Linux on old laptop - still trying...

[Ben Scott]

On 6/6/06, Paul Lussier <p.lussier at comcast.net> wrote:
>> once I trimmed out a little of the extra crud... in particular
>> switching to a low-demand X window manager helped.
>
> This is a good idea even on modern systems.  Gnome and KDE are huge
> resource hogs ...

  Indeed.  Until last month, my main home PC was a 1200 MHz Athlon
with 256 MB of RAM.  Hardly a screamer by today's standards, but not
horrible.  I had been using GNOME or KDE for some time, on various
iterations of Red Hat Linux/Fedora Core.  I finally got fed up with
both, built FVWM from source, and switched back to FVWM.  I was amazed
at how much faster X started, and how more responsive it felt once
running.

> ... which don't really add anything useful, IMO.

  If you're like me and don't want or need a GUI file manager or icons
on the desktop or all that other stuff, that stuff really is just a
waste of RAM.  I suppose there are those who want that kind of thing.
Me, I'll stick with my trusty screen full of xterm's.  :)

-- Ben