Hi, I'm thinking of buying a second PC to use it as a sort of 'test' computer. I have 2 Linux distros on my main PC and I'm happy to keep things as they are as far as that's concerned. For, the second PC, I would like to play around with some other Linux distros and would probably network both PCs. I have seen quiet a few low spec (very cheap) PCs for sale. I'm just wondering what minimum system requirements I should be looking at to run any Linux distro comfortably. Thanks, David.
You could take two different routes here. The first route as you've mentioned is to purchase a second computer. The lowest specification computer I have used with KDE is a Pentium 2 333MHz with 192MB of RAM. It ran a little slow and could only run about one or two programs at a time, but it was still usable For a better experience you should be looking at a Pentium 3 with 256MB of RAM. For reference, I run a second computer for testing Linuxes on. It's a Pentium 3 1.0GHz (overclocked to 1.12GHz ), 384MB RAM and an nVidia Geforce2 Ultra 64MB. I get very good performance running Ubuntu with Beryl 3D special effects. The second route would be to upgrade your existing computer and run virtual machines using VMware. I recommend you upgrade your RAM to at least 1GB to get reasonable performance from your virtual machines.
Hmmmmmm, thanks for the info - very helpful! The 'VMware' option is sounding interesting as I am a bit stuck for space at home (although I could accomodate 2 machines at a pusht). I'll have to read up on VMware, as I know nothing about it. However, if I could achieve my objectives using just the one machine, that would be great!
VMware allows you to run one or more Operating Systems on top of your existing Operating System. Effectively the 'Guest' operating systems run in a window and work in the same way as if they were installed 'normally'. You can run guest operating systems in full screen mode as well if required. However running two or more operating systems at the same time is memory and cpu intensive, hence why I suggest a memory upgrade. My main computer has 768MB of RAM which is just about adequate for running multiple OSes. I can reserve 256MB for the host OS and 512MB for the guest OSes as and when required. You will want to download 'VMware Server' because you can create and manage virtual machines. 'VMware Player' only lets you run pre-built virtual machines
VMware is great, but you do suffer performance wise on the guest OS, however if you don't split the guest OS into 2Gb file sizes (i think it has to do with the optimum file size on a FAT32 partition - but i could be wrorg) but you can decrease the lag further by installing VMware tools no, but a lot of thinks are easier to do with keyboard shortcuts
Hmmmm, not too keen on sacrificing performance. I think I might go for a cheapish PC in the New Year - network that to my main PC. The only trouble is, my main PC is in my bedroom and I would want to put the second PC in the box room - which is only about 4 metres away. However, it's going to be a bit of a pain to run the RJ45 from the router in my bedroom to the box room. I can't run the cable under the carpet (long story, but a bit impractical), so I would have to run it along the skirting boards, alongside and up the door frames and drill a hole just above one of the door frames to feed the cable through to the box room. I would prefer a 'hardwire' setup, rather than a wireless, so I guess I'll be getting that electric drill out of the shed in the New Year!
[ot]On the topic of hard wired networks, I want to create a hard wired network within my house and do it properly. Use a nice terminator and have the RJ45 sockets coming from the walls.[/ot]
true, but VMware lets you try an OS without have to install the OS to HDD, you do get a very very good idea of the particular OS[ot]if you like the OS or not[/ot]
If you can pick up a cheap second computer, I would say do it. A low spec computer should run just fine as long as you aren't married to KDE or gnome. XFCE, fluxbox, enlightenment and other light window managers should run fine on a pentium class system with about 128MB of RAM (maybe XFCE would want a little more horespower). There are many great *lightweight* distros out there to try. I would recommend Vector linux and Zenwalk but there are more (look up puppy and DSL). You can run more heavyweight distros alright on an older machine as long as you aren't using KDE or Gnome. For the most disro options, a more modern second machine or VMware are the best choices. Good luck.
I've seen slackware 6 with FVM95 on a computer with 32 megs of RAM and a 500 MB hard-drive. It took a while to boot, but command line is command line. If you need something to act as an secure internet gateway, A 12 year old 133 should work well enough. There is a Linux distro for about every end of the spectrum. Solairs also recently became open source, and it works very well on low end systems as well. Be warned, it looks like crap, but you can browse the internet and use a text-editor. __ -Goodluck, Godspeed.
I am running Xfce4 on a PIII 600Mhz, 128 RAM, Compaq M300 laptop. It is beautiful to look at and runs very, very well! The base system is Debian. Xubuntu should do the trick as well.....
[ot] I was stuck using that bloody laptop whilst I was staying with my parents at Christmas :x: I've upgraded the RAM to 384MB but Windows is such a hog that the laptop still runs slowly. My P2 333MHz laptop with Xubuntu performs better, hands down! Worse though, is the Compaq M300 can only do 800X600... Arrrggghhhh! [/ot]
[ot] Xfce doesn't have anything to do with it, it's his laptop's screen which can only do 800x600.[/ot]
[ot] Even so, it's the X server, X.org in this case, which determines the max resolution, not the Window Manager.[/ot]
[ot] The X server is a pretty cool thing - network transparent, with a plain-text config file. This also means that you don't need software like Citrix on Linux at all; such functionality has already been built in for a long time.[/ot]
