🚀 go-pugleaf

charlie@develop-1.ed.datacash.com (Charlie Stross) writes:
> On Mon, 24 Nov 1997 19:56:47 +0000, Stephen Charlton 
> <mega@cableinet.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> >Currently I'm running Linux Slackware on a Pentium 200 but I also want
> >to know the possibilities of connecting to the Internet using a 486
> >DX2/66 with 8mb ram. I would like to know if you could seriously
> >consider using it as an internet machine and if so what version of
> >Netscape would be best to run on it. (I'm hoping for at least version
> >3).
> 
> It'll work fine. But forget X. 

Well, I ran my net connection off exactly such a machine for some
time, with X, but it did swap like a bastard.  X will eat nearly all
your real memory; you certainly can't contemplate running anything at
all sizeable, such as INN, emacs, or Netscrape, at the same time.
Configure plenty of swap space, and make sure you switch off any kind
of screensavers and suchlike so X can be completely swapped out when
you're not using it, and install "screen" to make your text terminals
more useful; you'll find that you almost never press Ctrl-Alt-F7 (as
it is here) to switch to the X server virtual console because you know
you can get things done faster on the text consoles.

I've now upgraded to a Cyrix 166 with 16Mb; I suspect I'd get better
performance out of my old DX2/66 with 32Mb.
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