[svlug] How reliable are LiveCD HD installs?

[James Sparenberg]

On Thu, 2005-09-29 at 17:44 -0600, Skip Evans wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
> As you know from previous posts, or not, I've been 
> playing with various live CDs, and checking them 
> out to see which one I wanted to load down onto 
> this old machine I acquired to make a spare 
> workstation. I'm stashing it at my biggest 
> client's place, where I spend a lot of time these 
> days.
> 
> Anyway, I have so far tried Mepis, Knoppix, 
> Feather and Damn Small Linux (and a couple more I 
> can't remember off the top of my head). DSL was my 
> favorite, having all the typical apps I need on a 
> workstation to develop PHP code.
> 
> However, Knoppix is the only one that will load 
> and then function! Weird things happened like 
> Feather would start booting, and then the screen 
> just filled up with '9's and then froze. DSL just 
> froze right off the bat when trying to boot from 
> the HD.
> 
> I realize that this is an old machine, and 
> therefore suspect (Pentium I, 466 Mhz, 256MB ram 
> and a 40GB hard drive -- thanks again, Lisa! --),

2 points of note.  Are you sure on the pI?  You see, my 500mhz with
256mb ram and a 20GB HDD is a pIII, I thought (and could be wrong) that
the fastest pI was 233mhz. 

Next comes what it runs. (My system)   Mandrake LE2005 I use XFCE (I
like ice or WindowMaker better but in this version of xorg they are a
bit flaky at times)  No sweat.   Believe it or not I can read e-mail on
it as fast as I can on my desktop running at 3ghz (I've timed it!).

Things I've found that really speed up a slow box (in rough order)

1.  More Ram
2.  Turning off things I don't need/use (You don't need postfix to read
mail, no matter what you are told.  Have another box run your mail
server. )
3.  Drop the eye candy
4.  Add a faster HDD (This makes a noticeable jump) or make sure that
your HDD is running optimally.
5.  Buy a better video card ( Tom's Hardware ran a 100 CPU shootout a
couple of years back.  They found a Mobo that would take an AGP video
card and 256 MB or ram.  It won the Half Like benchmark)
7.  FSB speed.  Faster Ram!
8.  buy a faster CPU. 

My experience has been that people tend to run this list in the opposite
order.  But unless you compile or render a lot.  Most of that 3ghz in
those 2 cpu's is turning to heat not productivity.  

James