Minimum requirements for install? (Sorry if this is a dup)

[Rodolfo J. Paiz]

At 10:25 3/19/2004, you wrote:
>I was feeling masochistic last night so I tried an install on a
>machine with 32MB of ram. What a disaster. It depends on the speed of
>the processor but I would not install FC1 on a machine with less than
>256MB of ram, and I don't care what the requirements say.

You cannot make generalizations like that about Linux and not expect to get 
shot down for it, since they simply *are not true*. It just depends on 
matching the software to the hardware to the user. You were trying to load 
a GUI, a graphical browser, and office apps on 32MB of RAM... please find 
*ANY* operating system released within the last five years which will run 
on that hardware and then come back to complain.

For example: I have 8 servers now running Fedora Core 1 on Pentium/166 
chips, with 32MB of RAM, and 1GB hard drives. The smallest network has 
three clients and the largest has about 30 clients. In all cases, the 
server provides firewall/masquerading/gateway services, DHCP, DNS, NTP, 
printer sharing with CUPS, and master browser/Netbios name resolution 
service via Samba (no actual file sharing). Two or three of these servers 
will also soon provide VPN connectivity to branch offices. Very useful 
boxes, these... very successful implementation of the most up-to-date Linux 
distro around on ancient and obsolete hardware.

Why does it work? Text mode (runlevel 3), minimal installs, all unnecessary 
cruft removed, all possible services shut down save what is truly necessary 
(kudzu, gpm, and others are shut down too), tight configuration, and... 
most importantly... requirements which make sense.

You can make an excellent operating system, but it won't work miracles. 
Expecting a 2004 operating system with a full load of applications, 
including Evolution, Mozilla, and OpenOffice, to run on 1994 hardware is 
just silly. That OS, and those applications, have been built and tuned for 
what users require today, and most of those users have much faster 
processors, better graphics adapters, more RAM, etc. and thus want more 
features, more simultaneous tasks, and more eye candy.

Match the requirements to the hardware, and Fedora Core will do you right. 
Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.


-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz at simpaticus.com
http://www.simpaticus.com