From: damien@b63519 (Damien Neil) Subject: Re: Coherent or Minix??? Date: 19 Mar 1993 14:33:34 GMT
davidh@towers.rn.com (David Holland) writes:
: dpn2@po.CWRU.Edu (Damien P. Neil) writes:
: >I currently am running X on my 25MHz 486/SX with 4MB RAM using Linux, and
: >have had no problems. It _does_ page quite a bit, but it is very usable.
: >--
:
: You must have a fairly fast disk controller then.. Otherwise the
: paging that's probably happening would kill the system. Interactive
: Systems Corperation Unix v3.01, requires a minimum of 8Megs, to even
: think about running its X11R4 server. And then its still easy to make it
: die a swapping death, but it is usable.
Actually, I have a very slow controller. I don't know what you mean by
paging 'killing' the system, but the only effect I see on mine is a bit
of delay when switching between tasks. For example, if I've been working
in x11emacs, and I decide to switch over to an xterm, the system will page
for about half a second when I touch the mouse and for a second or so more
when I start typing. Large programs (Nethack for X comes to mind) are
nasty -- things can begin swapping in normal operation.
All in all, however, X is completely usable. It would most likely be quite
better if I used the mono server, but I've become addicted to color. :-)
The only major problem that I have is that running at ~1056x798 makes me
wish that I had a bigger monitor...