PC-BSD and Windows in Computer Lab

[jonborbon]

Good day to all!

We have decided to use PC-BSD as the official OS for our computer laboratory. Most of the box uses P4 1.7Ghz and some 2.26Ghz processor. We have it dual-boot with windows 98 (so that others can still use the "old" OS they're used to) and it is working fine. (We just did a standard install from the CD)

The problem is, when I open several applications in PC-BSD, it crawls to the point that some stations have stopped or "hangs". Now that would be a problem since we would like to encourage and inform our users that it is best to replace Windows and use PC-BSD instead. Can you guys help us tweak it so that it would run at par or better with Windows?

Specs: 25@ P4 1.7Ghz with 128 MB of mem, built-in video/sound card
5@P4 2.26Ghz with 128 MB of mem, built-in video/sound card
7@P3 733Mhz with 128 MB of mem, S3 video card
All have 40Gb of hdisk partitioned equally

[Charles]

128MB is the minimum requirements. Ideal to real several heavy applications is 512MB. If you want to keep 128MB RAM, you'll have to use only one application at a time like on modern OSes

[TerryP]

If you look through the KMenu there should be a desktop settings wizard. Run that for each user and turn the slider at the end of the wizard all the way to the left. It turns off some Graphical stuff for slower CPUs I don't know if it effects RAM but try it on one user it might help.

One idea, is to modifiy the machines to use blackbox for KDEs window manager instead of KWin. You can install blackbox from the pbidir or ports/pkg. I'll look up how to change KDE into useing another WM since I've been meaning to try it myself. It might save you from upgrading the ram. Blackbox is the "light and fast" so it may help abit.


128MB of RAM is more ideal for a system like Win95-98 then current Windows and KDE/GNOME based systems. PC-BSD will run on 128mb but I think you would be using alot of swap space to make up for the low memory.

Just like Windows XP 256mb~384mb is more livable then 128mb.

[TerryP]

http://forums.pcbsd.org/viewtopic.php?p=37150#37150