Subj : Re: Slimmed down Debian To : Barry Martin From : Ky Moffet Date : Sat Jun 06 2020 17:32:00 BARRY MARTIN wrote: > Hi Ky! Ancient history comes back to haunt you. :D > Have you noticed it seems like the newer the machine the shorter the > time it runs? 286: two years. Something-or-other 4-core: 3/4 year > (rounded and to keep the time unit consistent. Not mine! Bullet (quadcore) *never* needs a restart, and only happens when the power is out beyond the UPS's capacity. And the stack of Dells don't get restarted enough to notice, either. (Tho what's with all the kernel updates this year? Seems like it's one every day!) > > Could create a virtual machine on your mega-toy you were gifted -- the > > one with the three multi-terabyte hard drives. Unfortunately VMs don't > KM> Yeah, that's why I went ahead and maxed RAM on the i7... not like > KM> Win7 needs 32GB, but thinking I should resurrect all the old > KM> systems in VMs. > Yes, I'd max out the RAM in that instance also -- did here with this one > even though right now only 6 GB of the 32 GB being used. XP VM only > using 1.9 GB out of 3.6 GB. I give XP 4GB and other VMs 8GB, seems like since I've got it and the base OS doesn't need it, I might as well use it for something. Does make a considerable difference in performance... can't tell this XP from the real thing. > Yes, I need to look into that more. Pretty much only the Virtual XP for > the BBS and X10 (home automation) stuff and eventually those are to be > switched to the Ubuntu portion just for convenience. Do have a Virtual > Linux machine for 'experimenting': do I like programme>? That's one good use for it! or two if we count the BBS. :D > LIS in other messages, I've sort of restricted myself to Ubuntu because > Mythbuntu (MythTV with the stand-alone OS) was based on Ubuntu and less > confusing for me to deal with one Operating System (though Raspbian on > the Raspberry Pi's is fun!). I could probably install a different Linux > OS in some of the old machines I have/had here -- just what for? I sometimes ask myself that. Yeah, some are just for fun. I mean, I have WinXP, why do I need ReactOS? Because it's there! > KM> Then again, I might install Mageia as an alternate, and it uses > KM> systemd. > Will you call that machine "Milk"? Then you could have Milk of Mageia! LOL! Sounds like a plan. :D Tho I have a (black) cat called Milk (Do you want Milk? do you want Milk2?) and they might get confused. > KM> I can see both sides of the argument. But with all the complaints > KM> about systemd, still no one has produced a viable fork. There's a > KM> video, "The Tragedy of systemd" that's worth a look. > > May have to take a look, though I'd probably still not going to do much > about it as I don't know enough to do my own change. (Tangent: like I'd Yeah, it's more a matter of knowing what other people are griping about. From userland, I don't really care so long as it works, and doesn't annoy me with lagging, crashes, or too many obvious vulnerabilities. > been a perfect candidate for an electric car when I needed to buy the > current replacement years ago: local driving, so no need to be concerned > about charging sites. Big block to purchase was the cost.) I live where the power goes out in bad weather. I like gas engines. > Right. I'm pleased when I can get a Western Digital in a refurbished > system (though lately not needing systems as reusing hardware and cases > and just updating motherboards). As for buying, I'll buy a WD over Yeah, I do a lot of recycling... I have a handful of PCIe vidcards, since I don't do modern games, why do I care how much RAM or GPU power they have so long as it's "enough" and isn't a drag on the system? So Fireball got one that's probably 12 years old, but works fine for the purpose, and it's paid for ($15 off ebay). > Seagate, though I'm purchasing one or maybe two at a time, not thousands > if not tens or hundrdeds of thousands at a time where a ten dollar > difference adds up real fast! And I don't have stockholders yelling at > my financial department! That too :D > > > Western Digital since my XT days because of some super-good customer > > service they gave me when I was upgrading. > KM> That, and that when they plan to die, they usually give plenty of > KM> notice. > Good, though I can't recall having one die. Decades ago did come home > to find a hard drive which decided to become a 60 or maybe 80 GB one > (from 250 or 500 GB) but don't recall the brand. Thinking not Western > Digital as that would have stiffled my preference. That kind of bug typically comes from the system BIOS. They don't actually know over 64gb (or sometimes 137gb), but will pretend they do until data exceeds that boundary. > KM> Just for the record, my PCLOS/KDE (which has every K-app known to > KM> man installed, and various other crap) uses 690mb at startup, or > KM> 730mb after it's been busy a while. About 100mb of that is > KM> probably the nVidia driver and similar junk; default naked > KM> install uses about 550mb. > > Know I know what to do with my 512 MB and 1 GB sticks! Someone gift me seven 1GB sticks of DDR3, but the old slow stuff nothing newer than the very earliest DDR3 systems can use. I have no idea why seven, either... that's just weird. They'd given me a vidcard and this was in there too. Here's a sucker, they'll take it off my hands! :D > True, though like you said some of the programmes check to see Swap is > available, though seems like they check for a Swap partition is present > but not necessarily the size of the partition. Some do, some don't. Photoshop is particularly stupid; it insists on a swapfile, but doesn't check if it's big enough before trying to use it. > > As for the current Ubuntu machines, this one has 32 GB of RAM and 32 GB > > of Swap -- I don't recall who set the swap size, probably the > > installation disk. I haven't seen this machine use more than 7 GB of > KM> So that's pretty much wasted swap space. > > Yup. OTOH I'm not too concerned as have only used 12% of the hard drive > (298 GiB of 2.7TiB). Haha... I think PCLOS defaults to a 4GB swap. I've never seen it use any, even on the 8GB system. > > > Same for the other system I'm using as the MythTV Backend: 'only' 16 GB > > of RAM in it, think uses not quite half (5 GB?). IIRC that system > > installed a 2 GB Swap. > KM> Which seems more rational. > > Yes. Not sure why this system has such a huge Swap partition. Stupid installer, that's why. Come to think of it, that's why Mint would not install on some smallish HD -- it took some for root and some for swap and there was none left. Didn't ask, just did. Mint is basically Ubuntu Lite, so... > Think I have a full height Maxtor around here, or maybe finally put it > out for electronics recyling -- less than a GB?? I have thumbdrives > larger! Oy... > > little gun-shy. There are some machines now with just a SSD. All have > KM> Yeah, the "new" i7 boxen are eating up the surplus SSDs :) Made > KM> a big difference with Win7, which seems to have a lot of lag > KM> during disk reads compared to XP and Vista. > > Perhaps doing verification processes? "Did I read this corrently?" "Did > I write this correctly?" Verifications being done before going on to > the next step int he process? Nope, just doing I/O stupidly, I think. > > Sounds a bit like some of the But Firsts around here! > KM> I have way too many of these But Firsts laying around... today's > KM> was Mow the Durn Lawn. > You forgot "Before It Turns To Hay"! Too late! Tho I did finally get Jurassic Weedpark under control.. mostly... þ RNET 2.10U: ILink: Techware BBS þ Hollywood, Ca þ www.techware2k.com --- QScan/PCB v1.20a / 01-0462 * Origin: ILink: CFBBS | cfbbs.no-ip.com | 856-933-7096 (454:1/1) .