From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jan 5 19:40:37 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id ACBC216A41F for ; Thu, 5 Jan 2006 19:40:37 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from danial_thom@yahoo.com) Received: from web33301.mail.mud.yahoo.com (web33301.mail.mud.yahoo.com [68.142.206.116]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 7249E43D58 for ; Thu, 5 Jan 2006 19:40:36 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from danial_thom@yahoo.com) Received: (qmail 791 invoked by uid 60001); 5 Jan 2006 19:40:35 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com; h=Message-ID:Received:Date:From:Reply-To:Subject:To:Cc:In-Reply-To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding; b=XukAuSyQyZGYyDSDuIgjOvFpBbhc3rk9JbvHqr6JgmV5fJ8MMkjOOVASXSH9bOPLIeBrr2ECBZ5KLRORQM6UDAp2q043akrsNV5DHFpoq8CWd5qgYu3PXHjxECTv2NNEOlg94apR1sD5QJptdI8I/jcq2oQ/YkiOJaZkh8Kcub4= ; Message-ID: <20060105194035.789.qmail@web33301.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Received: from [24.46.186.215] by web33301.mail.mud.yahoo.com via HTTP; Thu, 05 Jan 2006 11:40:35 PST Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 11:40:35 -0800 (PST) From: Danial Thom To: Mark Kane , azri abdul majid In-Reply-To: <43BCD90E.2040505@mkproductions.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: memory requirement X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: danial_thom@yahoo.com List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2006 19:40:37 -0000 --- Mark Kane wrote: > azri abdul majid wrote: > > Hi there > > > > I am a linux user and I am very interested on > trying FreeBSD. I just > > curious about one matter. Currently I have an > old linux machine with > > 15GB Hdd, 64MB RAM, 266MHz Intel Celeron > Processor. I just want to use > > FreeBSD for my academic research. Can FreeBSD > running smoothly using > > my machine. What is your recommendation?. > > -- > > Azri > > Hi. > > FreeBSD will run on that hardware just fine. I > still have FreeBSD > installed on machines as slow as 166MHz/96MB > RAM and they perform just > fine for lower load server applications. Keep > in mind a few things though: > > 1) Compiling software will be quite slow. In > your case, you may want to > consider using the binary packages system for > installing most software > instead of compiling via ports. > > 2) I have not personally used X on anything > less than a 500MHz machine. > You didn't say if you wanted a GUI or not, but > I cannot say how that > experience would be with your hardware. > > 3) I recently found one of my old Cyrix 233MHz > machines with 32MB RAM. > One thing that I know would help it's > performance would be more RAM. It > boots and functions fine, but it does get a bit > sluggish. Just make sure > to give it ample swap space and put in as much > RAM as you can. > > I'm not sure what type of research you were > planning so I think that's > about all I can say for now. > > Hope that helps. > > -Mark The "load" is not the issue with memory, its the number of processes. If you'll have many users or many processes (such as httpd spawning processes per session) then you'll need more memory. You can certainly build a kernel for a single user system with 64K as long as you don't have a large database or try to compile large source modules. For example I have a "low end" system that takes about a week to compile one of the .cpp modules in the mySQL distribution. It goes into swapping hell. DT __________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL – Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com