User Feedback :: Very nice job!



ke4nt1

Not currently using 'toram', since I've got quite a lot of extensions.  Might give it a go though and see how much faster it is.  Used that option from a live CD boot and was very impressed.

Planning to use a USB thumbdrive for backups, since I'm bound to mess around and break something at some point!

Not actually using an EPIA board, it's an MATX board with a socketed C3 on it, and same chipset as the EPIA 800.  Should still be able to shoehorn it into a small case though.  Planning to gut the broken CD-player from my old Technics mini system and use that.

Messed around with BeatrIX for a bit, which was apparently compiled on a 533 Eden board.  It looks nice with its Gnome 2.10 desktop, but it's the frugal install and mydsl extensions that are the deal-clincher for DSL on a CF based system.  No other distro has that.

Now that I'm picking up some Linux knowledge I might have to see about replacing my Windows 2000 server with a linux box.

Andy
My 233mhz system only has 128mb so I havent tried 'toram'. What is the recommended amount of ram for 'toram'?
128MBs seems to be the magic number,
but others have tried it with less..

Once loaded, I don't know how much ram you would have left
for running apps and things with less than 128..

With a decent swapfile, I can do many of my usual tasks with
only 128MB in my box..  

Give it a shot,
and time some applications opening and shutting down.
( especially the second time you execute, when they are cached )

Then run without, and see the difference..

73
ke4nt
I tried it on an old tecra 520 laptop, p166 96meg ram, as a live cd, and it ran acceptably. Toram isn;t an option on 96 meg. I did the hd install
to an old 1.4 gig hdd in it, set a 300 meg swap first, and rest for the os and apps, no fancy partitioning.  I had a custom slack 9 install on it, with compiled kernel, and xfce desktop on a 2.4 gig disk.
DSL ran much, much better on that old machine. IT makes a great couch pc, as it is small, and can do surfing and most chats with ease, hardly touching the swap file even with 8 tabs open, xchat, and gaim up.
imho, if you have a small hdd around, you can set it up easily on that, and once the hardware config is finalized, kill the hw scan on boot up, and you'll have a good stable machine with any installed apps there all the time. even a slow hdd beats the cd, but still will be slower than to ram, but in a minimal memory system, I think it is the best option.
ke4nt1,

Have you tried to get the XFree86 and TVOut drivers working with your EPIA 5000 & DSL?

I'm still wanting to create a "set-top" unit that I can use for playing streamed movies and mp3 from a backend server.

This EPIA looks great as there will be no noise.

If I add one of those serial cable IR recievers it would be a pretty nice unit.
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