Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 13:02:25 -0800 From: Gary Kline <kline@thought.org> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, Da Rock <freebsd-questions@herveybayaustralia.com.au> Subject: Re: Tuning for very little RAM Message-ID: <20100106210225.GC7886@thought.org> In-Reply-To: <20100106172105.GA95215@comcast.net> References: <1262685825.15832.5.camel@laptop1.herveybayaustralia.com.au> <20100106072531.2b0c18b1.wmoran@potentialtech.com> <20100106172105.GA95215@comcast.net>
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On Wed, Jan 06, 2010 at 09:21:06AM -0800, Charlie Kester wrote: > On Wed 06 Jan 2010 at 04:25:31 PST Bill Moran wrote: > >In response to Da Rock <freebsd-questions@herveybayaustralia.com.au>: > > > >>Its been a while- work's has been keeping me very busy for months now. > >> > >>I have revived an old laptop which has very little RAM, and it is > >>absolutely hammering the swap. > >> > >>I'm trying to set it up as a demo for some skeptics with no money, so I > >>need email, internet (with plugins), openoffice, acrobat, and wine. > >> > >>Aside from all that though, for the academics of it how can I help this > >>situation? The laptop has around 100MB RAM, with 16k free, and has a new > >>install of FreeBSD 8.0. > > > >The most obvious thing to do is reduce the number of running programs. > >Go through /etc/ttys, for example, and disable all but one or two consoles, > >and edit /etc/rc.conf to disable anything that you don't need on the > >system (possible sendmail, syslog?, etc) > > The other most obvious thing to do is to look at the apps you're running > and see if there are more lightweight alternatives. > > If I had to run a machine like that, I'd probably want to avoid X > Windows altogther and go console-only. But it sounds like your > "skeptics" won't let you do that. > > Assuming you have to use X, you'll want to avoid heavyweight desktop > environments like KDE or Gnome. I like tiled window managers like musca > or dwm myself, but your skeptics will probably want a more traditional > window manager (aka MS-Windows clone) like xfce or openbox. Or even lighter weight, CTWM, which is just a step up from twm.... > > When you say "internet (with plugins)" I think you mean Firefox. If > this isn't a hard and fast requirement, take a look at some of the more > lightweight browsers like Midori, Kazehakase or Arora. (I'd recommend > even more lightweight alternatives like surf or elinks, but I don't > think your skeptics will approve.) > > Same for OpenOffice. There are alternatives to each of the apps in the > OpenOffice suite that might not have all the same bells and whistles, > but will run in much less RAM. AbiWord is a great word-processor if that would serve Da Rock's needs. For very kwik browsing I use links -G [[the graphical incarnation of the otherwise text]] links. Every bell and whistle is 'just a tad more'; but then so many tads add up to tons; so it takes some forethought before piling on the apps. Da Rock, did you mis-type that you only have 16k free? .... > > For some ideas on which apps to try, look at the apps bundled in some of > the Linux distros that target small machines. > http://bengross.com/smallunix.html has a good list of these distros. Good one! gary > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" -- Gary Kline kline@thought.org http://www.thought.org Public Service Unix
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