Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > linux.debian.user > #228577 > unrolled thread

An old box running Debian 8

Back to article view | Back to linux.debian.user

Contents

  An old box running Debian 8 Miroslav Skoric <skoric@uns.ac.rs> - 2020-11-11 18:50 +0100
    Re: An old box running Debian 8 Linux-Fan <Ma_Sys.ma@web.de> - 2020-11-11 19:10 +0100
      Re: An old box running Debian 8 Miroslav Skoric <skoric@uns.ac.rs> - 2020-11-12 23:50 +0100
        Re: An old box running Debian 8 Linux-Fan <Ma_Sys.ma@web.de> - 2020-11-13 00:20 +0100
          Re: An old box running Debian 8 Miroslav Skoric <skoric@uns.ac.rs> - 2020-11-13 15:20 +0100
            Re: An old box running Debian 8 Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-11-13 16:00 +0100
              Re: An old box running Debian 8 David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2020-11-13 21:30 +0100
                Re: An old box running Debian 8 Miroslav Skoric <skoric@uns.ac.rs> - 2020-11-14 17:50 +0100
                  Re: An old box running Debian 8 Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-11-15 09:50 +0100
                    Re: An old box running Debian 8 David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2020-11-17 16:30 +0100
                      Re: An old box running Debian 8 Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-11-17 16:50 +0100
                        Re: An old box running Debian 8 David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2020-11-18 16:50 +0100
                          Re: An old box running Debian 8 Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-11-18 17:00 +0100
                          Re: An old box running Debian 8 Felix Miata <mrmazda@earthlink.net> - 2020-11-18 18:20 +0100
                            Re: An old box running Debian 8 Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2020-11-18 19:10 +0100
                              Re: An old box running Debian 8 David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2020-11-18 21:40 +0100
              Re: An old box running Debian 8 Miroslav Skoric <skoric@uns.ac.rs> - 2020-11-14 17:50 +0100
    Re: An old box running Debian 8 Greg Wooledge <wooledg@eeg.ccf.org> - 2020-11-11 19:10 +0100
      Re: An old box running Debian 8 Miroslav Skoric <skoric@uns.ac.rs> - 2020-11-12 23:50 +0100
    Re: An old box running Debian 8 Felix Miata <mrmazda@earthlink.net> - 2020-11-11 19:50 +0100
      Re: An old box running Debian 8 Miroslav Skoric <skoric@uns.ac.rs> - 2020-11-12 23:50 +0100
        Re: An old box running Debian 8 Doug McGarrett <dmcgarrett@optonline.net> - 2020-11-13 02:40 +0100
          Re: An old box running Debian 8 Miroslav Skoric <skoric@uns.ac.rs> - 2020-11-13 15:20 +0100
            Re: An old box running Debian 8 Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2020-11-13 15:40 +0100
              Re: An old box running Debian 8 Nicholas Geovanis <nickgeovanis@gmail.com> - 2020-11-13 16:20 +0100
                Re: An old box running Debian 8 Dan Ritter <Dan@randomstring.org> - 2020-11-13 16:30 +0100
                  Re: An old box running Debian 8 Nicholas Geovanis <nickgeovanis@gmail.com> - 2020-11-13 17:30 +0100
                    Re: An old box running Debian 8 Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2020-11-14 00:20 +0100
                  Re: An old box running Debian 8 Nicholas Geovanis <nickgeovanis@gmail.com> - 2020-11-13 17:50 +0100
                    Re: An old box running Debian 8 Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2020-11-13 18:10 +0100
    Re: An old box running Debian 8 Long Wind <longwind2@yahoo.com> - 2020-11-11 21:50 +0100
      Re: Celeron vis a vis Pentium (was: An old box running Debian 8) Felix Miata <mrmazda@earthlink.net> - 2020-11-11 22:30 +0100
        Re: Celeron vis a vis Pentium (was: An old box running Debian 8) Long Wind <longwind2@yahoo.com> - 2020-11-12 04:50 +0100
        Re: Celeron vis a vis Pentium Miroslav Skoric <skoric@uns.ac.rs> - 2020-11-13 15:20 +0100
    Re: An old box running Debian 8 Charles Curley <charlescurley@charlescurley.com> - 2020-11-11 22:10 +0100
      Re: An old box running Debian 8 Felix Miata <mrmazda@earthlink.net> - 2020-11-11 22:30 +0100
        Re: An old box running Debian 8 riveravaldez <riveravaldezmail@gmail.com> - 2020-11-12 03:40 +0100
          Re: An old box running Debian 8 Michael Lange <klappnase@freenet.de> - 2020-11-12 10:00 +0100
            Re: An old box running Debian 8 Miroslav Skoric <skoric@uns.ac.rs> - 2020-11-14 17:50 +0100
              Re: An old box running Debian 8 Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2020-11-14 18:50 +0100
                Re: An old box running Debian 8 Charles Curley <charlescurley@charlescurley.com> - 2020-11-14 20:30 +0100
                  Re: An old box running Debian 8 John Hasler <jhasler@newsguy.com> - 2020-11-14 21:50 +0100
                    Re: An old box running Debian 8 Charles Curley <charlescurley@charlescurley.com> - 2020-11-14 22:40 +0100
                      Re: An old box running Debian 8 John Hasler <jhasler@newsguy.com> - 2020-11-14 23:20 +0100
              Re: An old box running Debian 8 Felix Miata <mrmazda@earthlink.net> - 2020-11-14 20:40 +0100
      Re: An old box running Debian 8 Miroslav Skoric <skoric@uns.ac.rs> - 2020-11-12 23:50 +0100
        Re: An old box running Debian 8 Felix Miata <mrmazda@earthlink.net> - 2020-11-13 00:00 +0100
          Re: An old box running Debian 8 Linux-Fan <Ma_Sys.ma@web.de> - 2020-11-13 00:40 +0100
        Re: An old box running Debian 8 Charles Curley <charlescurley@charlescurley.com> - 2020-11-13 01:00 +0100
        Re: An old box running Debian 8 Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-11-13 13:10 +0100
        Re: An old box running Debian 8 Greg Wooledge <wooledg@eeg.ccf.org> - 2020-11-13 13:40 +0100
    Re: An old box running Debian 8 Patrick Bartek <nemommxiv@gmail.com> - 2020-11-13 00:10 +0100
      Re: An old box running Debian 8 Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-11-13 13:10 +0100

Page 3 of 3 — ← Prev page 1 2 [3]

#228656

On Sat, 14 Nov 2020 12:49:05 -0500
Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> wrote:

> In my opinion, mutt is the best mail user agent of all. It's
> also one of the most efficient.

And has the further virtue of not requiring a GUI, only ncurses.

-- 
Does anybody read signatures any more?

https://charlescurley.com
https://charlescurley.com/blog/

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#228659

Charles Curley writes:
>And has the further virtue of not requiring a GUI, only ncurses.

Gnus doesn't even require ncurses.
-- 
John Hasler 
jhasler@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#228660

On Sat, 14 Nov 2020 14:41:40 -0600
John Hasler <jhasler@newsguy.com> wrote:

> Charles Curley writes:
> >And has the further virtue of not requiring a GUI, only ncurses.  
> 
> Gnus doesn't even require ncurses.

True. But it does require emacs. Which in the context of the OP's
requirement, stands for "Eighty Megs And Constantly Swapping" :-)

Jokes aside, GNUS would serve the OP's requirements admirably.

-- 
Does anybody read signatures any more?

https://charlescurley.com
https://charlescurley.com/blog/

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#228662

Charles Curley writes:
> True. But it does require emacs. Which in the context of the OP's
> requirement, stands for "Eighty Megs And Constantly Swapping" :-)

It was "eight Megs and constantly swapping": eight Megs was huge on a
Vax.

In the 90s I ran text-mode Emacs on a 386 box with 16M with no problems.
By current standards text-mode Emacs is *tiny*.  Even GUI Emacs has a
negligible memory footprint compared to any modern browser.
-- 
John Hasler 
jhasler@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#228657

Miroslav Skoric composed on 2020-11-14 17:02 (UTC+0100):

> I understood from this thread that after distro upgrade 
> from 8 to 9 shall work in CLI, and then look for a simple window manager 
> & light mail processor.

I can't imagine why it wouldn't work. Last night I performed a fresh installation
on a relic similar to what yours could be with a dirt cheap or free CPU upgrade to
a Pentium II or III and bringing RAM up to 384M or even 768M or 1024M, depending
on what the board supports. Many old P2 boards came with 3 RAM slots supporting up
to 768M. That's what the board I used constitutes, but with BIOS upgrade also
fully supports Pentium IIIs. Newer Celeron boards with Socket 370 instead of slot I
have seen only have two RAM slots but support at least 1024M RAM.

This was a NET installation initialized by Grub after downloading only the
installation kernel and initrd before starting. Also, in advance, I partitioned
and formatted, and provided an ample swap partition for the installer to use.
Thus I was able to use the GUI installer. As all my PCs are, it's multiboot,
this one with DOS, Windows XP and two old SUSE releases running 2.x kernels.

Note that Trinity Desktop Environment is a full DE, not mere window manager.
Its version 14.0.9 was released just last week. It's developed on and primarily
intended for Debian-based distros.

Also note below the dismal disk I/O. That's because the HD is running on a 50 pin
SCSI-2 HD, which when new, was a lot faster than the IDE disks of its early '90s
era.

# inxi -Cy
CPU:
  Info: Single Core model: Pentium III (Coppermine) bits: 32 type: MCP
  L2 cache: 256 KiB
  Speed: 702 MHz min/max: N/A Core speed (MHz): 1: 702
# inxi -GIMSmay
System:
  Host: s2846 Kernel: 5.9.1-2-default i686 bits: 32 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.1
  Desktop: Trinity R14.0.9 tk: Qt 3.5.0 info: kicker wm: Twin 3.0 dm: TDM
  Distro: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20201111
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: Tyan model: Intel 440BX/GX v: Rev. 4 serial: 00000000
  BIOS: American Megatrends v: 063101 date: 07/15/99
Memory:
  RAM: total: 483.6 MiB used: 138.2 MiB (28.6%)
  Array-1: capacity: 768 MiB slots: 0 EC: N/A max module size: 256 MiB
  Device-1: N/A size: 256 MiB info: double-bank speed: type: N/A
  bus width: N/A total: N/A manufacturer: N/A part-no: N/A serial: N/A
  Device-2: N/A size: N/A info: not installed speed: type: N/A bus width: N/A
  total: N/A manufacturer: N/A part-no: N/A serial: N/A
  Device-3: N/A size: 256 MiB info: double-bank speed: type: N/A
  bus width: N/A total: N/A manufacturer: N/A part-no: N/A serial: N/A
Graphics:
  Device-1: Matrox Systems MGA G400/G450 driver: matrox_w1 v: kernel
  bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 102b:0525
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.9 driver: matrox_w1 note: display driver n/a
  FAILED: mga unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa display ID: :0 screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1280x1024 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 339x271mm (13.3x10.7")
  s-diag: 434mm (17.1")
  Monitor-1: default res: 1280x1024 hz: 77
  OpenGL: renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 11.0.0 128 bits) v: 4.5 Mesa 20.2.1
  compat-v: 3.1 direct render: Yes
Info:...Shell: Bash v: 5.0.18 running in: konsole inxi: 3.1.09
# free
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:         495392      134324       81852        1404      279216      346244
Swap:       4875652         264     4875388
# df /
Filesystem     1K-blocks    Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb7        6460497 1668643   4460436  28% /
# hdparm -t /dev/sdb
/dev/sdb:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  56 MB in  3.01 seconds =  18.61 MB/sec

I have not tried any more with the TDE GUI on this installation than
customizing settings and using Konsole to collect this data, but they were
plenty brisk, in spite of the poor Matrox graphics performance. IMO TDE
qualifies as a lightweight well suited to antiques. After all, it's a fork of
KDE3, which ran well on hardware common when it was forked to TDE a decade
ago, and hasn't been bloated by unnecessary changes in the interim.
-- 
Evolution as taught in public schools, like religion,
	is based on faith, not on science.

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#228607

On 11/11/20 9:43 PM, Charles Curley wrote:

> 
>> I have an old comp (CPU Pentium II Celeron 400 MHz, 224 MB RAM)
>> running ham radio server in Debian 8. It works well in CLI, but very
>> slow after starting GUI. I wonder whether it would be worth to try
>> (if possible at all) to upgrade it to Debian 9. Any experience with
>> such old boxes?
> 
> It is not clear whether you are merely observing that it is slow with a
> GUI running, or whether you would like to have a GUI, and are asking
> for advice specifically there.
> 
> Assuming the latter, what do you want out of a GUI? An absolute minimal
> GUI such as FVWM might serve you well enough, but I would not expect
> miracles. Also consider a lightweight desktop such as XFCE. But I would
> be surprised if that solution helped.
> 

At first, I wondered whether Pentium II Celeron 400 MHz, 224 MB RAM, 
would make it even bootable after upgrading 8 to 9. (Without any GUI, if 
needed to be removed before the upgrade).

And when bootable, what GUI might be workable at best (Mate, Xfce, ...)?
As I said, for nothing much more than occasional Thunderbird, or any 
other compatible mail client that can use the CLI-based ham email server 
(FBB), to process pop3/smtp mails by using copy/paste by mouse click etc.

At this stage (Debian 8) I do that in MATE + Thunderbird. It's slow but 
works. What is not known is whether that would work in Debian 9.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#228609

Miroslav Skoric composed on 2020-11-12 23:01 (UTC+0100):

> At this stage (Debian 8) I do that in MATE + Thunderbird. It's slow but 
> works. What is not known is whether that would work in Debian 9.

Possibly you could boot live media 9 to find out, or if you have enough disk space
available, install a minimal 9 alongside 8.
-- 
Evolution as taught in public schools, like religion,
	is based on faith, not on science.

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#228612

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

Felix Miata writes:

> Miroslav Skoric composed on 2020-11-12 23:01 (UTC+0100):
>
> > At this stage (Debian 8) I do that in MATE + Thunderbird. It's slow but
> > works. What is not known is whether that would work in Debian 9.
>
> Possibly you could boot live media 9 to find out, or if you have enough disk  
> space available, install a minimal 9 alongside 8.

The problem with a live system on limited hardware is often the amount of  
RAM.

I am impressed to read that Debian 8 + Mate + Thunderbird works anything  
near acceptable on the hardware. I am curious about a `free -h` output from  
that Pentium II-style Celeron machine :)

Just for comparison, on my old Acer Travelmate laptop (Debian 10), for GUI  
tasks, I run the i3 window manager. It performs acceptably. Starting urxvt  
also works. But whenever I run a "larger" GUI application like the zathura  
PDF viewer (which is pretty minimalistic compared to a full-blown  
Thunderbird), it gets very slow and uses swap. While I have occasionally run  
it this way, I would not consider it really "working" because basic features  
like scrolling become "unusably" slow.

On the other hand, if you are using Mate now and can consider switching to  
something lighter (Icewm and FVWM were good suggestions I saw in the  
thread), chances are it will continue to run slowly "as it used to" - the  
RAM and CPU saved from the DE may just be enough to compensate for the  
higher resource usage of newer software...

PS/OT: My previous message missed the important signature characters: öö.  
Thus its PGP-signature is unfortunately incorrect :(

HTH
Linux-Fan

öö

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#228613

On Thu, 12 Nov 2020 23:01:19 +0100
Miroslav Skoric <skoric@uns.ac.rs> wrote:

> And when bootable, what GUI might be workable at best (Mate,
> Xfce, ...)? As I said, for nothing much more than occasional
> Thunderbird, or any other compatible mail client that can use the
> CLI-based ham email server (FBB), to process pop3/smtp mails by using
> copy/paste by mouse click etc.
> 
> At this stage (Debian 8) I do that in MATE + Thunderbird. It's slow
> but works. What is not known is whether that would work in Debian 9.

Ah. Consider a non-GUI mail user agent (MUA). Pine and elm are old
standards. heirloom-mailx is a very simple program. The most modern is
mutt. The main thing these will not do is handle HTML mail.

Of those, I would recommend mutt. It uses curses, so you get something
that acts something like a GUI. It is highly flexible and configurable.
Do, however, expect a learning curve.

-- 
Does anybody read signatures any more?

https://charlescurley.com
https://charlescurley.com/blog/

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#228622

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Jo, 12 nov 20, 23:01:19, Miroslav Skoric wrote:
> 
> At first, I wondered whether Pentium II Celeron 400 MHz, 224 MB RAM, would
> make it even bootable after upgrading 8 to 9. (Without any GUI, if needed to
> be removed before the upgrade).
> 
> And when bootable, what GUI might be workable at best (Mate, Xfce, ...)?
> As I said, for nothing much more than occasional Thunderbird, or any other
> compatible mail client that can use the CLI-based ham email server (FBB), to
> process pop3/smtp mails by using copy/paste by mouse click etc.
> 
> At this stage (Debian 8) I do that in MATE + Thunderbird. It's slow but
> works. What is not known is whether that would work in Debian 9.
 
If you insist on a Desktop Environment (as opposed to the Window 
Managers already suggested) you should try LXDE.

For e-mail Claws Mail or Sylpheed are probably the fastest GUI options.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#228624

On Thu, Nov 12, 2020 at 11:01:19PM +0100, Miroslav Skoric wrote:
> At first, I wondered whether Pentium II Celeron 400 MHz, 224 MB RAM, would
> make it even bootable after upgrading 8 to 9. (Without any GUI, if needed to
> be removed before the upgrade).

Yes, it will boot, assuming the upgrade is done successfully.  You are
well above the minimum RAM requirements for Debian 9 (or 10).  IIRC the
minimum RAM requirement is around 80 MB for post-wheezy versions.  It
was 64 MB for wheezy.

> And when bootable, what GUI might be workable at best (Mate, Xfce, ...)?

I would go with a traditional window manager, not a desktop environment.

> At this stage (Debian 8) I do that in MATE + Thunderbird. It's slow but
> works. What is not known is whether that would work in Debian 9.

There's only one way to be sure.  I have no idea how much memory
Thunderbird uses.  It should "work", but if Thunderbird wants more
than 200 MB of RAM, it'll probably swap too much for comfort.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#228610

On Wed, 11 Nov 2020 17:40:50 +0100
Miroslav Skoric <skoric@uns.ac.rs> wrote:

> I have an old comp (CPU Pentium II Celeron 400 MHz, 224 MB RAM)
> running ham radio server in Debian 8. It works well in CLI, but very
> slow after starting GUI. I wonder whether it would be worth to try
> (if possible at all) to upgrade it to Debian 9. Any experience with
> such old boxes?

You are trying to do what we call in the US, a Fool's Errand, that
is, a fruitless undertaking.  If you could upgrade the RAM to 512MB or
even 1 GB, you might get usable performance with Debian 8 and a
lightweight GUI environment or, better yet, a window manager, but
certainly not with GNOME or KDE. Let me give you an example:

About 10 years ago, I installed Debian 7 on an Asus EeePC 900 with a
900MHz Celeron and 512MB RAM. I tried GNOME first, but even then it was
too much a resources behemoth to even work. LXDE was lighter;
however, even with only a browser running, system performance was
slow, but usable, if you were patient. Upgrading RAM to 1GB made all
the difference in the world turning a barely usable system into one
that while not screaming fast was adequate for simple web browsing,
video streaming, email, etc. which was what it was intended for.

So, first, before changing anything else, see if upgrading RAM does any
good with 8.

B 

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#228623

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Jo, 12 nov 20, 15:07:48, Patrick Bartek wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Nov 2020 17:40:50 +0100
> Miroslav Skoric <skoric@uns.ac.rs> wrote:
> 
> > I have an old comp (CPU Pentium II Celeron 400 MHz, 224 MB RAM)
> > running ham radio server in Debian 8. It works well in CLI, but very
> > slow after starting GUI. I wonder whether it would be worth to try
> > (if possible at all) to upgrade it to Debian 9. Any experience with
> > such old boxes?
> 
> You are trying to do what we call in the US, a Fool's Errand, that
> is, a fruitless undertaking.  If you could upgrade the RAM to 512MB or
> even 1 GB, you might get usable performance with Debian 8 and a
> lightweight GUI environment or, better yet, a window manager, but
> certainly not with GNOME or KDE. Let me give you an example:
> 
> About 10 years ago, I installed Debian 7 on an Asus EeePC 900 with a
> 900MHz Celeron and 512MB RAM. I tried GNOME first, but even then it was
> too much a resources behemoth to even work. LXDE was lighter;
> however, even with only a browser running, system performance was
> slow, but usable, if you were patient. Upgrading RAM to 1GB made all
> the difference in the world turning a barely usable system into one
> that while not screaming fast was adequate for simple web browsing,
> video streaming, email, etc. which was what it was intended for.

Fast storage (SSD) would also make a big difference, though it's likely 
that machine has only PATA ports.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser

[toc] | [prev] | [standalone]

Page 3 of 3 — ← Prev page 1 2 [3]

Back to top | Article view | linux.debian.user

csiph-web