How much RAM?

May b I am second third or nth paerson who have asked this question.
I have a PIII System with 64MB RAM and 15GB HDD. I have Dual Boot Linux RH7.2 and Win98SE(Smart ***). The Linux RH7.2 uses 5 GB and I had found that working In Linux is hard. Not b'coz of command things but it is too slow. First I ahd used 1024x780 Res for my Linux system as I have same on Windows. But system used to be very slow. Dragging a window was a hardest thing to do. Then I removed Wallpaper and even reduced the res to 800x600 now the system is not as slow. Can someone let me know how much RAM is needed if you are using Linux?

(I am just using Apache, MySQL, Gimp, Gedit and Galeon most of time to write and watch my php scripts. XMMS also go. But in Win 98se I can open as amny windows As I want and my system waorks smoothly. Starnge)

Hi,

I am not too sure about how X uses ram/video ram, but I am sure it is your graphics processor that will do all the work with displaying pixels/depth as it does in windows.

Do you have a dedicated gfx (in a pci/agp slot) card or is it a built in gfx processor which uses system ram? This can have a dramatic effect on performance (and stability!).

Regards, ed.

do you have the RIGHT X-Server installed? the standard server has nearly no hardware acceleration! sadly there is only few free accelerated X-Servers maybe you have to buy one. if you have a nvidia card, chances are good to find one on their homepage! (yes, finally a manufacturer that supplies linux "drivers" )

i recommend 128 MB of Ram for both, windows and linux. you sure are not running apache, php, mysql, ftp-server and all this on your windows box, no? they need "some" ram too.

eg. for working with big pictures in gimp, you need 256MB anyways, same for photoshop (even worse, at work i have 512MB using photoshop 6 and it is swapping swapping swapping... and i wait seconds to drag my windows just like you described for X....).

type "ps ax" and see how many processes are there and how much ram they use.

in windows, type ctrl-alt-delete and see in the taskmanager how many tasks are running. just because there is no visible window, they still use resources!

All the replie gave me some confidense. I thought it must be the Gfx processer and peoper drivers which are cousing The Linux Desktop to be too slow. But I thought as anewbie I should not make this stament as it could be wrong I have onboad video processer and it uses 4mb RAM and My System is good on Win machine when I run PHP+Apache+MySQL+DevPad+Winamp all along with Gimp sometimes added to list.The only problem is in Linux. Should I get Separet Video Card (As I had to buy a external modem) to work with Linux. Or I just put a 64MB RAM in my system.
Interestingly I know hoe to look the processes in Background using some stuf in Linux I can't recall now and The alt+^+Del key in Win

you have a on-board gfx card with only 4 MB Ram? Uh oh, i fear it additionally uses part of your "normal" RAM in windows. and probably part of your CPU power for graphics processing.
you should definitively get a external card. linux probably won´t support this in the near future.

1024x768x32 Bit = 3145728 Bytes. this alredy uses nearly all of the gfx-ram. does it do 3D at all? i think 4 MB was texture memory on the early Voodoo I cards. But they were used in addition to a already present 2D-Card...

you are probably better off with any $20 gfx card

get a well-known chipset brand to make sure linux supports it. an old nVidia, some S3 (depends on chipset), matrox, ...

in windows (at least XP) you can use both with two monitors to make a real big screen then