System requirements of live ubuntu 6.06 cd

[Dan Kegel]

On 8/10/06, Dan Kegel <dank at kegel.com> wrote:
> > > http://releases.ubuntu.com/6.06/ claims that the live installer only
> > > requires 192MB of system RAM.   That's about what my 256MB system has
> > > (after subtracting shared video RAM), and it was bad enough that it
> > > was unusable.
> > > Thus it's either a bug in the live installer, or a bug in the release notes.
> >
> > That figure was the result of real-world testing; we used the installer in
> > an environment with that amount of RAM and thereby established the
> > requirement.  Check the amount of available memory with
> > System->Administration->System Monitor.

That says there's 234MB of system memory.
'free' says there are 240MB of system memory.
So I guess the live cd uses a 16MB display mode, which seems fine.
The hardware in question is a Compaq Presario 700, an Athlon 4 system that
defaults to 500MHz and can be set to run at 1GHz (but not at the keyboard).

Timings at 500MHz with the live cd:
boot time: 217 seconds.
time for install to get to the Welcome screen: 36 seconds
"Where are you?" screen: 7 seconds
"Who are you?" screen: 4 sec
"Prepare disk space" screen: 23 sec
manual "prepare partitions" screen: 53 seconds
Total: 340 sec (5 1/2 minutes)
I didn't go further this time, as I didn't want to modify the hard drive,
but my recollection is that it got very slow thereafter.

For comparison, a Compaq Presario R3000 with 503MB (according to system
monitor), with an Athlon 64 at 800 MHz, had the following timings with the 32
bit live cd:
boot time: 227 seconds
time to welcome screen: 11 sec
"where are you": 2 sec
"prepare disk space" 14 sec
manual "prepare partitions" 7 sec
Total: 261 sec.

The live cd seemed a lot more responsive on the bigger system;
on the small system, it would swap whenever you did anything.

Timings with the alternate cd:
boot time: 15 seconds.
time to get to "please enter the hostname": 42 seconds
thence to "who are you?" screen: 9 sec
thence to "partition disks": 13 sec
thence to manual partition screen: 1 sec
Total: 61 sec (1 minute)
'free' says 240MB ram in this mode, too.

I unfortunately can't reinstall the small system or add RAM to it,
or remove RAM from the large system, so this is all a bit inconclusive,
but the poor interactivity and swapping on the 240MB system
are a clue that the rest of the install might suck there, too.
- Dan