[Techtalk] Do I even think about upgrading it?

[Dave North]

Caity:
> bet I'm not the only one keeping some old hardware alive

You're not! In my case, economics have little to do with it an affection
for the equipment is the motive, but who cares?

> It's a 486DX4-75 with 16MB of RAM and an 810MB hard drive.

I run a zenith with a 48633/16MB + 540mb HD.

> The thing is, if I do that, will it even run in a usable way on my
> Libretto 20CTA?

Depends on what your idea of usable is. It should run; RH 7.0 and SuSE 7.0
both ran on my Zenith, but verrrrry slowly (and the cramming involved was
awful). SuSE 6.4 ran better ... but it was still draggy.

> How much slower is RH 7.2 than 6.0?

In my experience, a lot.

> Do I even think about this upgrade?

Only if you have no fear of the reaper ... and can back up your system and
restore it effectively.
	True, you have more horsepower than me, but not much. And fact is,
I found all the distros save one to run very poorly on my Zenith: Debian.
They're still supporting 4MB RAM installs (with 'slink' which is
theoretically obsolete but still gets updated). I've been thinking of
trying woody, but don't care that much.
	Anyway, I found the debian setup much more zippy on my wheezer, so
you might want to try that route. The new 'fat' distros just bog mine down
to the point where I just don't want to run them.
	At least, that's my call.
	The old zenith was the reason I first started fooling with Debian,
and that's turned into my 'main distro.' I start up RH, SuSE and Mandrake
every now and then to see what they're up to, but -- well, I don't like
'em. Though RH is my current pick of the litter (and has often rated flat
bottom in the past. My scales slide all over the place depending on Who
Did The Stupidest Thing Last).


d