How To Have A Good Time With Linux & X Without Having To Rob The Bank
Jeffrey Chok - July '99
Here's a little case study on the cost of having a reasonably sized machine to have a good time with Linux and X in the comfort of your home.
There's a lot you can do with a Linux installation if it's server type apps you're after, ie. web servers (Apache), proxy (Squid), fileshare (Samba), etc. All this can be done on a low end machine with sufficient RAM and disk space. In character mode of course.
But once you mess with X Windows (nothing to do with Mulder and Scully), window managers and desktop environments then things begin to change. You'd need a higher end machine and a reasonable graphic card paired with a larger monitor. There are "light" window managers and there are "heavy" window managers, the latter could do more of course, and usually have better looks too (everyone want's a cool looking desktop :-) Bound to make heads turn in the office, especially if you have a fire burning in the background (those who have seen it would know what I mean).
A typical RedHat 6.0 installation puts in XFree86 (X Windows, required to get GUI), GNOME (desktop environment) and Enlightenment (window manager). And all these are heavy weights! Amongst the top players in the industry. And almost guaranteed to kill a low end machine. With a little bit of effort you could tune the system to perform faster but that means not using GNOME and Enlightenment. There are others and opensource gives you the power of choice. But that's another story.
So what do you do? Upgrade! Yes, if you haven't figured out by now we're big on upgrading. :-) I agree, it's not cheap but hey, that's the price you pay to play with technology and to stay on top. You'd need something to muck around with at home. How else can you try out all the different Linux distributions and partition the disk to your hearts content? And no, your office desktop won't do, too risky to be a "play" station.
It need not cost a lot too, below is a guesstimate of what it takes with a balance of price and performance. These prices are valid as of this writing 18th July 1999.
CPU (K6-2 or Celeron) RM300 Mainboard RM250 Case & power supply (ATX form-factor) RM200 4GB or 6GB Harddisk (Quantum) RM350 CD-ROM drive RM150 64MB RAM RM150 4MB Graphic Card RM100 Soundcard RM100 15" Monitor RM500 Modem RM200 Keyboard, mouse, floppy, speakers RM200 Works out to be about RM2.5k for a bundle of joy! Could be cheaper too because prices are dropping or if you know a good and reliable store with discount. Of course, because you're gonna run Linux on this baby, you'd also need to check if the soundcard or graphic card is supported.
Okay, the next thing that pops up on your mind is "But how long would this system last me? Will it be obsolete in a year? Well, only time will tell but there's an upgrade path to this setup, minor but significant. Maybe a year down the road you don't have enough disk space to install more apps and to store all the files you've downloaded from the Internet. Easy, just slap in another harddisk which would cost you as low as RM300.
Or maybe you're a power user capable of multi-tasking with five web browser windows, loaded up The GIMP with a few 5 meg images that you've just scanned with SANE, using Word Perfect to write your next Linux article which you're gonna publish to your local Linux User Group, listening to MP3's on xmms in the background and at the same time compiling the latest copy of Window Maker in one of the eight virtual desktops. So what do you do then? Obviously, such activity would require more memory, so just pop in another 64 megs of RAM which would cost about RM150 and you could hold off buying another brand new system for some time.
So what are you waiting for? Get off that chair and head for your nearest hardware store! :-)
/jeff
Apache is the most widely used web server software on the Internet.
Enlightenment is a cool window manager. It's so cool you've gotta wear shades to use it.
The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program.
GNOME or GNU Network Object Model Environment is a desktop environment.
Jeffrey is the author of this article who sometimes shamelessly promotes his web site by subtly inserting links to it in the least expected places :-)
RedHat is one of the major Linux distributions.
Samba opens Windowstm to a wider world.
SANE deals with scanners on Linux (Scanner Access Now Easy).
Squid is a type of cephalopod that lives in the ocean feeding off... whoops, wrong squid. This squid is an Internet Object Cache or simply put, a web proxy server.
Window Maker is another window manager that emulates the elegent look and feel of NeXTSTEPtm
Word Perfect belongs to Corel Corporation.
XFree86 is a freely redistributable implementation of the X Window System.
xmms is an MP3 player that looks like WinAmp.
© 1999 PLUG. A Penang Linux User Group article by Jeffrey Chok.