- Jan 31, 2001
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It was suprising to find out after much testing that Linux does not offer the same performance on an old machine as a default Windows 98SE installation. Asking for advice on how to best configure Linux for a Pentium 90 with 16MB RAM I was offered several steps:
[*]Recompile the kernel using a reduced configuration that only installs the necessities for that specific machine's hardware
[*]Disable all but the essential services (no httpd, crond, etc.)
[*]Run a minimal window manager such as fvwm2
Trying all of the steps and even more, such as the twm window manager (which is even smaller than fvwm2) and using Opera rather than Netscape, Linux was still painfully slow compared to a default Windows 98SE installation. Windows refreshed so slowly that I could count the seconds (it took two for Opera to refresh). The swapspace was needed even if only running one Opera window in fvwm2 with no other programs, thus slowing things down even further with constant disk access. Win98, on the other hand, could run both IE and AIM without significant slowness or disk access.
Has anyone had better success at running Linux with faster performance than Windows on older hardware? It would be nice if it did, because Linux has a lot of Unixy features that Windows lacks.
[*]Recompile the kernel using a reduced configuration that only installs the necessities for that specific machine's hardware
[*]Disable all but the essential services (no httpd, crond, etc.)
[*]Run a minimal window manager such as fvwm2
Trying all of the steps and even more, such as the twm window manager (which is even smaller than fvwm2) and using Opera rather than Netscape, Linux was still painfully slow compared to a default Windows 98SE installation. Windows refreshed so slowly that I could count the seconds (it took two for Opera to refresh). The swapspace was needed even if only running one Opera window in fvwm2 with no other programs, thus slowing things down even further with constant disk access. Win98, on the other hand, could run both IE and AIM without significant slowness or disk access.
Has anyone had better success at running Linux with faster performance than Windows on older hardware? It would be nice if it did, because Linux has a lot of Unixy features that Windows lacks.