--- Phil Deane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Folks > > I am getting ready to renstall mandrake after > getting this heap of junk pc > working again. I am convinced i should be a beta > tester, because if Phil can > install it without breaking it, it must be a solid > piece of programming :) > > Anyway I was reading an interview, or an excerpt of > one with Linus who said > that with the 2.4.* kernals you REALLY needed twice > as much swap space as > you have RAM( as oppesed to before where they > reccomended it but you could > do with less). I have 320mb, so do i need 640MB > swap? I am installing on a > drive that only has 2500MB and that would be a big > chunk, I had about 150MB, > should i have more? >
Basically the VM in 2.4 is broke. No in fact it is REALLY broke but its getting better. Basically you will find that without double your ram as swap space bad things will happen with regards to swapping. However you have 320mb of ram, do you really need swap? My advice is that if you arent running anything that really eats memory, (that doesnt include things like gimp which handle their own swapping) you can probably do without swap and your machine will probably be a little faster since the vm attempts to swap out as much as possible to keep as much ram free as possible This works very well in some respects as when you have a machine running lots of seperate applications such as a windowing system with lots of windows inactive they get swapped out. Its bad however when you have to wait for an application to get swapped in again. You don't need 640mb of swap. Your machine will just work slightly better if you do. If you go for 150mb swap, try putting a swap-off swap-on command in a cron script if you leave your pc on for a lot of time, as i've heard reports of that making things better. /me shrugs shoulders. > Also I have trolled the howtos and the docs but dont > seem to find what i > need. Basically I am looking to install with as > little space being used as > possible. On my last attempt (apart from breaking > the machine) I managed to > get it down to about 900-1GIG by removing all the > games and all the the > windo managers except KDE which was quite good i > thought. The problem is i > could probably reduce it more if i knew which libs i > needed. For example i > usually install all the glibc files, because i dont > know which does what and > dont want to be missng somthing, same goes for perl, > samba, and evey other > think i need. > Debian/slackware can be good for this since it starts off with a very small distro which you build from. I was once told as ageneral rule that when your installing something if you don't know what it is - dont install it. Most installers can handle dependancies, iirc mandrake has a button called automatic dependancies which when toggled will select the applications required by other apps automagically. So. when mandrake presents you with the groups of applications deselect everything, then go into individual package selection and unselect everything that isnt in the base installation - then go back and select the applications which you use, that way you should get a very small system with kde, and the apps you use, libraries which are needed will be dropped in by the installer. Make sure you select your favorite config tools, an editor, and gcc,glibc,make,and binutils. (they are usually standard in the base package) You should be able to get your basic minimal system down to < 50mb definatly <100mb. Once you install kde you should still have a system <500mb with your applications. > How do you know exactly what you need? Is there a > definative list somewhere? > Do you need any of the dlevel files? devel files are basically used for compiling applications. iirc they are the header files for the compiled dynamic libraries which gcc will link against when you compile an application. if you use rpms you will very rarely need them. Only install them when you need them. > > My basic requirements is to have a fully bootable > machine with x using KDE > which i can install thinghs with no problem, so i > onbviously need compilers, > I am not one for games, I want to be able to write > cd's using a GUI in > X(wave using DAO), I want to be able to check email > (8 differnt pop > accounts) and read newsgroups (2 different > accounts). Make webpages, and to > upload them, once i get some network cards i want to > network 2 pcs for > internet sharing, and just generally enjoy trying > out the new distro. > > If anyone can help point me in the right direction i > would be grateful. > Try installing the very minimum system and then installing the applications you need on top of it. They wil tell you which dependancies you need to satisfy from then you can use rpm to install them from the cd HTH David > TIA > > Phil Deane > http://www.MiracleExpress.force9.co.uk > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > http://www.lug.org.uk > http://www.linuxportal.co.uk > http://www.linuxjob.co.uk > http://www.linuxshop.co.uk > -------------------------------------------------------------------- ===== "Artificial Intelligence is no match for human stupitity!" __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail! http://promo.yahoo.com/videomail/ -------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.lug.org.uk http://www.linuxportal.co.uk http://www.linuxjob.co.uk http://www.linuxshop.co.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------
