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

[Krzysztof Lichota]

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.

I don't know, I don't use 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.

In common understanding they have 256 MB of RAM because this is what is
put on the sticker (like pseudo-gigabytes on hard disks).
And user experience would be "I have enough RAM, my system freezes =>
Linux sucks".

>> 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.

Polish. I think locales could be pre-generated as I don't see localedef
do much more than generating LC_* files in /usr/lib/locale/$LANG.

>>> 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.

256 MB and less is rather typical configuration of computer in Poland
and possibly other countries. If the system does not install on such
machines, user base will be cut down.

>>> 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.

OK, I misunderstood. I have apologized.

>> 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.

One person reported that Ubuntu installed even on 220MB of RAM.
But it was using Qemu. I want to test it in real life.

Regards

	Krzysztof Lichota

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