Re: Which flavour for a 2GB RAM laptop?

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Mon, Mar 07, 2022 at 04:06:01PM +0900, 황병희 wrote:
> Ottavio Caruso  writes:
> 
> > One of my memory slot has died, so I am running a Thinkpad with 2GB
> > ram only. I have been told that, even if I put a 4GB ram module in, it
> > won't be as fast as 2x2GB ram (true? Stop me here if I am
> > wrong). Never mind put an 8GB stick; it might not even work.
> >
> > At the moment I'm running a heavily hacked LMDE4 (Buster) with a lot
> > of Mint customisations off. What flavour of Debian should I replace my 
> > LMDE4 with? And does it make any difference? My memory hogs are
> > Chromium and Firefox, the rest is ok.
> 
> Hi, grazie!
> 
> My 1st chromebook(codename: alex)[0] have only 2GB ram. At that time
> (in 2016), i did install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS via Crouton[1] at there the
> chromebook. It was not bad.
> 
> So if you want Debian, Jessie (stable)[2] seems proper to you, i guess. 
> (also it would be good to try xfce ho ho ho ^^^)
> 

XFCE / Mate or Cinnamon all work on my Lenovo Ideapad with 32G disk and 2G RAM.
Web browsing may be a little slower using Firefox - don't open too many tabs.
This with Bullseye (Debian 11).

Please don't use Jessie at this point: it's almost entirely out of support by
anybody. Consider using something completely up to date.

With every good wish, as ever,

Andy Cater


> REFERENCE: [0-2]
> [0]
> 
> [1] 
> [2] 
> 
> Sincerely, Linux fan Byung-Hee
> 
> -- 
> ^고맙습니다 _地平天成_ 감사합니다_^))//
> 

Re: Which flavour for a 2GB RAM laptop?

[황병희]

Ottavio Caruso  writes:

> One of my memory slot has died, so I am running a Thinkpad with 2GB
> ram only. I have been told that, even if I put a 4GB ram module in, it
> won't be as fast as 2x2GB ram (true? Stop me here if I am
> wrong). Never mind put an 8GB stick; it might not even work.
>
> At the moment I'm running a heavily hacked LMDE4 (Buster) with a lot
> of Mint customisations off. What flavour of Debian should I replace my 
> LMDE4 with? And does it make any difference? My memory hogs are
> Chromium and Firefox, the rest is ok.

Hi, grazie!

My 1st chromebook(codename: alex)[0] have only 2GB ram. At that time
(in 2016), i did install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS via Crouton[1] at there the
chromebook. It was not bad.

So if you want Debian, Jessie (stable)[2] seems proper to you, i guess. 
(also it would be good to try xfce ho ho ho ^^^)

REFERENCE: [0-2]
[0]

[1] 
[2] 

Sincerely, Linux fan Byung-Hee

-- 
^고맙습니다 _地平天成_ 감사합니다_^))//

Re: Which flavour for a 2GB RAM laptop?

[David Christensen]

On 3/5/22 02:10, Ottavio Caruso wrote:

On 05/03/2022 00:56, David Christensen wrote:

On 3/4/22 02:47, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
One of my memory slot has died, 



I would retire that computer.


Thanks. Where do I send my bank details for the funding of a new laptop?




so I am running a Thinkpad 



What model/ part number is the Thinkpad?



$ inxi -F && sudo inxi -m
System:    Host: e130 Kernel: 4.19.0-17-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: 
MATE 1.20.4 Distro: LMDE 4 Debbie
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: LENOVO product: 33588QG v: ThinkPad Edge 
E130 serial: 
    Mobo: LENOVO model: 33588QG v: Win8 Pro DPK TPG serial: 
 UEFI: LENOVO v: H4ET98WW (2.58 )

    date: 08/24/2016
Battery:   ID-1: BAT1 charge: 34.3 Wh condition: 57.6/62.2 Wh (93%)
CPU:   Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core i3-3217U bits: 64 type: 
MT MCP L2 cache: 3072 KiB
    Speed: 798 MHz min/max: 800/1800 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 
798 2: 798 3: 798 4: 798
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics driver: i915 
v: kernel
    Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: modesetting 
unloaded: fbdev,vesa resolution: 1366x768~60Hz
    OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Ivybridge Mobile v: 4.2 
Mesa 18.3.6
Audio: Device-1: Intel 7 Series/C216 Family High Definition Audio 
driver: snd_hda_intel

    Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.19.0-17-amd64
Network:   Device-1: Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230 driver: iwlwifi
    IF: wlp3s0 state: up mac: 84:a6:c8:a8:de:be
    Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit 
Ethernet driver: r8169

    IF: enp9s0 state: down mac: 08:9e:01:35:89:ce
    Device-3: Ericsson Business Mobile Networks BV H5321 gw 
Mobile Broadband Driver type: USB

    driver: cdc_acm,cdc_ncm,cdc_wdm
    IF: wwp0s29u1u6i6 state: down mac: 02:15:e0:ec:01:00
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 465.76 GiB used: 285.99 GiB (61.4%)
    ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Hitachi model: HTS725050A7E630 size: 
465.76 GiB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 47.81 GiB used: 17.35 GiB (36.3%) fs: ext4 dev: 
/dev/sda5
    ID-2: /home size: 46.45 GiB used: 26.20 GiB (56.4%) fs: ext4 
dev: /dev/sda8
    ID-3: swap-1 size: 8.08 GiB used: 164.6 MiB (2.0%) fs: swap 
dev: /dev/sda7

Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 47.0 C mobo: 0.0 C
    Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 598
Info:  Processes: 167 Uptime: 15h 46m Memory: 1.73 GiB used: 899.0 
MiB (50.8%) Shell: bash inxi: 3.0.32

Memory:    RAM: total: 1.73 GiB used: 898.5 MiB (50.7%)
    Array-1: capacity: 16 GiB slots: 2 EC: None
    Device-1: ChannelA-DIMM0 size: No Module Installed
    Device-2: ChannelB-DIMM0 size: 2 GiB speed: 1333 MT/s



Is the Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E130 your one and only computer?  If and 
when the other memory socket goes bad, you will be in a tough situation. 
 It would be better to get a working computer now, install Debian, 
migrate your data, and then recycle the E130.



Used equipment is a much better value than new equipment.  I prefer 
computers with Xeon processors, integrated graphics, and ECC memory.



Rack mount servers can be found on eBay starting around US$100 (you 
provide the HDD/SSD and Debian):


https://www.ebay.com/sch/175698/i.html?_nkw=xeon+ecc&_sop=15


Entry-level tower servers with Xeon E3 v5 processors and Intel 
integrated graphics start around US$200, and also work well as desktop 
machines (again, you provide the HDD/SSD and Debian):


https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=xeon+e3-1225+v5+tower&_sop=15


David

Re: Which flavour for a 2GB RAM laptop?

[tomas]

On Sat, Mar 05, 2022 at 10:03:44AM +, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
> On 04/03/2022 14:13, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > Or just ditch the desktop environment altogether and use a
> > honest window manager (e.g. Fvwm
> 
> Is it still around? I used to use it circa 2003...

Yes, of course. It's distributed with Debian. Doesn't change very
much (for me an asset). It does what it has to, I can configure
it as I want -- what's not to like?

Cheers
-- 
t


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Re: Which flavour for a 2GB RAM laptop?

[David Christensen]

On 3/4/22 02:47, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
One of my memory slot has died, 



I would retire that computer.


so I am running a Thinkpad 



What model/ part number is the Thinkpad?

What make/ model/ part number is the processor?

What make/ model/ part number are the hard disk(s) and/or solid state 
drives?



with 2GB ram only. 



What make/ model/ part number are the memory module(s)?


I have been told that, even if I put a 4GB ram module in, it won't 
be as fast as 2x2GB ram (true? Stop me here if I am wrong). 



If the motherboard, chipset, CPU, GPU, etc., support multiple memory 
channels ("dual channel" is common) and you install the correct memory 
modules (e.g. "matched pair"), connected hardware will be able to access 
memory banks in parallel and the computer will perform better (less 
latency, more throughput) .  You want that; the effect is noticeable.




Never mind put an 8GB stick; it might not even work.



The technical manual for your computer should tell you what memory 
modules are supported.  As another reader suggested, you might want to 
"max it out" by installing the biggest, fastest supported memory modules 
in every available memory slot.



At the moment I'm running a heavily hacked LMDE4 (Buster) with a lot of 
Mint customisations off. What flavour of Debian should I replace my 
LMDE4 with? And does it make any difference? My memory hogs are Chromium 
and Firefox, the rest is ok.



I recommend the network install image of Debian Stable:

https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-cd/

debian-11.2.0-amd64-netinst.iso


Be sure to download a checksum file (e.g. SHA256SUMS) and verify the 
checksum of the ISO file after downloading.  If you want to be extra 
careful, download the checksum signature file (e.g. SHA256SUMS.sign) and 
verify the signature.



Burn the ISO to a fast USB flash drive.  Verify the checksum of the 
burned image before booting (one booted, the Debian installer may write 
to the USB flash drive and the checksum will no longer match).



If you select "Install" at the Debian Installer main menu, you should be 
able to choose among various desktop environments (I run Xfce).  If you 
select "expert", you should have even more control.  It is also possible 
to install additional login managers, window managers, desktop 
environments, etc., at a later time.



David

Re: Which flavour for a 2GB RAM laptop?

[Nicholas Geovanis]

On Fri, Mar 4, 2022 at 4:58 AM Christian Britz  wrote:

>
> On 2022-03-04 11:47 UTC+0100, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
> > One of my memory slot has died, so I am running a Thinkpad with 2GB ram
> > only. I have been told that, even if I put a 4GB ram module in, it won't
> > be as fast as 2x2GB ram (true? Stop me here if I am wrong). Never mind
> > put an 8GB stick; it might not even work.
>
> As far as I know this depends on the design / architecture of the
> chipset / motherboard.
>

More specifically, get ahold of the doc for your specific model of
Thinkpad. Lenovo/IBM are better than
average for making it available online. There will be a short section on
RAM configuration.
In general, using interleaving across "banks" should be done with sticks at
identical design frequencies
and sizes. But often there you have a choice of interleaving style.


> > At the moment I'm running a heavily hacked LMDE4 (Buster) with a lot of
> > Mint customisations off. What flavour of Debian should I replace my
> > LMDE4 with? And does it make any difference? My memory hogs are Chromium
> > and Firefox, the rest is ok.
> You should run Debian stable for daily use. If performance is your main
> concern, try one of the light desktop environments (Xfce, LXDE,
> LXQT...). I like the simplicity of LXQT, although I have recently fallen
> in love with Cutefish (not yet in Debian).
>
> Regards,
> Christian
>
> --
> http://www.cb-fraggle.de
>
>

Re: Which flavour for a 2GB RAM laptop?

[Christian Britz]

On 2022-03-04 16:10 UTC+0100, Hans wrote:

> There are also other WM available, which may be faster, like fvwm95, openbox, 
> twm.
amiwm ;-)

-- 
http://www.cb-fraggle.de

Re: Which flavour for a 2GB RAM laptop?

[Hans]

I am a great fan of my old EEEPC, beecause it is tiny and running a long time.

But it is 32-bit, not fast, although I spent him 2GB fast RAM and a SSD.

So I tested with several window managers. There was no number 1 winner, but 
IMO the fastest one was LXDE. Almsot the same speed gave me XFCE (which has a 
little advantage, that it can look like Windows_10).

As LXDE is no more developed, I tries its sucessor, LXQT (a conglomerat of 
RazorQT ans LXDE), which was amazingly just as fast as XFCE (but slower than 
it), but is looking more comfortable than LXDE or XFCE.

Gnome I never tested, because I do not like it personally, but I tested 
Plasma5 (former KDE), and it was still ruunning smooth on my slow netbook. 

However, in Plasma5 I noticed, that the bottom bar is flickering, when I hover 
the mouse over it. This appeared after an update about 2 years ago (guess, 
they changed some code, so it got slower). As this is not a bug at all, I did 
never file it.

So, that is the tests I did. 

How in practice? Well, when I am on the road, I am using often a livefile 
system (here: kali-linux) or the native installed system (here: debian/
bullseye 32-bit), and when I need speed, LXDE ist my first choice, especially 
when running kali. 

For my normal work, when speed does not matter, I am using either LXQT or , 
for comfort and a I am a dinosaur, Plasma5 (you can well work with it, it is 
just 10 percent slower than XFCE).

Conclusion:

If speed is most important: LXDE (maybe sometimes no more available)

If speed is most important and you need Windows_10 look: XFCE

If a good relation between speed and comfort: LXQT

If comfort and some flickering does not matter: Plasma5

There are also other WM available, which may be faster, like fvwm95, openbox, 
twm.

And last but not least, there is TRINITY, which is a modern build of KDE3 (or 
4???), which is running fast and has great comfort.

However, it is not in the debian repo, and it does interfere with Plasma5, but 
it is worth a look. I ran it a while on my EEEPC, but it got interfered with 
Plasma5 (especially kmail), so I deinstalled it. But if you do not want 
install Plasma5, try TRINITY.

Hope this helps!

Best regards

Hans

  



 

Re: Which flavour for a 2GB RAM laptop?

[tomas]

On Fri, Mar 04, 2022 at 05:56:50AM -0800, Peter Ehlert wrote:

[...]

> I keep hearing about Xfce being "light"
> 
> it defiantly is, but I decided to compare it to my personal favorite Mate
> 
> Two fresh netinstalls, same machine, same SSD drive. Xfce and Mate desktops
> 
> xfce:  774 MIB ram used .. 4 GIB / space used
> mate:  719 MIB ram used .. 6 GIB / space used
> mate*:  722 MIB ram used .. 6 GIB / space used
> 
> *Mate with the mate-desktop-environment-extras metapackage

Or just ditch the desktop environment altogether and use a
honest window manager (e.g. Fvwm ;-)

USER   PID %CPU %MEMVSZ   RSS TTY  STAT START   TIME COMMAND
[...]
root  1867  0.0  0.0   8460  2096 ?Ss   Mar03   0:00 /usr/bin/xdm
root  1885  0.8  0.3 758372 55104 tty7 Ssl+ Mar03  10:24  \_ 
/usr/lib/xorg/Xorg :0 vt7 -nolisten tcp -auth 
/var/lib/xdm/authdir/authfiles/A:0-QCuTrm
root  2088  0.0  0.0  16052  8228 ?Ss   Mar03   0:00  \_ -:0
tomas 2433  0.0  0.0  80564 14812 ?Ss   Mar03   0:05  \_ 
x-window-manager
tomas 2484  0.0  0.0   5964  2692 ?Ss   Mar03   0:00  \_ 
/usr/bin/ssh-agent x-window-manager
tomas 2485  0.0  0.0   5612  1324 ?SMar03   0:00  \_ 
/usr/lib/fvwm/2.6.8/FvwmCommandS 8 5 /home/tomas/.fvwm/config 0 8
tomas 2486  0.0  0.0  76212 11384 ?SMar03   0:00  \_ 
/usr/lib/fvwm/2.6.8/FvwmButtons 10 5 /home/tomas/.fvwm/config 0 8
tomas 2487  0.0  0.0  76184 12340 ?SMar03   0:00  \_ 
/usr/lib/fvwm/2.6.8/FvwmPager 11 4 none 0 8 0 0

Yes, that's 15 MB RSS for the window manager, roughly 45 MB counting
in its minions :-)

That's less than one-tenth of one of the many firefox's sprawling
tentacles...

Cheers
-- 
t


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Re: Which flavour for a 2GB RAM laptop?

[Eric S Fraga]

On Friday,  4 Mar 2022 at 05:56, Peter Ehlert wrote:
> xfce:  774 MIB ram used .. 4 GIB / space used
> mate:  719 MIB ram used .. 6 GIB / space used
> mate*:  722 MIB ram used .. 6 GIB / space used

stumpwm: 86 MB, 1.3 GB ;-)

-- 
Eric S Fraga with org 9.5.2 in Emacs 29.0.50 on Debian 11.2

Re: Which flavour for a 2GB RAM laptop?

[Peter Ehlert]

On 3/4/22 02:58, Christian Britz wrote:


On 2022-03-04 11:47 UTC+0100, Ottavio Caruso wrote:

One of my memory slot has died, so I am running a Thinkpad with 2GB ram
only. I have been told that, even if I put a 4GB ram module in, it won't
be as fast as 2x2GB ram (true? Stop me here if I am wrong). Never mind
put an 8GB stick; it might not even work.

As far as I know this depends on the design / architecture of the
chipset / motherboard.


At the moment I'm running a heavily hacked LMDE4 (Buster) with a lot of
Mint customisations off. What flavour of Debian should I replace my
LMDE4 with? And does it make any difference? My memory hogs are Chromium
and Firefox, the rest is ok.

You should run Debian stable for daily use. If performance is your main
concern, try one of the light desktop environments (Xfce, LXDE,
LXQT...).


I keep hearing about Xfce being "light"

it defiantly is, but I decided to compare it to my personal favorite Mate

Two fresh netinstalls, same machine, same SSD drive. Xfce and Mate desktops

xfce:  774 MIB ram used .. 4 GIB / space used
mate:  719 MIB ram used .. 6 GIB / space used
mate*:  722 MIB ram used .. 6 GIB / space used

*Mate with the mate-desktop-environment-extras metapackage

I did not stress test either but the apparent speed was the same


I like the simplicity of LXQT, although I have recently fallen
in love with Cutefish (not yet in Debian).

Regards,
Christian

Re: Which flavour for a 2GB RAM laptop?

[Richard Owlett]

On 03/04/2022 04:47 AM, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
One of my memory slot has died, so I am running a Thinkpad with 2GB ram 


I suspect the specific model of Thinkpad may be relevant.
HTH

only. I have been told that, even if I put a 4GB ram module in, it won't 
be as fast as 2x2GB ram (true? Stop me here if I am wrong). Never mind 
put an 8GB stick; it might not even work.


At the moment I'm running a heavily hacked LMDE4 (Buster) with a lot of 
Mint customisations off. What flavour of Debian should I replace my 
LMDE4 with? And does it make any difference? My memory hogs are Chromium 
and Firefox, the rest is ok.


Thanks, merci, grazie.

Re: Which flavour for a 2GB RAM laptop?

[Christian Britz]

On 2022-03-04 11:47 UTC+0100, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
> One of my memory slot has died, so I am running a Thinkpad with 2GB ram 
> only. I have been told that, even if I put a 4GB ram module in, it won't 
> be as fast as 2x2GB ram (true? Stop me here if I am wrong). Never mind 
> put an 8GB stick; it might not even work.

As far as I know this depends on the design / architecture of the
chipset / motherboard.

> At the moment I'm running a heavily hacked LMDE4 (Buster) with a lot of 
> Mint customisations off. What flavour of Debian should I replace my 
> LMDE4 with? And does it make any difference? My memory hogs are Chromium 
> and Firefox, the rest is ok.
You should run Debian stable for daily use. If performance is your main
concern, try one of the light desktop environments (Xfce, LXDE,
LXQT...). I like the simplicity of LXQT, although I have recently fallen
in love with Cutefish (not yet in Debian).

Regards,
Christian

-- 
http://www.cb-fraggle.de