comeau@CRC.SKL.DND.CA (Phil Comeau) (12/08/89)
A while ago, I posted a request for people's experience with 386/ix X11. I stated that we had planned to use a Matrox graphics board and 4Mb of RAM, and develop an application that used 2Mb of this RAM. I asked for fatherly/motherly advice on the sanity of our intentions. I said I would summarize replies if ther was enough interest; at least one person was interested (thanks, mom); here's the summary. First of all, just about everybody said 4Mb was too tight if not impossible. One replier stated flatly that 386/ix and X11 would not run in 4Mb. The general consensus was that 6 or 8Mb was doable but straining and only at 12Mb would things get really comfortable. It's possible to have a 2Mb application run on a machine with 6Mb, but an 8Mb system is required for development. Some other random facts reported about 386/ix X11: - a floating point coprocessor is advantageous because Interactive's server is largely compiled from the MIT sample server and uses floating-point math for line drawing. - the server has a bug: it fails to release memory and so must be restarted about once/day. - host based TCP/IP is required because Xlib makes calls to a TCP/IP library. Thanks to all who replied. Phil Comeau comeau@crc.skl.dnd.ca Software Kinetics Ltd. 65 Iber Rd. Stittsville, Ont. Canada K2S 1E7 (613) 831-0888 (613) 831-1836 (Fax)
scottw@ico.isc.com (Scott Wiesner) (12/08/89)
comeau@CRC.SKL.DND.CA (Phil Comeau): > First of all, just about everybody said 4Mb was too tight if > not impossible. One replier stated flatly that 386/ix and X11 > would not run in 4Mb. The last statement is untrue. 4 Mb is painful if you're doing anything "real" like compiles or have a large application, but it will run. In fact, you could probably even run in 3 Mb, but I wouldn't want to try it. >The general consensus was that 6 or 8Mb was > doable but straining and only at 12Mb would things get really > comfortable. I think things are pretty comfortable at 8 Mb. 6 can be ok, depending on your application. If you're really running a 2 Mb app, 8 is better. It's possible to have a 2Mb application run on > a machine with 6Mb, but an 8Mb system is required for development. "Required for development" is an interesting notion. It all depends on how much performance you want. In general, in System V, if you have to start hitting the disk (paging), you'll wish you had more memory. > Some other random facts reported about 386/ix X11: > - a floating point coprocessor is advantageous because Interactive's > server is largely compiled from the MIT sample server and > uses floating-point math for line drawing. Floating point is used for arcs and wide lines. 0 width lines are done in integer arithmetic on most (if not all) of the servers. > - host based TCP/IP is required because Xlib makes calls to > a TCP/IP library. Again, untrue. If you don't have TCP/IP, you'll get a warning message from the server telling you you won't have access to a network, but things will run, and you can build stuff. You have to link with the networking library, but we supply that with the X development environment since some people don't have the host based TCP/IP package. Scott Wiesner Interactive Systems X Development Group
cpcahil@virtech.uucp (Conor P. Cahill) (12/08/89)
In article <8912071756.AA12931@CRC.SKL.DND.CA>, comeau@CRC.SKL.DND.CA (Phil Comeau) writes: > - the server has a bug: it fails to release memory and > so must be restarted about once/day. I don't know if there is a bug or not, but I leave my X server up for two to three weeks at at time with no problems. -- +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Conor P. Cahill uunet!virtech!cpcahil 703-430-9247 ! | Virtual Technologies Inc., P. O. Box 876, Sterling, VA 22170 | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
caf@omen.UUCP (Chuck Forsberg) (12/09/89)
I can speak from experience that one can run 386/ix X11 on a 4 MB machine. To be precise, on an Everex 3000A with 1MB 32 bit RAM and a motley collection of 16 bit memory boards to bring the total to about 3.7 MB. It's still faster than TSO in the old days... Xbigphoon took several minutes. A good disk drive exceriser. On a 10 MB machine xbigphoon does its thing in about 9 seconds. Might be faster with a 387. BTW, when I upgraded to 2.02 the mouse (Logitech bus mouse or Microsoft bus mouse) became hyper sensitive to the point of near unusability. The only change was installing the 2.02 upgrade. Is there a fix for this? The icons are rather difficult to touch now. Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX ...!tektronix!reed!omen!caf Author of YMODEM, ZMODEM, Professional-YAM, ZCOMM, and DSZ Omen Technology Inc "The High Reliability Software" 17505-V NW Sauvie IS RD Portland OR 97231 503-621-3406 TeleGodzilla:621-3746 FAX:621-3735 CIS:70007,2304 Genie:CAF