Can my computer handle linux?

[neo_x500]

My computer that I want to install linux on has a pentium 166 processor with mmx tech. It also has a measely 32 MB RAM. Can I still run Linux without any problems. My Harddrive also has 3 gig. I'm not sure if the processor or the ram are enough though. Win 95 run fine on it though. I don't plan to use it for much more than internet access and maybe playing a few ancient games. No cd burning or any stuff like that. I dont have any problems with this stuff now as a win 95 accept that it crashes everytime I try and read the posts that cause a bsod. That was real cute by the way, locking me out of my own thread. PLEASE DONT DO IT AGAIN. thank you.

[preacher]

quote:Originally posted by Neo:
My computer that I want to install linux on has a pentium 166 processor with mmx tech. It also has a measely 32 MB RAM. Can I still run Linux without any problems. My Harddrive also has 3 gig. I'm not sure if the processor or the ram are enough though. Win 95 run fine on it though. I don't plan to use it for much more than internet access and maybe playing a few ancient games. No cd burning or any stuff like that. I dont have any problems with this stuff now as a win 95 accept that it crashes everytime I try and read the posts that cause a bsod. That was real cute by the way, locking me out of my own thread. PLEASE DONT DO IT AGAIN. thank you.

This question is very similar to another question posted in this thread.
http://forum.fuckmicrosoft.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=5&t=000420

Yes your pc can handle linux and one of the less resource heavy desktop environments.

[Lloydr]

yep ur system can run it.....probaly a lot faster than one of my systems....such as my ancient pentium I 50mhz lol...the ram is plenty too since linux don't eat up resources like some shitty Operating systems such as WINBLOWS!!!! lol lata

[ June 23, 2002: Message edited by: RedHat SeaWolf ]

[lazygamer]

So in Linux is there some super rad mega performance enhancer option if you have tons of ram like me?(384 mb ram)  

It's a shame that only 32 of that is needed.

[voidmain]

32MB is a minimum.  The more the merrier.  I put at least 512MB in any new system.  384 should do you just fine, and in fact just about right if you don't use VMware.  I regularly run several operating systems at the same time using Linux as my base.  512MB seems skimpy sometimes.

[smokey]

mmm I recomend at least 64mb for desktop as I have a shithouse Toshiba Tecra 800 laptop (PII 233, 32mb ram, 2.5mb gfx card) and Linux runs ok - a little slow on disk access but faster than winitblow$up 98times

[Calum]

well, from what i've heard, if you can run windows, you can run linux. Windows is a worse resource/memory/diskspace hog than linux, so you should have no problem. Plus, re: getting "locked out" of your own post, that bug only works if you use internet explorer. Try using Opera, mozilla or netscape, and it won't happen.

[ravuya]

BSD runs a lot better in low-memory and low-CPU environments than Linux does, IMHO.

But Linux is better for more powerful machines that are being used as desktops.

[choasforages]

to the guy that posted about 384 megs of ram. umm, no there not an option to make it run faster, it just does. i have 256 megs/*used to have 256 + 64 till my main system died but thats another thread*/. linux runs WAYYYY faster on more ram. after about 256 megs of ram, win98 ran no faster on my comp. however linux runs on anything including the 60mhz pentium. it can however use your hardware more heaviliy then windows could dream of resulting in insane perfomance. owell have fun

[Pantso]

Theoretically you can run Linux on a machine with the specs you mentioned. However, don't try using KDE 3.0 with only 32 megs of RAM. As VoidMain said: "The more, the merrier"  

[ June 24, 2002: Message edited by: Pantso ]

[voidmain]

I try and put enough RAM in the machine so Linux never has to page (swap to the swap partition).  There are several ways to tell how much memory is in use (I like the "top" command for a quick easy look, but there are better commands like "sar").  There is no one magic number for the amount of RAM, depends on how you use it and what apps you run.

Note about automatically detecting RAM.  I have seen on the rare occassion where a machine might have certain amount of RAM and Linux only detects and uses a fraction of that.  It's not a problem though because you can pass a parameter to the kernel in the LILO or GRUB configuration to tell the kernel how much RAM you really have (I had one with onboard video that used a portion of the system memory for video, there was 128MB total but Linux only detected 64.  I just specified 120MB in the LILO configuration and everything was fine. The missing 8MB was used by shared video.).  This is rare but it can happen on certain machines.  Just make sure you don't specify more RAM than you really have or the machine will not boot (test your mem=xxx parameter interactively at the LILO prompt first).  You'll know when you run "top" or any other command that shows you how much physical RAM Linux detected.

[ June 24, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[lazygamer]

OH GOODY! /floors 384mb gas pedal

[Pantso]

Hmm, I never had a problem with Linux not detecting the amount of RAM on my system correctly. But the point is that if you don't want your system to go into swap all the time use more RAM. If you intend to use Linux in text mode though, I don't think that any lack of RAM would pose serious problems.

[voidmain]

Out of probably around 500 Linux installs I've seen it only twice that I can think of. Once on an old Dell server and once on a Microshack desktop (cheap machine).

[Pantso]

That's one of the things I love about Linux. It only runs well on descent hardware