Ubiquity installer not usable on machines with <= 256 MB of RAM

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 12:07:27AM +0200, Krzysztof Lichota wrote:
> > Matt Zimmerman napisał(a):
> > [...]
> Vmware is not the same as real system. I guess X server does not use RAM
> in Vmware.

That is not true; the X server uses a comparable amount of memory in VMWare.

> Laptops use also some memory for video memory (in my case it is 16 MB, but
> one other person reported it as 32 MB), so it is less than 256 MB in
> reality.

Then we should talk about the amount of memory they actually have.

> And is your test checking installation of other locales than English?
> From my tests it seems localedef is taking 50 MB of memory (temporarily,
> but it is peak usage and then my system freezes).

Yes, generating some locales takes more memory than others.  Which languages
are you using in your testing?  It's possible that we can do something to
reduce this temporary memory usage.

> > We already have a text-mode installer which has reduced memory requirements,
> > though the memory requirements for the live CD are pretty similar to the
> > installed system itself.
> 
> But it is not distributed in ShipIt.

That is correct.

> > If the system doesn't have enough memory to run GNOME, KDE or XFCE
> > comfortably, what is the point in jumping through hoops to allow Ubiquity to
> > be used to install it?
> 
> System has enough memory provided there is a swap file/partition, which
> is not available until second phase of installer (after partitions are
> set up).

This is a valid point.

> > You got a response from a developer the very next day after you filed the
> > bug, on a Saturday I might add.
> 
> Yes, but as I said the response was that it is desktop environment
> problem, not Ubiquity. And Dapper is 3 weeks away.

I do not think this is a fair characterization.  Your bug was not rejected
or denied; it seems you misunderstood Colin's response.  Please do not
panic.

> I will try to test Ubuntu version tomorrow, along with Flight 7 of
> Kubuntu to see if the problem is still there.

I would not expect the results to be different.


-- 
 - mdz