On 04/03/12 21:51, alan c wrote: > (new team member here......) > > I had a Pentium II - 400 PC holding up some shelves (literally) and > heard the call for low spec PCS. > > Am I correct in thinking that the PII chipset will necessarily be non > pae? And is the objective of this sort of test that the Lubuntu kernel > is pae compatible, and does it work on the ancient PCs? > > My PII 400Mhz Pc was running Ubuntu 7.04 (and win 98) using 281MB RAM > total, and I reduced that to > 128MB (PC133, CL3) ram for the test. > > I used a 32 bit alternate CD Lubuntu beta1, and the CD self check in > the PC passed ok, verifying also the CD drive. > > I used manual directed install, continuing the PC existing > configuration as a dual boot with Windows 98. Wired ethernet. > > The install went quite normally as far as I could see. > > This install process took about 2 hours 10 minutes. > > The PC then booted ok, took just over 3 minutes to get to login > request and a further 5 or so minutes to show a completed desktop. > Subsequent startups might possibly go faster, I have not yet tried that. > > However, a very significant thing occurred soon after startup and this > was that, for a solid two and half hours, the PC was almost literally > un usable because of a constant activity. > > My guess is that it was maybe an indexing of updates status, I am not > sure. However, I managed to view task manager and for the whole of > this period the CPU as maxed at 100%, the memory indication was almost > constant at 109MB out of 116MB indicated, and the hard drive access > light was full on with obvious continuous hard drive activity. > > After the two and half hours it fell away and the quiescent values are > cpu 3%, memory 53MB of 116MB. > > A rapid and continuous movement of the mouse cursor takes the cpu up > to near 30% - this is the low resource machine speaking of course. > > What struck me was how impractical it would be to attempt an install > in this machine with any normal expectations of the post install > situation, or maybe other tasks also. > I have not yet attempted updates but it would sensibly be an overnight > job. > > I wonder if there is a way of reducing the priority of the update (? > if that is what it is) indexing here? Or maybe giving (me) some > control over when the indexing is to be done, or its priority. > Intuitively, the machine is not usable at this stage. So, many users > would simply write it off. I do not know if more ram will help, it is > something for later? > > I have not done further checks such as confirm that the swap partition > is in place and apparently normal, but the install configuration > seemed ok. Swap is (should be) 370MB. > > Summary so far: it does install ok, but the resources are totally > consumed for hours initially following install and re start. > > Other timings after the initial dust has settled: > > File manager appears in 13 seconds (cpu 100%) > web browser chrome 1 min 42 initial startup and 1 min subsequent. > Most of this time seems to be spent getting the Google sign up pages > ready, because the homepage (now set to www.google.co.uk) refreshes in > 6 seconds by itself. If Google encumber chrome browser with a > crapware sign up log in page, then in a PC like this is it a lead > balloon. Of course, maybe the user wants to sign in, but this is a low > resource PC and could be on a low speed network etc. (?) I dont know > how firefox runs in these conditions yet. > > I do not know enough about chrome browser to know yet how to make it > remember that I do *not* want to be asked to sign in.
Further: Chrom browser now accepts use without a sign on. With no sign in screen, just a home page of www.google.co.uk, it starts in 55 seconds. (then a subsequent search in google for distrowatch, then) going to distrowatch took about 45 seconds, again cpu limited I think. Generally this machine looks as if it is cpu limited. -- Ubuntu user #10391 Linux user #360648 -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-qa Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-qa More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
