[LBo] Distros...

[Tim]

On Mon May 7 2007 10:15, Douglas Orchard wrote:
> > Allen wrote:
> > > Hi gang,
> > >
> > > The questions I have are:
> > >
> > >     1) Xubuntu says a swap of 1 gig, but the old formula I
> > >        remember is 2x installed memory. I have a gig of
> > >        memory so should I really use a 2 gig swap?
> >
> > It's an 'old' formula because it's just that. It works good for 256MB or
> > so, but with 1GB or more of memory, it all depends on what you are
> > doing. I've seen a Kubuntu installation run fine in a laptop with 512MB
> > and no swap at all. Over time, you'll figure out the amount of memory
> > you usually will be using.
>
> I would look at how big the harddrive is and what can you spare for
> swap.  Use "top" or similar to see how much memory is being used by all
> the simultaneous programs.  If it is nearly 3Gb the 1Gb of ram and 2Gb
> of swap is good. If it is less than 512Mb then 2Gb of swap is excessive.
> Many programs use some swap, even if they dont need to, so 512Mb swap is
> probably the minimum.
>
> > >     2) Xubuntu says only other partition needed one with a
> > >        mount point of /. Is this really the way to go or
> > >        should I have a partition for /boot as well? If so
> > >        how big, 128 meg?
> >
> > That's correct. All that is needed is / partition. I usually add a /home
> > as well, and /data or something is not a bad idea. /boot is not needed
> > as most laptop system bios' will not have the 1024 cylinder issue that
> > required a very small bootable partition.
>
> Theoretically / is all that is needed but for crash recovery I use the
> following:
> /
> /boot (mounted "RO")
> /home (all my docs, data, personalised config files, go here)
> /var (/var/tmp and apt-get stuff goes here. If it fills up and chokes it
> wont crash the whole system.)
>
> > >     3) Back to the distro question. I do a lot of information
> > >        test logs. Does this make sense? If so is Xubuntu a
> > >        good choice? Others I've looked at include PCLinuxOS,
> > >        rPath, gNewSense, BLAG and DSL. I've even thought of
> > >        going with PC-BSD. My real goal is stability with a
> > >        minimum of fuss and constant fiddling with updates.
> > >        Suggestions?
> >
> > Distros with package management such as Debian or Ubuntu or derivatives
> > make updates almost a non-issue. The former uses older packages for
> > stability, and the latter has a 6 month cycle for new releases.
>
> If stability is an issue use Debian (Stable) and just do the security
> updates.
>
>
> --
> Douglas Orchard
>
> Registered Linux User
> # 206698

I'm running mepis 6.5 with 1gb memory and 2gb swap file, here what top says I 
am using:

Mem:   1034952k total,   836612k used,   198340k free,    86020k buffers
Swap:  2096440k total,    61736k used,  2034704k free,   210536k cached

Main applications currently running are Kontact, Firefox (8 tabs open), gFTP, 
Konsole, Gkrellm

Hope this helps

Tim

I rarely start using large amounts of swap file, I have to have two desktops 
open with a couple of firefoxes running with around 6 tabs on each desktop 
open, along with digikam, gimp and quanta