System requirements! Do i have them?

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hello!

I’m new here and can’t wait to try opensuse. i’ve read on this site that my computer is enough but i wanted live feedback and honest opinions!

The why: I’ve been playing around with ubuntu, ubuntu studio, xubuntu… and well now i’m trying. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an awesome distro… it just don’t seem to fit my needs… or more exactly my pc(he hates it with passing by crashing softwares… alot).

The very old beast:

P3 1GHZ
512M of ram(asus board won’t take more haha)
Geforce2 MX 440
Sound Blaster 128bit(stop laughing already!)

So?.. What do you guys think? Will it survive opensuse?

I’m wondering if i should have fun with 11.2 milestone 1(at least i could contribute by itesting) or if i should try 11.1 .

I’ve looked around the forum a bit and read some of the other members posts. I am quite impress with the way the community acts around here. People seem friendly and very professional.

I really hope opensuse runs well on my machine. Because it looks dashing and i won’t even start on yast(didn’t try it yet but i like what i read).

Thank you in advance for any feedback or comments.

Kemeros

#2

Sysreqs - openSUSE

You can try suse from a live cd, but install for you (and I would advise the same for anyone really) use the DVD.

You can find info that users have reported on hardware here:
Hardware - openSUSE

You should be fine. Though you could get better performance by using one of the ‘other’ desktops during install: xfce
Installation/11.1 DVD Install - openSUSE

#3

caf4926 wrote:

>
> ‘Sysreqs - openSUSE’ (http://en.opensuse.org/Sysreqs)
>
> You can try suse from a live cd, but install for you (and I would
> advise the same for anyone really) use the DVD.
>
> You can find info that users have reported on hardware here:
> ‘Hardware - openSUSE’ (http://en.opensuse.org/Hardware)
>
> You should be fine. Though you could get better performance by using
> one of the ‘other’ desktops during install: xfce
> ‘Installation/11.1 DVD Install - openSUSE’ (http://tinyurl.com/94fha9)

Second caf4926’s comments - I have a couple of old Dell gx1xx boxes with
similar (or even slower) processors and 512mB that run specific tasks -
like a DB2 server - and they do fine. You’ll never mistake them for fast,
but even with KDE running they do the job and as file servers they service
the LAN with response similar to the more modern multi-core boxes. The
advice about xfce is good - most any command line ops are respectably fast
but extensive graphic interfaces like KDE (especially KDE4!) or Gnome seem
to have as a core purpose the transformation of a reasonably fast machine
into a dog. Part of the trick is to manage your usage so that the swap
file is hit as little as possible also.

–
Will Honea

#4

It should do fine with Opensuse, but I would install the Gnome version as it might be a bit better right now for older systems.

#5

I have openSUSE-11.1 running on my mother’s PC. Its a Dell Dimension-2100 with 1.1 GHz CPU and 512MB of RAM. Her PC has specifications similar to your PCs. She is running KDE-3.5.10.

My athlon-1100 (w/1GB of RAM), running openSUSE-11.1 had an AGP GeForce2 MX440 (I temporary replaced the Mx440 with a nVidia 8400GS, but I’m about to put the AGP GeForce2 MX440 back in). The extra memory means more applications can be run at once, and software updates are quicker. It is running KDE-3.5.10.

Our old family laptop, a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo M7400 with a 1.4GHz celeron and 512MB of RAM (until today that is, when we removed one of the 256MB RAM banks and put in a 1GB RAM bank, to give the laptop 1.25GB of RAM). … Its running openSUSE-10.3. Updating the memory to day, my wife and I immediately noted software updates are much quicker (with the additional memory) and that more applications can be run at once. Still, we ran this laptop with openSUSE installed (from 9.3, to 10.1, to 10.3, to 11.1) with only 512MB of RAM since the weekend we purchased the laptop well over 4 years ago. It is now running KDE-3.5.7.

So, to answer your question, yes, your old PC should be able to run openSUSE-11.1. If you like KDE3, I recommend you go for the KDE-3.5.10 that comes with openSUSE.

Some openSUSE concepts:
Concepts - openSUSE

The “trick” will be getting openSUSE to install. If you can install from the DVD, it will be easy. But if you have to install from the liveCD, you may need to do a text install, as 512MB is borderline for liveCD installation.

After you get openSUSE installed and up and running, here is some information on getting your multimedia updated: openSUSE Forums - View Single Post - setting up multimedia on openSUSE-11.1

And please do not forget to read our installation stickie:
NEWBIES - Suse-11.1 Pre-installation – PLEASE READ - openSUSE Forums

#6

I have it running on a compaq 2.4ghz with 256MB ram (KDE 3.5) though.

#7

I( have found it funny that all this time people were talking about how great KDE4 is because its supposed to use less memory…
But this is complete @$%#$^ from personal experience

#8

I have not read that. More specifically, I have not read that "all this time people were talking … because it was supposed to use less memory ". Not in the slightest. I know there was an expressed desire to reduce the memory foot print of the code, but my having been on the periphery of many software projects over the years, I also know one needs to take the implementation of such wishes (of reduced memory foot prints) with lots of salt. Linux desktop software is no exception.

What I read was KDE3 simply was (and is) no longer maintainable.

If ever one wished to have a KDEx desktop, that could be maintained and enhanced in the future, then a re-write of the code was needed. Sadly, KDE3 no longer “cuts it” in that regard.

Having stated that, I did run KDE-4.1.3 on my sandbox PC (athlon-1100 w/1 GB RAM and MX-440 graphics) for a number of months. I did not notice any drastic slow down. Rather my observations were it was neither faster nor slower than KDE-3.5.10. I do think KDE-4 was (and still is) buggy in some respects, but thats my personal opinion. Fortunately the improvements that are constantly being made on KDE4 are turning it in to a good desktop.

#9

Interesting read here
The LXF Benchmark: Desktop environments :: Linux Format :: The website of the UK’s best-selling Linux magazine