: 246MB
* Xfce: 262MB

Boot time from GRUB to login page:

* Fluxbox: 31.16 sekuntia
* LXDE: 26.79 sekuntia
* Xfce: 26.46 sekuntia

Boot time from login page to desktop:

* Fluxbox: 3.32 sekuntia
* LXDE: 3.77 sekuntia
* Xfce: 9.63 sekuntia