Long-lost Click: Thanks for the memory (almost)

(This post was originally written on April 24, 2008; since then, I've bumped the system up to 144 MB. This entry should set the scene for how much better things are working with the additional memory).

When you're not running X, 64 MB of RAM is plenty. In OpenBSD, or just about any version of Linux for that matter, you just don't need a lot of memory to use the console. Of course, you can't do a whole lot either.

I know, I KNOW, that real geeks use the command line as much as possible. E-mail with Mutt or Pine (and fetchmail, procmail, sendmail, procmail ... did I miss anything (maybe msmtp, which I prefer, or esmtp, exim, postfix ...), text entry with vi (or nano, joe, emacs), text-only Web browsing with Lynx or Elinks.

OK, I do all this stuff, though I did give up on Mutt; it just didn't work for me as well as I needed, and while I put in plenty of time on the configuration, I needed to be way more of an expert than I'll probably ever be). But I really prefer to run X. I get the apps I want, real Web browsing, and a whole lot more overall productivity.

But X takes memory, and while OpenBSD with the Fvwm window manager can run in 64 MB, things take forever and a day due to all the swapping. Unfortunately, my 1999-era laptop -- a Compaq Armada 7770dmt -- maxes out at 144 MB. That's 16 MB on the motherboard, plus two 64 MB EDO SODIMMs.

The memory is on the way (I hope). Right now I have two smaller SODIMMs, a 16 MB and a 32 MB, in the laptop. And yes, I had to do the Compaq memory fix from the OpenBSD FAQ to make the OS recognize the "extra" memory. But it does work.

Anyway, I'm hopeful that OpenBSD will perform dramatically better in X with 144 MB. Since this is a pre-ACPI laptop, I don't have the problems that plague me with my Gateway Solo 1450, on which only Linux, it seems, will turn the fan on and off in response to CPU temperature. In OpenBSD, it's all on. In FreeBSD, it works for a day, and then that's the end of it. Can't figure out that one.

But I'd love to have a laptop devoted to OpenBSD (I'm using vi now ... but I miss Geany, Firefox and the rest of the junk I've got loaded on here). And if OpenBSD can work well on the desktop with only 144 MB, that will be a significant achievement for all of us with hardware in the 10-year-old range.

I'd love to roll OpenBSD onto my 10-year old PC that now runs Windows 2000. It would Do OK with Linux, for sure, but getting OpenBSD on there would be really great. And I have a full 256 MB of RAM on that box. I'm already running that much memory on my test box in the office, and I have no complaints there when it comes to running X apps in OpenBSD.

I started X to finish this post. First I ran Firefox, even though this laptop has only wireless 802.11b networking (and no wired Ethernet, although I've been meaning to get a PCMCIA Ethernet card). Yep, still takes a dog's age to start Firefox, and it's not all that responsive when it's running.

Again, I would love for that NOT to be the case after the memory upgrade.

I started Geany to continue writing. Geany runs pretty well with this 233 MHz processor and 64 MB of RAM.

So does the Dillo browser. And everytime I write about Dillo in OpenBSD, I like to mention that, for some reason, the Dillo menus and buttons look way better in the OpenBSD version of the app (I'm using the package, not the port) than they do in any other operating system in which I've tried it. And I've tried many.