New Laptop with Opera and PCLinuxOS
Saturday, 27. June 2009, 21:55:32
This past month, I purchased a new laptop as my new primary machine and eventually will be my sole machine as I cut down on my inventory of IT equipment. The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite L305-S5944, and has 2GB of system RAM, and a 250GB hard drive.
The first thing I did was to create restore DVDs, and then immediately replaced Vista with PCLinuxOS 2009.1, a Mandriva derivative developed at Houston, TX.
Thankfully, the repositories include the latest version of Opera, which I was able to download, install and use.
The new laptop came out of necessity as my then current desktops and laptop were fast becoming obsolete in terms of being able to replace hardware when needed. While this may be OK for now, should something happen a year or two from now, this may become a problem.
Over the past two years, the system requirements for mainstream Linux distributions have increased two fold.
Fedora still has a 192MB requirement since version 6, and still requires 192MB at version 11. The true requirements for a Linux distribution depend largely on which desktop environments you have installed.
GNOME still has a 256MB minimum requirement, but 512MB is more of a realistic requirement for any kind of performance, and that depends upon what features of GNOME you have installed and are active.
KDE 3.5.10 is the latest (and final) version of the KDE 3 series. This version, like GNOME, can run on 256MB, but 384MB or larger is required for performance.
KDE 4, however, requires 512MB minimum, and preferably 1GB of RAM for performance, and that is if you do not have many features activated. A fullly featured KDE 4 installation requires 1GB to 2GB for performance.
All of this is the state of today's major desktop environments. That is not to say that you cannot install other environments like XFCE, LXDE (unofficially called KDE Lite because of its KDE-like functionality and lightweight system requirements), Fluxbox and WindowMaker.
Next year at this time, Linux distributions containing KDE and GNOME may require 1GB of RAM to install either of these desktops. This is one reason why I purchased a new laptop.
PCLinuxOS is a Mandriva derivative that happens to be one of the easiest to install and maintain, especially for a person like me who lives a busy lifestyle, but wants a Linux distribution for everyday use...and it's Made in America.
The first thing I did was to create restore DVDs, and then immediately replaced Vista with PCLinuxOS 2009.1, a Mandriva derivative developed at Houston, TX.
Thankfully, the repositories include the latest version of Opera, which I was able to download, install and use.
The new laptop came out of necessity as my then current desktops and laptop were fast becoming obsolete in terms of being able to replace hardware when needed. While this may be OK for now, should something happen a year or two from now, this may become a problem.
Over the past two years, the system requirements for mainstream Linux distributions have increased two fold.
Fedora still has a 192MB requirement since version 6, and still requires 192MB at version 11. The true requirements for a Linux distribution depend largely on which desktop environments you have installed.
GNOME still has a 256MB minimum requirement, but 512MB is more of a realistic requirement for any kind of performance, and that depends upon what features of GNOME you have installed and are active.
KDE 3.5.10 is the latest (and final) version of the KDE 3 series. This version, like GNOME, can run on 256MB, but 384MB or larger is required for performance.
KDE 4, however, requires 512MB minimum, and preferably 1GB of RAM for performance, and that is if you do not have many features activated. A fullly featured KDE 4 installation requires 1GB to 2GB for performance.
All of this is the state of today's major desktop environments. That is not to say that you cannot install other environments like XFCE, LXDE (unofficially called KDE Lite because of its KDE-like functionality and lightweight system requirements), Fluxbox and WindowMaker.
Next year at this time, Linux distributions containing KDE and GNOME may require 1GB of RAM to install either of these desktops. This is one reason why I purchased a new laptop.
PCLinuxOS is a Mandriva derivative that happens to be one of the easiest to install and maintain, especially for a person like me who lives a busy lifestyle, but wants a Linux distribution for everyday use...and it's Made in America.
WIDGETIZE