Baslinux mailing list

[qwms-avib AT dea.spamcon.org]

James Miller wrote:
> > Some of you may be wondering how this is possible, how
> > the corpulent Mozilla can work so well on a pathetic 486.  
> 
> You're running it in an X session on your P166 with 64MB 
> RAM that you've logged into from your 486 66 with 16Mb RAM?

That's right James.  I'm running Mozilla (without X) on
my P166 and running X (and icewm) on the 486.  The network
is an old coax 10Mbps and it works just dandy.  Dividing
the workload makes a big difference.  Running Mozilla just
on the P166 is sluggish -- it actually runs better when 
displayed on the 486.  

Somebody mentioned a while back that the VGA16 Xserver is slow.  
They sure got that right!  Mozilla was hopeless when displayed
on VGA16 (running on the 486).  The SVGA Xserver was much, much
better.  Even though it was running 800x600x256 resolution, it
was significantly faster than 640x480x16.  

Since icewm was running on the 486, I had the benefit of the 
little CPU window on the toolbar.  The CPU never maxed out, 
although it did get close sometimes.  It appears that a 486-66 
is just about perfect for the job.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how well the P166 handled
Mozilla.  Unburdened by X and stripped of all unnecessary
processes, it did just fine.  Of course, it did have 64mb
RAM and that probably helped a lot.  I doubt that a P166 with 
32mb RAM would have done nearly as well.  Still, 16mb SIMMs 
(72pin) are pretty cheap on the secondhand market, so it 
shouldn't be too hard to get that Classic Pentium up to 64mb.

The lesson here is that a 486 (on its own) has difficulty
running up-to-date graphical applications.  But network it
to a more powerful machine, and that 486 can run anything
the more powerful machine can.  Old 10Mbps network cards
are throw-away items, a crossover cable costs a few dollars.
The best thing you can do for an old PC is network it.
Linux loves networking.

Cheers,
Steven