Great usability of Trisquel 5.5 :)
Hi there,
this is not really a success story but I was really surprise how well my little one (8 years old) is able working with Trisquel 5.5.
I set her up an old barebone PC with all MP3 audioplays on it. She has never been exposed to a standard Linux desktop too much. At least not unless you count playing Majong a desktop activity. :-)
I set her up a standard Trisquel 5.5 desktop with a few tweaks (Menu on top instead of bottom, some girlie-friendly icons plus nice wallpaper), and simply was amazed how fast she got used to searching her MP3 files, switching wallpapers, etc.
The good german localisation was also a great plus since she hardly could read english menu entries. I also also a few nice looking free games she might want to explore some day. Trisquel has really a lot of nice games which I never found for newer Ubuntu flavor. That is really cool !
Well done....
Thanks,
Holger
P.S.: In general the handling was a bit slow but I guess this is caused by the limited RAM of the maching (1 GB).
Please, call the whole system GNU/Linux. It does matter.
> P.S.: In general the handling was a bit slow but I guess this is
> caused by the limited RAM of the maching (1 GB).
Congrats for you success Holger. I use 1GB RAM but cannot notice any lag.
It would help a lot if you name the operating system GNU as MagicBanana
sugests because people will pay more attention to freedom just by naming
it that way. Thanks for your support!
--
Saludos libres,
Quiliro Ordóñez
Presidente
Asociación de Software Libre del Ecuador - ASLE
(593)2-253 5534
(593)2-340 1517
(593)9-675 9641 *temporalmente deshabilitado
I am a member!
It depends on the software although most GNU/Linux distributions do really need 2GB now. Unless you are still on a LTS release I wouldn't suggest less. Even with 2GB I wouldn't plan on upgrading for many more releases.
:) Great to hear your daughter is taking a liking to free software.
Yes, true...it is GNU/Linux.
But in the end I think it is more important that I spent my little one a PC with a free GNU/Linux OS on it for playing her favorite MP3 files rather than a Windows 7 box, right ?
I think for a standard vanilla Trisquel 5.5 2GB of RAM are mandatory. The system I used is an old Shuttle SN41 barebone system with NForce2 chipset and an AMD Athlon 2800XP+ inside. This mainboard is pretty picky about RAM. I am happy that I had 2x512MB of DDR RAM which runs stable in dual channel mode inside this box.
For lower end desktop environment (e.g. XFCE, LXDE, OpenStep) 1 GB will be fine though.
I am a member!
With 1GB GNU/Linux can become unstable depending on the desktop environment, software running it, etc. Unity/Gnome are both pushing it and swapping is occurring with 1GB of ram. You are definitely not able to take full advantage of the system with 1GB of ram any more.
That said until you've opened so many windows that it crashes and locks up it probably still runs adequately. That's the one thing that amazes me about GNU/Linux. GNU/Linux doesn't become unbearable even when things are stretched to the breaking point. There is no doubt in my mind it would run better than trying to put Microsoft Windows 7 onto the system /w anti-virus and other bloated software (GNU/Linux has bloat although it isn't nearly as bad if you ask me).
I use a desktop computer with only 256 MB RAM using essentially only
X-Windows, fvwm, xterm, xpdf and firefox as graphics software. Since I
prefer the command line, this works well with Trisquel GNU/Linux
4.01. As a software developer I don't need much graphics software.
I'm really grateful for this wonderful free GNU/Linux distribution.
~
~
~
Shure, for basic things at console level may be even 128 MB will be fine but if you install Vanilla Trisquel 5.5 with Gnome 3 2D fallback, you will experience massive slowdowns with 1 GB of RAM, trust me...
I am a member!
Something nobody ever seems to keep in mind when chatting about this topic is the target user one is talking about. When you start talking about this kind of stuff the user is key. The user and the software make a huge difference. For a developer that likes the terminal it is certainly possible to get away with terribly little in many cases. Not that this is always the case though as it does depend on the setup and what software one might be working with and how it is being compiled (offloaded etc).
The majority though with a standard GNU/Linux setup tend not to need nearly as much ram as a similar setup running Microsoft Windows latest and greatest. It's a combination of bloat from defaults in driver installation discs for printers, anti-virus, and increased system demand from the main OS. There is also more sharing of code on GNU/Linux. Microsoft Windows application do share code too although it's not to the same degree.
The current standard default setup for most distributions needs 2GB or the system will start swapping. Swapping is where the disk is used as ram and the disk is much slower. You don't want your system to swap. That will slow the system down. Modern swapping is a bit more complicated than this although the same basic idea applies. You need "enough ram" to avoid swapping being necessary (even if swapping occurs when it's not needed to speed the system up).
I can't wait to see how 6.0 turns out. Not only is it a 5 year LTS version, but Ruben and crew will have had more time to tweak the Gnome 3 codebase. 5.5 felt like I was using beta software and 6.0 should benefit from a later version of Gnome and Canonical's contributions to their 12.04 release.
I can't wait too :D I really am waiting for the Big Release Day so I could start using Trisquel instead of Ubuntu for my Servers ! (I only use Ubuntu because of all the updated packages like Drupal7 and other that I need + the new Kernel).