From: kfogel@occs.cs.oberlin.edu (Karl Fogel) Subject: Re: Can X run with only 4 megs RAM? Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 14:35:02 GMT
In article <Dec.13.14.03.44.1992.2074@telerobo.rutgers.edu> roskos@telerobo.rutgers.edu (roskos) writes:
Wow. I have been using 4 Meg of RAM on a 33MHz 386 with a 15Meg swap
partition (like to play it safe with swap space :-) without any real
performance troubles so far. I can have 2 xterms, emacs, xdvi, and an
xconq game going, and bringing different windows up is a matter of a
few seconds at the most, often only a second or two. I have been
running Xfree86 in 800x600 (color) physical resolution with a virtual
screen of 1024x768 (my card has 1 Meg of RAM, making the virtual
scrolling nice and quick. And with all that I have running, I must be
swapping quite a bit. I am a relative newbie, but I don't think that
from what I have seen, 4Meg of RAM is too big a problem.
--Ed Roskos, roskos@caip.rutgers.edu
Huh! I have nearly the same config: 4 megs RAM, 386/40 (AMD),
16 megs swap, and I'm running in 640 by 480, color. By all counts, my
X should be even faster than Ed's! But if I had 2 xterms, emacs, xdvi,
and anything else running, the swap time would be unbearable! I never
open more than 4 windows of anything now, and if I run Xv, or xdvi, I
expect things to take a long time. Starting up xdvi or xv can require
more than one minute, when xemacs is running as well! Compilations
take much longer in X... in short, why is my system so much slower
than his? It's still quite useable, and I love it, but what the heck
is going on here? I have heard so many different reports of X speeds
from Linuxers, and I can't see why there should be such a wide range
of timings, especially as they don't necessarily make "faster" systems
look any faster in reality!
Any ideas?