NetBSD and old hardware curiosity

[Zane H. Healy]

> You know, an 800 MHz P3 isn't exactly state of the art, but it's not a
> slouch either.  I did a fresh installation of NetBSD, transferred the
> pkgsrc stuff and then chdir-ed to /usr/pkgsrc/x11/gnome-desktop and did a
> "make".
> 
> That was yesterday.   Granted, it's had to go out and grab some packages
> and updates off the net, but it's not spending any appreciable time online.
> 
> At some point yesterday, things started getting slower and slower, so I
> killed the make and shutdown and restarted.  It's still cranking, but it
> doesn't look stuck like it did yesterday.  Memory leak somewhere, perhaps?
> 
> During this exercise, I just kept thinking "...and guys with a MicroVAX do
> this?!!?"
> 
> Cheers,
> Chuck

I should hope that no one is running a pig like the Gnome Desktop on a
machine such as a MicroVAX.  Not even taking the fact that a MicroVAX should
be running DECwindows if it has a GUI, I would think that the requirements
for running Gnome Desktop would prevent it from being run on a MicroVAX (RAM
strikes me as the largest issue).

Personally I try to keep Gnome off of my systems, unless I need a specific
application (which I typically don't).  It is far to much of a resource hog
for my tastes.

		Zane