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  • From: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] browser memory usage lower in BL2, and XP (!)
  • Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2011 16:45:08 +0000 (UTC)

I tested recent Opera, Seamonkey and Firefox in 384 and then 128MB RAM in Puppy Linux 4.31 and MicroXP 0.83.

Puppy Linux
384MB 128MB
Opera 11 - about:blank 80MB 25MB
youtube playing 100MB 54MB
On a 1GHz computer, youtube was quite usable (very slight jerkiness
and cpu usage up to 104% sometimes). Opera obviously adjusts its memory usage (cache?) for low-ram computers and is usable in 128MB with swap.
Puppy Linux was not loaded into RAM, and it used 23MB.

Firefox 3.6 youtube playing 125MB 125MB?

It took a very long time to load and unload Firefox 3, with memory usage running about 200%, and when it attempted to play, 250%. Impossibly jerky.

Conclusion: If you use linux on a 128MB computer don't use Firefox, use Opera (or Seamonkey 1 gtk1).

MicroXP - uses 65MB not running programs (more than Puppy)

384MB 128MB total RAM

Opera 11 speed dial 97MB 42MB
about:blank 88MB 43MB
youtube home 94MB 60MB
youtube play 120MB 83MB

Seamonkey 2 about:blank 50MB 48MB
youtube home 56MB 57MB
youtube play 83MB 80MB

Firefox 4 about:blank 76MB 78MB ?
youtube home 81MB 61MB
youtube play 87MB 75MB

The Firefox figure was obtained by adding memory for Firefox and Plugin (flash). The plugin is 10MB and stays in RAM even after you leave Youtube, so subsequent sites used 10MB extra.

Conclusions:

1. In MicroXP opera 11 reduces its memory usage on low-ram computers by up to 55MB. Seamonkey and Firefox reduce by up to 10MB. They end up using about the same amount of memory (within 10MB) and are all usable with youtube.

2. In Puppy Linux, Opera reduces memory usage on low-ram computers by up to 65MB and can play youtube (occasionally using 104% of RAM). Firefox 3 uses 200-250% of memory and loads and unloads excruciatingly slowly and is useless especially for youtube. Seamonkey 1 GTK1 uses much less RAM and also plays youtube. Seamonkey 2 is like Firefox - memory hog. I did not try Opera 9 with Youtube since 11 works.

Therefore if you have 128MB RAM and 1GHz or faster, to play youtube online you can use Puppy Linux with Seamonkey 1 or Opera 11 (or earlier) but not Firefox 3 or Seamonkey 2. Or use MicroXP with any of these three recent browsers. Firefox appeared to use 8MB less than Opera to play.

Opera 11 has interesting extensions (new).

Either OS can dual boot with Basiclinux using lilo as described earlier.
A simple way to dual boot is to shrink XP (gparted on a live CD or PQMAGIC), make an ext2 hda2 and install basiclinux, then boot from a floppy disk to hda2 (C:) and use loadlin (or install lilo to floppy disk).
Or from a DOS boot CD (downloadable isos online). Tinycore linux will also boot with lilo (not loadlin) and runs the latest browsers.

Puppy you2pup youtube downloader seems to be broken - it downloads error messages instead of mp4s. There is some site (see archives) which can be used to download youtube videos to play with mplayer in BL2. Most of the others require java to function. youtube-dl for linux needs python.

Sindi




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