Lubuntu Saucy running in a Thinkpad T42 without PAE flag

[Nio Wiklund]

Hi Jonathan and everybody else,

There is new text at the end of the message comparing the default
installation and the manual one 'Something else'.

Best regards
Nio

On 2013-06-19 03:34, Nio Wiklund wrote:
> On 2013-06-18 23:32, Nio Wiklund wrote:
>> On 2013-06-18 16:32, Nio Wiklund wrote:
>>> Hi everybody,
>>>
>>> I installed the Saucy 32-bit daily build to a USB drive and could boot
>>> it in my IBM Thinkpad T42 with Pentium M without any problems. It runs
>>> well as it is (and if I install fake-PAE I will also be able to update
>>> the kernel). See the attached picture :-)
>>>
>>> Best regards
>>> Nio
>>>
>> I added today's daily build to 'grub-n-iso-n-swap', ran it live in my
>> IBM Thinkpad T42 with Pentium M, and also made an installation into that
>> old laptop.
>>
>> I plan to reduce the RAM used with the boot option 'mem=256M' etc. It
>> seems to work also when editing 'behind' the grub2 menu.
>>
>> Best regards
>> Nio
>>
> Now I can report successful installation from 'grub-n-iso-swap' which is
> useful for Pentium M and Celeron M. It is not possible (or I don't now
> how) to bypass the full desktop screen. So it is somewhat heavier, and I
> had issues with 256 MB RAM even when I used swap to disk.
> 
> I skipped updating via the internet and the 3rd party multimedia
> software, and the installer passed over the threshold.
> 
> The installation was smooth at 384 MB RAM.
> 
> So the general conclusions from my previous test in a Dell desktop with
> a Pentium 4 CPU are confirmed. I can install with 256 MB RAM only with
> the help of swap to disk, zRAM is not enough. It is not even close. I
> cannot do it with 320 MB, but it works repeatedly without swap to disk,
> when RAM is increased to 384 MB.
> 
> -o-
> 
> There is a difference between my results and those of Ali. He manages to
> install at 256 MB RAM without any swap to disk.
> 
> -o-
> 
> I support Jonathan's suggestion to add zRAM to the alternate installer
> too. It would probably make it easy to install Lubuntu with 256 MB RAM,
> and there are lots of old computers with 256 GB RAM. But I think many
> (most?) Pentium M computers were delivered with 512 GB RAM or more.
> 
> -o-
> 
> I think we should simply recommend 'at least 384 MB RAM', and mention
> that 'it is possible to install Lubuntu with 256 MB RAM, but it might be
> difficult, and it helps to create a swap partition on the hard disk
> before the installer is started'.
> 
> Browsing the internet is not pleasant below 512 MB RAM, because many web
> pages and services need a lot of memory. But the computer can be used
> for other tasks, where it might work well.
> 
> Best regards
> Nio
> 

On 2013-06-19 02:14, Jonathan Marsden wrote:
> Ali,
>
> On Tue, Jun 18, 2013, at 03:57 PM, Ali Linx (amjjawad) wrote:
>
>>    - Installation Type: 'Something Else' - I wanted to create two
>>      partitions manually.
>>    - Partitions: Two Partitions (Root and SWAP).
>
> I'd much prefer a test using the default install type.  We want to
> verify that a novice user who installs Lubuntu on what used to be an old
> XP machine can easily do so.  Such users are not likely to be selecting
> "Something Else" and doing manual partitioning.  They probably don't
> even know what a swap partition is.
>
> Keep it simple, act like a newcomer, stick to the default choices
> wherever possible.
>
> Having said that, the result was really encouraging!  I don't *think*
> this would have affected the result... but it would be good to *know*.
>
> Jonathan
>
[Continued test to install from 'grub-n-iso-n-swap']

For comparison I added a test with the default installation to the
manual one, 'something else', at 256 MB RAM in my Thinkpad T42.

The default installation seemed slightly smoother, but no significant
difference. The speed was slow because of swapping in both cases, and
the poor swap on the USB pendrive was very busy until a swap partition
was created on the internal drive as part of the partitioning process
and swapped on automatically.

Another difference to Ali's tests might be that I install into Swedish
(not the default English). And it is on purpose, because local languages
must work within the general recommendations.

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