minimal system requirements

minimal system requirements

[Cyprian Laskowski]

Hi,

I am seeking some advice about whether a certain ancient laptop will
be sufficient for my minimal purposes.

I will be moving to Japan for a while and my friend has an old laptop
which he's offered to give me with the following basic specs: Pentium
75, 24 MB RAM, and 540 MB harddrive.

I'd like to install a debian linux system on it with X, and pretty
much nothing else (although it would also be great to have LaTeX and
ghostscript, but I think that's pushing it).  The two primary uses
would be light email usage and very light newsgroup reading (through a
modem connection, and using gnus), and Japanese vocabulary testing
(using kdic.el, vocab-test.el, and VTE); so I would also need the
Emacs fonts (at least for Japanese and Greek).  It would also be nice
to have non-intensive use of the Internet (with w3m through emacs).
So this would be an emacsocentric universe, of course!

Looking at debian.org and the Emacs 21 INSTALL page, it seems that the
laptop would be sufficient for this.  But I would appreciate any
advice or experience that anyone could share with me, regarding this
sort of plan.  I love Emacs and Linux, but am not very good with
hardware and not too good with below-the-surface unix, so I might not
be well equipped to handle strange problems or nuances that develop.
And so, although I can have the laptop for free, I want to try to
figure whether there is a point to taking it.

Thanks in advance!


cyp

Re: minimal system requirements

[Kai Großjohann]

Cyprian Laskowski <swagbelly@yahoo.com> writes:

> I will be moving to Japan for a while and my friend has an old laptop
> which he's offered to give me with the following basic specs: Pentium
> 75, 24 MB RAM, and 540 MB harddrive.
>
> I'd like to install a debian linux system on it with X, and pretty
> much nothing else (although it would also be great to have LaTeX and
> ghostscript, but I think that's pushing it).

I think the X11 will be the big problem.  Hm.  24MB of RAM.  That's
really really small.

It will be much easier to get LaTeX to run in that environment than X.

I used to use X with 32 MB and it wasn't fun.  I used the Ion window
manager to avoid excessive swapping, but it was still easy for the
laptop to swap.  Hm.  But there is a Tiny-X or somesuch howto, maybe
that helps.
-- 
A turnip curses Elvis

Re: minimal system requirements

[Karl Eklund]

kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> Cyprian Laskowski <swagbelly@yahoo.com> writes:
> 
> > I will be moving to Japan for a while and my friend has an old laptop
> > which he's offered to give me with the following basic specs: Pentium
> > 75, 24 MB RAM, and 540 MB harddrive.
> >
> > I'd like to install a debian linux system on it with X, and pretty
> > much nothing else (although it would also be great to have LaTeX and
> > ghostscript, but I think that's pushing it).
> 
> I think the X11 will be the big problem.  Hm.  24MB of RAM.  That's
> really really small.

I don't mean to argue for the sake of arguing now, but we run X,
Windowmaker and Emacs on a 24 MB laptop (which has a slightly faster
CPU than the one mentioned, though - 150 or something). It works (to
actually work on, I mean).

Re: minimal system requirements

[gebser]

Karl Eklund at 18:55 (UTC+0100) on 10 Feb 2003 said:

= kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann) writes:
= 
= > Cyprian Laskowski <swagbelly@yahoo.com> writes:
= > 
= > > I will be moving to Japan for a while and my friend has an old laptop
= > > which he's offered to give me with the following basic specs: Pentium
= > > 75, 24 MB RAM, and 540 MB harddrive.
= > >
= > > I'd like to install a debian linux system on it with X, and pretty
= > > much nothing else (although it would also be great to have LaTeX and
= > > ghostscript, but I think that's pushing it).
= > 
= > I think the X11 will be the big problem.  Hm.  24MB of RAM.  That's
= > really really small.
= 
= I don't mean to argue for the sake of arguing now, but we run X,
= Windowmaker and Emacs on a 24 MB laptop (which has a slightly faster
= CPU than the one mentioned, though - 150 or something). It works (to
= actually work on, I mean).

It's not a question of *whether* it will work, but rather of the quality 
of the performance.  


ken

Re: minimal system requirements

[Cyprian Laskowski]

Okay, thanks to all for your responses!  I think I'll try it out and
see how it goes.  I'm hoping that my minimalist fvwm2 config will
reduce the colossus that is X.

cyp