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I put a 16MB DIMM in the 1.2GHz computer.
Nvidia PCI video card with 16MB of its own RAM.

Without a 32MB swap file zgv and links don't work.
With a 32MB swap file zgv and links-svga work.

In BL2, viewing a 1.5MB image:
zgv views at 1600x1200, takes about 2 seconds to display and uses 78% of 
RAM after the image is on the screen

links2 (delilinux or the three I recently compiled) in svgalib mode takes 
much longer to display the same image, at 640x480  (maybe 1280 would be 
faster since the photo was taken at that resolution, but is uses more 
RAM).  kswapd is running for a long time.  Links2 takes 87% of RAM for a 
while but eventually once the photo is displayed, settles down to 34%.

I then started Xvesa and icewm at 640x480 and used delilinux links2 -g (my 
executables don't run under X) and tried to view the same photo but every 
time the process got killed.  I tried running links2 from rxvt or from the 
icewm menu.  After 10 sec or so links2 exited (after top showed it to be 
using a lot of RAM).  I presume it ran out of swap space.  2X actual RAM 
is recommended, but maybe 48MB should be the minimum.  (I have not tried 
this).

Steven, have you tried links2 in X in BL2 with low memory?

I don't have xli in BL2.  xv uses 68% of RAM (in addition to 12% that X 
uses). It took several times as long to display at 640 as zgv did to 
display at 1600 but was much faster than links2 on photos.

On this very fast computer, xpdf and svp both load in just a few seconds. 
Svp uses only 20% of memory to display a large file at 640x480.  xpdf 
uses 66% of memory at the same resolution (under X, which uses another 
16%).  On slower computers xpdf is much slower than svp.

Opera:  15% of RAM used by X (Xvesa, xinit, rxvt, icewm), 63% by Opera, at 
640 with nothing displayed. When I display the same photo, it takes only a 
few seconds and 19% is used by X, 55% by Opera.

If I switch between terminals, I hear lots of swapping to hard drive.


Conclusion:  links2 is not optimized for low-memory situations and in my 
case (BL2) would not even view my photo in X, but it did work (slowly) 
under svgalib.   zgv worked quickly.  xv was not bad.  Opera was 
surprisingly fast.





In BL3 things don't work right with links2.  xli baddrawable messages for 
pages, when I try to view an image with graphical links2 under X.  I have 
'display images' checked in links.cfg.  links2 -g under svgalib asks me 
whether to save or download image.  Something is messed up - I appear to 
be using non-graphical links2.  I no longer am recommending the links2's 
that I compiled for use in BL3, unless I can get image viewing to work 
myself.

zgv worked - 84% of RAM.  I did not check Opera in BL3 yet.

Sindi



keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org