Mandriva for old/small computers (ex PIII 64MB) : Mini ?

AshLeDombos

I know that adamwilliamson is against too many distributions, but wouldn't it be great to have a special distro for our old computers ?

I work with schools and many schools don't have money to buy new computers, so pupils' parents give some old computers, but mdv 2008 is too big for its.

What could be great is a special mini with, for example, iceWM , fluxbox, opebbow or jwm (like "puppy linux" or his french equivalent "toutou linux", wich are, in my opinion, the real best distribs just after mandriva). And all software using the smallest memory footprint possible (maybe kazehakase abiword and gnumeric, or any other best idea) In this distrib, we don't need to have other packages than those in main and contrib (and non free).

I thought it was the goal mandriva mini was aiming, but now, nobody talks about it.

I think there is a market for a mandriva-mini.
So do you think it is possible to create such a distro?
_________________

Jabber : ashledombos (che) amessage (punto) be

imr · Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 1:17 am Post subject:

Ash, someone is doing one in the french forums.
http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?t=61926
_________________
jabberID:

grand hunier · Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 4:24 am Post subject:

http://torrent.mandriva.com/public/mandriva-linux-2008.0-free-mini-dual.torrent

Ahmad Yasser · Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 10:57 am Post subject:

TBH, I was just thinking about it yesterday. But I didn't give it much thought since I thought nobody would be interested.

Although I have a AMD Athlon 64 x2 4000+ with 2 GB of RAM Razz

, I do have two older PCs, one 1.7 GHz with 256 MB of RAM, and another PIII with 64 MB of RAM.

And for some reason, I kinda like minimalist desktops Razz

For starters, we would have to decide few choices:

WM : Fluxbox - Openbox ( my fav Smile

) - IceWM ( I hear this one's Mandriva's favorite Razz

) - WindowMaker ?

Web Browser : Firefox (obviously only for the more capable PCs) - Kazehakaze (this one's my suggestion, it uses Gecko, and its lightweight) - Dillo - Opera (this one has e-mail and IRC in it too)?

We could also use PCManFM (its in the repos), which is a lightweight GTK2 file manager which is similar to THunar, without the Xfce dependencies, which has the ability to put a desktop background, and put icons on it too Smile

If this progresses enough, we could get a task- package in the repos, and an ISO too Smile

awilliamson · Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 6:30 pm Post subject:

yes, this is an ideal project for a community group to do, so go ahead. Smile

you could do it as a custom One CD: there's a discussion on the Cooker ML currently about how to generate One CDs, you might want to read up on that thread - subject "Call for Xfce Mandriva One CD" - in the Cooker archives.

the official mini CD is intended more for providing a customizable, base environment, it's not exactly intended to be used as is.
_________________
Adam Williamson | Editor, Mandriva Community Newsletter | Mandriva Club Monkey | PR Monkey | Mandriva Bugmaster | Packager | General dogsbody | awilliamson A T mandriva D 0 T com

Ahmad Yasser · Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 9:23 pm Post subject:

I will play around a little and post my progress.

If anyone's interested/wants to help, then post in this topic Smile

AshLeDombos · Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 11:04 pm Post subject:

Ahmad Yasser · Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 11:14 pm Post subject:

Well, for starters we could define the choices I outlined in my other post.

asahartz · Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 7:47 pm Post subject:

I find it amazing that in Central Europe schools don't have new computers! Here in England we invest thousands in computers in schools; the secondary (11-18yrs) school I work in has 400 computers, all less than 4 years old, and most other secondaries are similarly equipped. Most primary schools can boast 30-50 newish computers too.

That aside, Mandriva One runs fine on old computers - I'm running this on a PIII/650 with 192Mb ram and 8Gb HDD.

JohnMinter · Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 8:02 pm Post subject: Great idea

Ahmad, i think you have a great idea. I was thinking about the choices you outlined above. I like IceWM for a minimalist window manager. I thought the phaaba theme was sleek and fast.

How bad has Firefox been on old hardware? Seems broadly supported and well maintained. Thunderbird isn't a bad mail client. More and more i use web based mail so I can get to key messages from multiple computers.

AshLeDombos · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 12:26 am Post subject:

Which post ahmad ?
_________________

Jabber : ashledombos (che) amessage (punto) be

Ahmad Yasser · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 11:31 am Post subject:

Robert Smith · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 9:29 pm Post subject:

I think that a community driven lightweight Mandriva is a great idea.
Kinda like a Mandriva version of Xubuntu. ( Xandriva?)

RJ549 · Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 1:31 am Post subject:

I just installed 2008.0 on an old Gateway P5-133 which originally had 32MB. I was able to upgrade the memory from my impressive spares stash but discovered that this machine uses some weird memory which is pricey new and very hard to find used. After some trials and tribulations, here's what I discovered:

32MB: Installer will not start.
48MB: Text installer starts but abruptly dies at the Disk Partitioning stage.
64MB: Text installer completes successfully.

In order to get to 64MB, I had to borrow some memory from a "better" machine. Wink

Once the installation was complete, I took it back down to 48MB and its still running fine.

A minimal installation with IceWM consumed 450MB of disk space. This box is too slow for web browsing so I removed Firefox and added the stuff I need to make it into a music player. Its still sitting at about 450MB. When first booted to IceWM, it uses about 28MB of memory so its still got room for playing tunes which xmms does very nicely.

My next test just for fun will be to install 2008.0 on a 486 with Pentium OverDrive 83MHz chip. Fortunately this one uses ordinary simms and I just found two 32MB sticks on ebay for a couple of bucks each. Smile

So it looks like Mandriva already *can* run on old/small computers because these are about as low as it goes for i586 hardware. Anything better than what's in my garbage heap should be able to run IceWM, XFCE or Fluxbox very nicely.

Does anyone here need or want to install Mandriva on a system with less that 64MB?
If so, I could file an enhancement request. If not, I won't waste time discussing it.

Oh, speaking of Xubuntu, here are its system requirements:

HermanAB · Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 6:21 am Post subject:

My 5c worth:
A problem with a system with 64MB RAM, is that you cannot run a decent word processor or web browser. For a useful system running IceWm or Xfce, you need at least 92MB RAM. However, I would suggest not bothering with anything less than 128MB or it would just frustrate the users.

AshLeDombos · Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 11:27 am Post subject:

Ahmad Yasser · Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 1:47 pm Post subject:

Sorry everyone, had a few tests lately, so I couldn't be very active. I also accidentally formatted my HDD (thank goodness I had made a backup right before that), so I will setup Mandriva again, and I will play around a bit. I will post results.

I was also thinking up of a name.. does MiniDriva sound nice? Razz

RJ549: Your PC sounds like a nice experiment. Have you tried Abiword? and Kazehakaze? I'm not sure if it is even packaged, but if it isn't, it should be. It uses the Gecko engine ( the same one Firefox uses) but it's much much more lightweight.
Please post the RAM usage with both of these programs.

AshLeDombos · Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 3:11 pm Post subject:

Ahmad Yasser · Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 5:20 pm Post subject:

Sadly, I don't think Dillo is usable now.. It's far too primitive as a browser to use.

awilliamson · Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 6:22 pm Post subject:

Kazehakase is packaged, and kept well up-to-date.

Personally, my favourite low-resources browser is links-graphic. Faster than *anything*, except regular links. Smile

Ahmad Yasser · Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 6:59 pm Post subject:

Bai Shen · Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 7:18 pm Post subject:

RJ549 · Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2007 3:10 am Post subject:

You're correct. The Mandriva installer will stop and complain if you attempt to boot it on a 486. However, back in 1995, Intel began offering Pentium OverDrive processors for certain "late" model 486 sockets. Mine is the PODP5V83 MHz which gave a huge performance boost to what was originally an SX2/33 Mhz system ("SX" means no built-in math coprocessor).

It should be noted though that real Pentium systems have a 64-bit wide memory bus while for i486, it was only 32-bits. Therefore, this 83MHz hermaphrodite is performance-wise similar to a Pentium 66.

Mandriva correctly sees this chip as an i586 so installation is not a problem. Smile

BTW: I also have a Cyrix "5x86" 133MHz chip which the name implies that it might work too but nope, its really just a DX4/133 and the Mandriva installer kernel will immediately identify it as a 486 and halt.
_________________
Club helper, crusader and house-trained primate.

MSI K8N Neo4, Athlon64 3200+, 2GB PC3200 dual-channel, GeForce 6600 PCIe 256M, Lite-On DVD/CD-RW, Memorex DVD-RW, AG Neovo 19" DFP. MDV 2008.0 x86_64.

awilliamson · Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2007 6:16 pm Post subject:

no hdlist for medium "contrib", only partial result for package slim
Name : slim
Version : 1.3.0
Release : 1mdv2008.1
Group : System/X11
Size : 321828 Architecture: i586
Summary : Simple login manager

so slim's in Cooker. not sure if it was in 2008, it may have been added after. do 'urpmq slim'. if it's not there, I can backport it.

rj: yes, the Cyrix '5x86' chips were just heavily multiplied i486-compatibles. I had one of those too. Overclocked quite nicely, as I recall.
_________________
Adam Williamson | Editor, Mandriva Community Newsletter | Mandriva Club Monkey | PR Monkey | Mandriva Bugmaster | Packager | General dogsbody | awilliamson A T mandriva D 0 T com

RJ549 · Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2007 7:33 pm Post subject:

Ah yes, those carefree days of spending heaps of money on processor and memory upgrades so I could play Doom, StreetFighter, and Nascar Racing in full detail on a 486. Cool

After spending about $2000 on the system, another $200 for a CPU and $300 for 16MB of memory was a "good deal". Fellow packrats may understand why I still can't throw the stuff away. Wink

I did 'urpmi kazehakase' but it wanted to pull all of Firefox and its dependencies back in so I said 'no' to that.
Opera only wanted to bring in qt and qt-libs so I accepted. I'll take it for a test drive a little later...
_________________
Club helper, crusader and house-trained primate.

MSI K8N Neo4, Athlon64 3200+, 2GB PC3200 dual-channel, GeForce 6600 PCIe 256M, Lite-On DVD/CD-RW, Memorex DVD-RW, AG Neovo 19" DFP. MDV 2008.0 x86_64.