New toys and SPEED!
I need to make updating my blog part of my normal routine - tricky, as I'm pressed for time these days...well, that's not exactly true, I'm pressed for kid-free time. What can I say? They come first. Writing complex articles, programming and things of that nature take concentration, and I've calculated that the kids don't let me get more than 20 minutes in on any project with out an interruption that totally scrambles my attention. This means that my projects back up and must be squeezed into that time frame after the kids are in bed and before I hit the sack myself. If I go over and stay up later, I pay for it the following day and end up even less productive...
Anyway, over the past month or so, a few minutes at a time it seems, I've started to use IceWM (Ice Window Manager) on this old laptop. This Pentium2 box runs at a whopping 300Mhz and has 128 megs of RAM. My Linux distribution of choice these days is Kanotix, a wonderful Knoppix derivative which is meant, unlike Knoppix itself, to be an installable OS. A main difference is that Kanotix uses Debian Unstable, rather then a mixed system. Knoppix is cool for running from CD and showing your non-Linux buddies what Linux can do, but as an installed OS, it gives headaches with software upgrades.
BTW, if all of this sounds like gibberish to the reader, fear not! In future articles, either here or at useless-knowledge.com, I'll elaborate on Linux, Knoppix and the LiveCDs and so forth.
Kanotix is great and comes with a recent version of KDE, 3.4. It's upgradeble to 3.5, which I've done. KDE is amazing but it's a bloated beast. It's the most XP like GUI for Linux, in my humble opinion, but it's by no means a mere clone; it uses the best ideas from many GUIs, including BeOS, MACs, XP, etc. Contrary to popular myth, KDE runs plenty fast on old machines, provided you have the RAM.
And, this I do not - 128 megs just isn't enough to run a modern KDE system well without lots of swapping.
My challenge, then, was to find a suitable replacement that would run WELL on this old crate. You've heard, if you've heard anything about Linux, that Linux runs well on old hardware. It does, and one reason is because you have a choice of GUI. Unlike Windows, in Linux, you can have XP-class support for hardware, but use a lighter, Windows2000 style GUI. In other words, nothing really prevents you from installing 2000 onto an older PC, but then you lose some of the hardware support that XP has for new devices. Sometimes manufacturers will make drivers for old versions of Windows, but this isn't certain. Even some software requires XP. And of course XP has other enhancements and such which are tied to the GUI. If you use something older in the Windows line, you lose key features.
These things are modular in Linux. The kernel is the meat of the OS, the system that is between you and the hardware. The GUI is simply another application sitting on top. This means that the ability of the OS to work with hardware is independent of what GUI you have, allowing you to run an ultra-modern OS which can use the newest devices, large hard drives and all the rest while using a fast and light GUI. Another difference is that these other GUIs are still being updated - these things are produced in parallel. Some had their start literally decades ago, yet most have a Windows-like Start menu in the lower-left corner, for example. Most are themable, and can be made to look like OSX or XP or KDE. Currently, I have an XP-like theme.
My setup uses IceWM, as I've said, and rox-filer for the file manager. This is crucial! You can actually run KDE's default file manager (and any KDE application, for that matter) without running the entire KDE desktop, however, some parts of the KDE framework will be loaded and this eats RAM. What do I mean by framework? Those parts of the KDE system that allow for interprocess communication and embedding - loading up a graphic or a text editor into the file manager "itself" for example. Part of my challenge, therefore, was to find suitable replacements for all of the KDE apps that I've grown to love, and the file manager is tops here - I LOVE the KDE file manager.
Rox-filer seems simplistic and deceptive at first, but I've been able to make it conform to my will! It meets my criteria for a good file manager, and, importantly, is easy to enhance. In future posts, I'll give details for my setup, why I chose rox, how I enhanced rox and so forth.
I can now have Firefox, a shell and rox running under IceWM and still have over 60 megs of RAM free! Avoiding constant swap is crucial for a computing experience to feel fast and responsive. This old laptop literally feels like a new toy now.
Anyway, over the past month or so, a few minutes at a time it seems, I've started to use IceWM (Ice Window Manager) on this old laptop. This Pentium2 box runs at a whopping 300Mhz and has 128 megs of RAM. My Linux distribution of choice these days is Kanotix, a wonderful Knoppix derivative which is meant, unlike Knoppix itself, to be an installable OS. A main difference is that Kanotix uses Debian Unstable, rather then a mixed system. Knoppix is cool for running from CD and showing your non-Linux buddies what Linux can do, but as an installed OS, it gives headaches with software upgrades.
BTW, if all of this sounds like gibberish to the reader, fear not! In future articles, either here or at useless-knowledge.com, I'll elaborate on Linux, Knoppix and the LiveCDs and so forth.
Kanotix is great and comes with a recent version of KDE, 3.4. It's upgradeble to 3.5, which I've done. KDE is amazing but it's a bloated beast. It's the most XP like GUI for Linux, in my humble opinion, but it's by no means a mere clone; it uses the best ideas from many GUIs, including BeOS, MACs, XP, etc. Contrary to popular myth, KDE runs plenty fast on old machines, provided you have the RAM.
And, this I do not - 128 megs just isn't enough to run a modern KDE system well without lots of swapping.
My challenge, then, was to find a suitable replacement that would run WELL on this old crate. You've heard, if you've heard anything about Linux, that Linux runs well on old hardware. It does, and one reason is because you have a choice of GUI. Unlike Windows, in Linux, you can have XP-class support for hardware, but use a lighter, Windows2000 style GUI. In other words, nothing really prevents you from installing 2000 onto an older PC, but then you lose some of the hardware support that XP has for new devices. Sometimes manufacturers will make drivers for old versions of Windows, but this isn't certain. Even some software requires XP. And of course XP has other enhancements and such which are tied to the GUI. If you use something older in the Windows line, you lose key features.
These things are modular in Linux. The kernel is the meat of the OS, the system that is between you and the hardware. The GUI is simply another application sitting on top. This means that the ability of the OS to work with hardware is independent of what GUI you have, allowing you to run an ultra-modern OS which can use the newest devices, large hard drives and all the rest while using a fast and light GUI. Another difference is that these other GUIs are still being updated - these things are produced in parallel. Some had their start literally decades ago, yet most have a Windows-like Start menu in the lower-left corner, for example. Most are themable, and can be made to look like OSX or XP or KDE. Currently, I have an XP-like theme.
My setup uses IceWM, as I've said, and rox-filer for the file manager. This is crucial! You can actually run KDE's default file manager (and any KDE application, for that matter) without running the entire KDE desktop, however, some parts of the KDE framework will be loaded and this eats RAM. What do I mean by framework? Those parts of the KDE system that allow for interprocess communication and embedding - loading up a graphic or a text editor into the file manager "itself" for example. Part of my challenge, therefore, was to find suitable replacements for all of the KDE apps that I've grown to love, and the file manager is tops here - I LOVE the KDE file manager.
Rox-filer seems simplistic and deceptive at first, but I've been able to make it conform to my will! It meets my criteria for a good file manager, and, importantly, is easy to enhance. In future posts, I'll give details for my setup, why I chose rox, how I enhanced rox and so forth.
I can now have Firefox, a shell and rox running under IceWM and still have over 60 megs of RAM free! Avoiding constant swap is crucial for a computing experience to feel fast and responsive. This old laptop literally feels like a new toy now.
posted by Frederick Smith @ 5:42 AM
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