Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 02:23:40 +0100 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Rapha=EBl_Ding=E9?= <raphael.dinge@ohmforce.com> To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Running FreeBSD on an old laptop Message-ID: <5BCAD5B2-0402-11D7-8FBE-00039312D14E@ohmforce.com>
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Hi everybody, This is loads of newbie questions, but it is technical ones. If i've mistaken by sending to the wrong mailing list, please redirect me to the right one. Thanks (actually this is my very first post to a FreeBSD mailing list) I've managed to install FreeBSD 4.7 on an Olivetti Echoes P120. I want to know if I did it the right way, and to have some advice (see below). The goal of that installation is to be able to use graphical application, with an office like package and some old games (well I'm converting a friend of mine to FreeBSD ;) ). Basically, the Olivetti laptop I hold is a Pentium 120 MHz with 32 Mbytes of Ram, and 1 Gbytes HD. There is a cdrom bundled in it, but it no longer properly works :/, and I don't have any cable to put a floppy or something... I have decided to extract the 2,5" HD and I put it in my desktop computer (with some IDE44 to 40 adapter). I installed FreeBSD on that computer to that 2,5" disk. About first page, hardware components detection : I have chosen what is available on the laptop itself (not the computer which is installing, it only concern thing like serial, and some others...), but it does not seems to have a particular consequence on future, It seems that anyway, when FreeBSD boots, it always make a hardware detection, is that completely right ? About partitioning the disk (since it is very limited), I've put : - 128 Mb to / - 64 Mb to swap - 50 Mb to /var - 50 Mb to /tmp - and the rest for /usr it seems that for the use that it should have : - / is a little oversized. I only want the minimum for it (no man pages, only essential) what should I put ? and what size should I use ? - is 64 Mb of swap enough ? - /var and /tmp are perhaps a little oversized. any advice on them ? - where goes /home ? to / ? should I put a /home in the partition table ? which size should be good ? I've managed to install X and windowmaker, as well as xdm, which automatically start at boot. How ever, X is very, very, very slow, in particular when switching resolution. any advice ? could the driver I use be really important in the way X draws to screen ? (I mean would it be faster with a proper driver ?) I've fall in love with windowmaker. It is very fast on modern computer, but it is really slow on a P120. What wm is the fastest gnu-step like available on FreeBSD ? For the office like, I installed koffice, but it is tooooooo slow for that computer. kde_init takes something like 30% of cpu, when doing absolutely nothing... Here is my question. It is cleared to me that perhaps 4.7 (KDE 3.03 included afair) is a too much modern version of FreeBSD and I would probably install an older one (including an older version of X). Any advice, considering the computer specs ? What office-like suite could run decently on that computer ? Could someone redirect me to a page when we can see screenshots of the games available in the port collection ? (easier for me to choose. once installed, and the disk back in the laptop, I won't be able to install anything more) Any help on those multiple questions would be very appreciated. Thanks, raphael.dinge@ohmforce.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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