Baslinux mailing list

[Nomdo Jansonius <nomdo AT dds.nl>]

   >Yes, it really can do that. OpenOffice's PowerPoint compatibility
   >is impressively good. But.

That's good!

   >>I've an old pentium with 1 G harddisk. 400 MB for DOS and 100 MB
   >>for Linux Swap leaves 500 MB for Linux itself. Presumably 500 MB
   >>is insufficient space for SuSE/RedHat? Moreover, I like the
   >>basiclinux  concept: start small end big.

   >You did not mention your RAM size. It is critical.
   >The problem is that OpenOffice is a memory hog. If you have less
   >than 128Mb of RAM memory, I do not recommend trying it, because it
   >would be very, very slow (keeps swapping). I have tried the Linux
   >version of OpenOffice with a 166Mhz Pentium MMX and 128Mb RAM,
   >and also with a 233Mhz Pentium II and 64 of RAM, and the second
   >configuration was basically unusable. The first one also required
   >patience, but it was not impossible.

RAM size is 32 Mb, CPU 120 MHz. As a DOS user (BasicLinux where DOS fails 
to do the Job) I never realised that 32 Mb could be insufficient. I could 
buy additional RAM, but the CPU remains rather slow (the comparison of 
your two configurations, however, suggests that RAM is more important 
than CPU-speed). Did you use BasicLinux with openoffice or another Linux?

   >The program also requires abour 200Mb of disk space (and temporarily
   >more during the installation). So I'm afraid you need a bit larger
   >computer for OpenOffice. I think a 233Mhz Pentium II processor
   >with 128Mb of RAM and about 500 Mb free disk left after Linux
   >installation would be about the minimum configuration for a
   >productive OpenOffice system.

I do have about 500 Mb of disk space for Linux. After installing 
BasicLinux including X and e.g. netscape 4.7, there should be still more 
than 400 Mb left. Is it possible to install only Impress (the openoffice 
powerpoint) instead of the whole package? I do not need the 
word-processor, spread-sheet, etc. If that is possible, then 400 Mb 
should be sufficient.

Thanks, Nomdo