Running Mint Xfce on old computers like netbooks

[lisabonne citadel]

edited...
create a swap file (aka virtual extensive memory)

these are the steps:

sudo mkdir -p /var/cache/swap/ # create a directory that holds the swap file
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/cache/swap/myswap bs=1M count=4096 # for 4 GByte

Of course any other method of creating a file of defined size would do.

Announce swap to the system

sudo chmod 0600 /var/cache/swap/myswap # only root should have access
sudo mkswap /var/cache/swap/myswap # format as swap
sudo swapon /var/cache/swap/myswap # announce to system

Insert the following line in /etc/fstab for swap from the next boot:

/var/cache/swap/myswap none swap sw 0 0

And reboot... you can see the swap on gnome-system-monitor application.
THIS steps is from Official Ubuntu forum.

note : for web browsing Do not use firefox on old netbooks, use qupzilla

[Pjotr]

for less resources at computer dispose (only 1G RAM)
create a swap file (aka virtual extensive memory)

Why? What on earth is wrong with the default swap *partition*?

[lisabonne citadel]

for less resources at computer dispose (only 1G RAM)
create a swap file (aka virtual extensive memory)

Why? What on earth is wrong with the default swap *partition*?

running mint xfce 18 version will not run in older computers with less than 750MB RAM for internet connection... reading again about the line i wrote you have right. This can be misunderstood. Thank you for a reply.

[Pjotr]

But why a swap file at all? Given the fact that by default we already have a swap partition, which does the same thing?

[lisabonne citadel]

In my particular case swap file cant be created with systemback tool.
For me its essencial to make my custom configuration with all applications installed and with less 2 minutes be able to make a fresh custom install in another computer. Dawn i really like linux.

[lmintnewb2]

Not meant as criticism, though generally speaking from the last 6-7yrs of experience have always taken to avoiding any swap activity ( lowering swappiness to 10) until physical memory is really close to being exhausted. Disk i/o is really slow compared to RAM and bogs down performance. With the default swappiness value being 60 out-of-box. Which I think is ridiculous and a throwback to when RAM was precious and expensive on systems of the time. A person will see their disk getting hammered constantly on a low-mem box.

Mentioned so many times before here and other forums, believe it really comes down to how well you configure your gnu/Linux OS. High or low-spec hardware on any platform I've always been an optimization and tweakage fanatic from hades. Wasting resources or unneeded added overhead (whether it's RAM, Cpu or diskspace), will always drive me nuts. This laptop is really dated and under-powered but still blazes along great.

Debian 9.2 32bit OS, openbox as the gui ( windows manager), thunar, terminal and latest Firefox running with 11tabs open atm and "free -m" output says 399mbs-ram in use. So yeah zero doubt you can still run latest Firefox or other browsers on a memory constrained system.

All comes down to tweakage skills. If someone really wants to be hardcore about it, another option which comes to mind is visiting the Mozilla archive and downloading and using one of Firefox versions kept there and that were designed for a time when low-spec hardware was common place. With proper tweakage, no reason someone can't run new browsers on underpowered systems though.

Oops and just to be overly anal, this isn't a standard gnu/Linux 32bit install. I added the amd64 architecture to it. The processor is 64bit capable, so it's 32bit Debian Stretch but is booting with a 64bit kernel and using 64bit versions of Firefox (with the noscript extension installed) and Chrome which are both installed. Even booting a 64bit v 4.12 kernel from Debian backports, boot idle is like 96mbs-ram. In other words blahblahblah, this is a multiarch and mixed gnu/Linux OS. Though the vast majority of the underlying operating system is 32bit gnu/Linux.

Also 399mb stat was with 32bit FF, decided to go ahead and setup 64bit latest, again 11 tabs (+noscript) = 435mbs at present. Still though properly config'ed this gnu/Nix install would have zero problems running on a 1gb-ram system imo. Could get by on 512mbs but would be pushing it.

[lisabonne citadel]

I have 2010 Atom cpu on my netbook, and it takes some time to use it... i almost sleep in front of.
running xfce 18 on acer aspire one happy (first model) is almost impossible. (and dont work well with cinnamon DE attached to).

[lisabonne citadel]

wouldnt you mind if you can give me some tricks to put this "awesome" model to have better running ?

[lmintnewb2]

This tutorial looks pretty good.

Much of it was sound advice, basically comes down to lightening the load on your system, to free up RAM, disk and reduce the workload on your cpu. Stuff like disabling unused/needed startup services for one as mentioned in the tute.

Do you use bluetooth on your computer ? If not ... then it doesn't need to be starting every time you boot up your system and wasting resources. An added benefit of killing off these unneeded services, faster bootup. Disabling visual effects, as mentioned above, lowering your swappiness from the default of 60. Have always preferred setting swappiness to 10 but the author of that how-to, advises setting it to 5. Either one is fine, shrugs.

Definitely no shortage of tips in that link. So look that over and apply the ones you feel are best suited to your situation. Certainly others you could explore, such as replacing some of the default Mint applications, with lighter alternatives. Xfce isn't a bad choice for limited hardware. Any and every desktop can be drastically lightened in gnu/Linux though.

Have personally long come to prefer windows managers (openbox) on OS's, high or low-spec hardware. Also mentioned some browser extensions do make a difference, noscript if you use Firefox or it's equivalent ( if available), if you prefer another browser. Agree with the author, in not overdoing browser extensions too.