Minimum RAM required to install Saucy (Lubuntu 13.10) from Desktop ISO

[Jonathan Marsden]

On 06/17/2013 04:48 AM, Yorvyk wrote:

> On 17/06/13 02:13, Nio Wiklund wrote:

>> 1. Has the GUI installer of Saucy improved a lot compared to Raring?

> Doesn't look like it. I had my trained monkey run the following test:-

> Compaq Deskpro as previous with 512 MiB RAM. Single FAT32 partition
> on HDD. Saucy live CD booted into live session. Swapoff run to
> disable zRAM. Start installation with default settings. As soon as
> swap was created and started the system began to use it. Max usage
> just over 10 MiB. Installation successful. Tried 13.04 on this setup
> with similar swap usage and another successful install.

Good.  But the real issue is what happens with 384MB or 256MB of RAM...
try the same test (without the swapoff run... which real users will not
do, so that just makes the test *less* realistic) adding the mem=256M
kernel parameter on both 13.04 and on 13.10 desktop install images, and
compare results, if you really want to test whether 13.10 is improved in
this regard.

>> 2. Or was I doing something seriously wrong?

> Probably :D

Unsupported speculation.  I don't think you have evidence to support
that, from one successful 512MB installation of 13.04.  From some
successful 256MB installs of 13.04, maybe you would be able to say that.

But if Lubuntu 13.04 truly installs fine on most 256MB and 384MB
machines using the desktop installer (ubiquity) starting from a blank or
Windows-partitioned HD, then I don't we would have been *having* all the
discussion about zRAM (and making swap partitions, etc.) in the first place!

At one level, whether you can or cannot install 13.04 successfully in
256MB or 384MB is not the issue here.  We are developing 13.10.  We are
documenting 13.10.  We cannot change 13.04, and we are not writing a
manual for 13.04 either.

So, let's test (and document) 13.10.

> We need to run Saucy installs on as much hardware as possible 

Agreed.  Especially older hardware, with 512MB and less RAM, or (second
best) use the mem=XXXM kernel parameter to simulate that lower amount of
RAM.  Suggested RAM amounts are 512M, 384M and 256M.

> ... as I believe there is more to this than just RAM size. I suspect
> some old CD drives aren't really up to it. I know the one in this
> machine is somewhat erratic.

We can't code around broken old optical drives.  So testing for that is
*not* going to improve Lubuntu 13.10.  We need to focus.  If you have an
older possibly broken optical drive in your test (desktop) machine, then
get that issue out of the way -- replace it temporarily with a brand new
or refurbished one (even if you have to buy one just for this, because
you do not have another working optical drive around that you can borrow
from another PC, it's only about US$15-20 to buy one online!), and then
retest.

Let's find out what amount of RAM is needed to reliably install 13.10 on
an otherwise-working otherwise-supported machine, (a) using the desktop
install image, and (b) using the alternate install image.  Let's not get
sidetracked.

There *are* likely to be some older PCs with now-unsupported video
cards.  That's a very different issue.  We are not currently testing or
working on fixing that, as far as I know.

Jonathan