<html><head></head><body>It's pretty amazing the hardware ability $300 buys in a desktop device. Even a 3-4 year old cheap desktop is faster than a 5-7 laptop of the same price. Portable horsepower is expensive.<br><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On November 15, 2021 2:32:22 PM EST, Steve Litt via Ale <ale@ale.org> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<pre class="k9mail">Neal Rhodes via Ale said on Mon, 15 Nov 2021 08:22:40 -0600<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #729fcf; padding-left: 1ex;">So, Thanks for the advice on helping friend with virus scan on their<br>6gb Dell notebook.<br><br>I think that got it to the point of occasionally running ok, but also <br>often needing more than 6GB for Win 10, and starting to thrash.<br></blockquote><br>I love Linux as much as the next guy, but did you try cleaning up<br>extraneous applications, getting rid of registry deadwood, and<br>defragging?<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #729fcf; padding-left: 1ex;"><br>It's one of those Dells without a RAM door on the bottom.<br></blockquote><br>There's a special place in the devil's playground for those who design<br>and manufacture DIY hostile equipment and software.<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #729fcf; padding-left: 1ex;"><br>The recommendation from HL computer was to swap the drive with a 500GB <br>SSD, and virus scan the new drive. They wanted $260 for that.<br></blockquote><br>You could buy that same drive from Newegg for $60.00 and install it<br>yourself, except for no door. Special place...<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #729fcf; padding-left: 1ex;"><br>I'm seeing Walmart is peddling an HP I3 with 8GB RAM, 220GB SSD for<br>$270 this week.<br><br>Which is actually a better proposition. Friend's finances are limited.<br></blockquote><br>If finances are limited, my suggestion is install a *low resource use*<br>Linux. And my further suggestion is that your friend put the $270<br>toward a new computer, and save money every month just so his next<br>computer can handle today's browsers and browser apps. It's not that<br>Linux is getting more bloated, at least if you use the right software<br>with Linux. The problem is that browsers are turning into RAM and MIP<br>sinks.<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #729fcf; padding-left: 1ex;">I'm debating telling him I'll give him $100 for the old notebook and <br>reformat it for linux. Likely Ubuntu.<br><br>Guessing Ubuntu will run fine in 6GB.<br></blockquote><br>Not with the Ubuntu standard setup. I'd suggest:<br><br>WM/DE: Openbox or LXDE. Both are very light. Openbox is<br> significantly lighter.<br><br>Daemons: CUPS and SSHD. Nothing else.<br><br>Browser: For picky sites, use Chromium. For the rest, use something<br> like Dillo or Midori. With Chromium, keep only one or at the<br> most two tabs open.<br><br>Workflow: Don't have a lot of programs running at once.<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #729fcf; padding-left: 1ex;">It's been a couple of years since I did that. Are there new hurdles <br>with doing a fresh install? EUFI? <br></blockquote><br>UEFI shouldn't be a problem because an old computer like that is<br>probably either MBR or UEFI with Legacy Mode. Your hard disk is much<br>smaller than 2GB, which is the cutoff (as I remember) at which you lose<br>space not formatting GPT.<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #729fcf; padding-left: 1ex;">What about audio? <br></blockquote><br>More and more software requires Pulseaudio. I dislike Pulseaudio<br>because it's the land of a thousand hidden mutes, but I've never<br>thought of it as consuming resources. If you choose Unbuntu, they handle<br>Pulseaudio pretty well.<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #729fcf; padding-left: 1ex;">Audacity? <br></blockquote><br>If you're going to be editing sound files, I'd imagine that's pretty<br>resource intensive. I'd sure turn off all the browsers before using<br>Audacity.<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #729fcf; padding-left: 1ex;">TeamViewer?<br></blockquote><br>I don't know, but why would an individual like him need TeamViewer? If<br>it's so you can fix him remotely, why not use ssh -Y for a few minutes,<br>then set his sshd back to no-video?<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #729fcf; padding-left: 1ex;">Ultimaker Cura? <br></blockquote><br>I don't know. Depends on how they designed the software. Do they<br>malloc() hundreds of megabytes at a time, or do they work within a<br>megabyte or so of RAM?<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 1ex 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid #729fcf; padding-left: 1ex;">Zoom?<br></blockquote><br>Zoom, Jitsi, BigBlueButton and especially GoToMeeting are extremely<br>taxing on the system, and prone to sound dropouts on anemic systems.<br>Also, my Daily Driver Desktop (DDD) uses Void Linux, which clicks and<br>drops out on all remote meeting software. My finding is that Ubuntu<br>sounds much better with such software.<br><br>By the way, you need Pulseaudio for Zoom, and my findings are that<br>apulse did not enable Zoom.<br><br>I've operated Jitsi on 16GB RAM and it worked as well as it could work<br>on Void, and perfectly on Ubuntu. I don't know about 6GB. Even more<br>unknown, does the Dell have enough CPU for the job? On my older 2<br>core, 1 thread per core 16GB DDD and Jitsi ran up CPU usage past 50%,<br>and Zoom and GoToMeeting pegged the 100% meter quite often. My new DDD<br>has 64GB RAM, but more important for meeting software, its 6core 2 core<br>per thread CPU never pegs, and is usually below 20% over all for Jitsi.<br><br>When operating meeting software, I use Chromium set to a Nice value of<br>-18, to minimize dropouts as much as possible. The shellscript follows:<hr>#!/bin/sh<br>nice -n 18 chromium --disable-gpu<hr>I couldn't understand parts of your post, so I'm going to assume this<br>is for your friend. If your friend isn't married to Windows, I think a<br>low resource consumption Linux install would work to a pretty good<br>degree, always assuming he doesn't abuse his browsers.<br><br>By the way, you could set up a 6GB virtual machine with his CPU, his<br>hard disk, and test it on the various tasks you described. That should<br>give you some further information.<br><br>SteveT<br><br>Steve Litt <br>Spring 2021 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful<br>Technologist <a href="http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques">http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques</a><hr>Ale mailing list<br>Ale@ale.org<br><a href="https://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale">https://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale</a><br>See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at<br><a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo</a><br></pre></blockquote></div><br>-- <br>Computers amplify human error<br>Super computers are really cool</body></html>