MX Linux Forum

kmathern wrote:Is it just an error when exiting the metainstaller?

Yes.

lonesomepoint wrote:I just learned of this new distro. Can you tell me what it's (going to be) like or give me an information link?

http://mepiscommunity.org/mx

What are people getting for memory usage? Is htop a good tool to get this? It seems like minimum recommended memory should be 256 MB, and it would run well with 512--barring those big memory-eaters like Google Earth. It'll probably boot to a desktop with 128 MB, but start swapping as soon as you do anything.

Stevo wrote:What are people getting for memory usage? Is htop a good tool to get this? It seems like minimum recommended memory should be 256 MB, and it would run well with 512--barring those big memory-eaters like Google Earth. It'll probably boot to a desktop with 128 MB, but start swapping as soon as you do anything.

I posted earlier that it runs great (live) on a PIII-700MHz with 512MB.

Just a data point.

It is using 130MiB in a VB install when no apps open.
184MiB with Thunar and Qupzilla open

Stevo wrote:It seems like minimum recommended memory should be 256 MB, and it would run well with 512--barring those big memory-eaters like Google Earth. It'll probably boot to a desktop with 128 MB, but start swapping as soon as you do anything.

I did a test today with an Athlon XP 1700 system with 256 MB RAM. It ran live, and installed, but was pretty much unusable. I tried four different browsers; two of them crashed when a 'busy' page tried to load, and the other two wouldn't run Flash.

I then tried with the graphics card removed, taking another 64 MB of RAM away. It booted live, but was too slow to be useful. When I tried to install from live, it failed at the 'creating' partition' stage with an error message.

I then tried using the CLI installer from the boot menu, but early on I was left with a black screen and no control.

My conclusion is that 512 MB is the realistic minimum.

Chris

I've wondered how much linux swap might make a difference on that small amount of ram (256mb)? I've seen machine running OK on 1 gig of ram but add 2-3 gigs of Swap to the hard drive and it acts like a new machine it runs so fast. Don't know if it would make as much difference starting with such a small amount of ram or not.

Although MX-14 is pretty light compared to KDE and some other implementations of Xfce, it still is 'heavy' as it uses quite a lot of stuff to make it a featured 'desktop' ie all the gvfs stuff that adds around 40MB to running live RAM use.

I would say that 256MB with pre-configured swap to be the bare minimum. 512 should be ok, but users should not expect miracles.
ie running firefox with 100 tabs open whilst watching a video in vlc and ripping a dvd.

anticapitalista wrote: running firefox with 100 tabs open whilst watching a video in vlc and ripping a dvd.

Ah, you've seen me at work...

Chris

anticapitalista wrote:...but users should not expect miracles.
ie running firefox with 100 tabs open whilst watching a video in vlc and ripping a dvd.

Well sh!t, that makes it pretty much worthless then.

Joking aside, you will be surprised what some people think they can do with an old box/laptop.

If I got a euro (or dollar/yen/pound) for every unrealistic expectation of what (name distro here) can do, I'd be a millionaire.

You know how it goes.

"I have an old computer that worked fantastically with windows 98 until it got slowed down by virus. I read that linux can save old computers like mine, but what a load of baloney! I can't surf the net, video doesn't work, I tried to rip a dvd. Nothing but crashes.
BTW It is a PII with 128MB RAM. Why won't firefox work? Netscape did!"