Tiny Core Linux
Tiny Core Extensions => TCE Q&A Forum => Topic started by: lolouis on February 04, 2011, 02:50:48 PM
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It has 96 MB of ram on it and it'll be using a good wireless connection.
Can't use the smaller browsers such as Dillo because most of the things I need to do on the web require a much more capable browser.
So, for those of you who have dealt with a similar problem on this kind of hardware and got to a satisfactory solution, the question is, which one will run reasonably well with TCL on the old hardware? Opera, Seamonkey, perhaps an older version of Firefox? Your suggestions, tips and advice will be very much appreciated.
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All will crawl, but in my experience Opera tends to be the least slow.
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Which release of Opera would you go for to reach a good compromise between speed, security and capability? Also, what am I looking at in terms of required dependencies that need to be added on to the opera.tcz? Thanks.
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Hi lolouis
If you call up AppBrowser and click on opera, then click on the tab called Size, it will
tell you what it needs to download. The + signs to the left of the items listed are what
it needs to download. The totals are listed at the bottom. Regardless of the browser
you choose you may want to go to the user preferences and knock the cache size
down a bit so it doesn't suck up all of your RAM.
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Thanks Rich,
I'd like to hear more from TCL users before downloading anything, though.
I noticed there's a bonecho firefox (bonecho-gtk2.tcz) meant for older machines....wondering how capable that is (of course I won't be doing my online banking with it because of security concerns). Perhaps, it will accept the DownThemAll! firefox add-on (really excellent download manager I am using) - that would be a plus!
Any further thoughts, suggestions, advice?
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If you install Tiny Core, and install applications using App Browser, it will download all dependencies. If you download using another method, you will take a long time to download each dependency.
I suggest you install Opera, and if you want, also install bonecho firefox, and even others. If you have them all in OnDemand, you can use each of them at different times, and see for yourself which you prefer.
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Great suggestions. Thanks. Will do.
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I would try opera 6.0 and hv3
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I am curious to know....are you currently running Opera 6 and what makes it more desirable than other similar releases of that era, in your opinion?
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I am curious to know....are you currently running Opera 6 and what makes it more desirable than other similar releases of that era, in your opinion?
Occasionally I do, for the sake of speed and small footprint.
6.0 is the oldest opera version which works with flashplayer (and netscape plugins in general).
There wasn't such a plethora of browsers back then, and certainly not of such which had a "tabbed browsing" feature, so not sure which ones you would define as 'similar'.
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There wasn't such a plethora of browsers back then, and certainly not of such which had a "tabbed browsing" feature, so not sure which ones you would define as 'similar'.
I meant, why opera 6.0 over, say, opera 6.10 or 7.11, which are all 2002-03 releases pretty similar as far as size and footprint...
With 6.0, can you log into sites such as google, use webmail and do most of the basic stuff people usually do on the web? I would think not, but if you can, then I'll definitely give it a try.....for the sake of speed and small footprint. I remember that firefox 2.0 (released around 2005, I think) ran quite fast on my old laptop (and within slax 5.06, which is no doubt much more resource consuming than TCL), so I would think a much more recent opera release should be doing fine as well.... Sure I want it to be reasonably fast, but if not able to use regular stuff on the web, then it kills the purpose, no?
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Links (links.tcz) is my favorite for old machines that need access to gmail or other https sites. Of course, no flash, but there is plenty of functionality, stability and security in a light package. I would use it for secure stuff before the older but more full featured browsers for sensitive business.
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There wasn't such a plethora of browsers back then, and certainly not of such which had a "tabbed browsing" feature, so not sure which ones you would define as 'similar'.
I meant, why opera 6.0 over, say, opera 6.10 or 7.11, which are all 2002-03 releases pretty similar as far as size and footprint...
With 6.0, can you log into sites such as google, use webmail and do most of the basic stuff people usually do on the web? I would think not, but if you can, then I'll definitely give it a try.....for the sake of speed and small footprint. I remember that firefox 2.0 (released around 2005, I think) ran quite fast on my old laptop (and within slax 5.06, which is no doubt much more resource consuming than TCL), so I would think a much more recent opera release should be doing fine as well.... Sure I want it to be reasonably fast, but if not able to use regular stuff on the web, then it kills the purpose, no?
As curaga said in Reply #1 all will crawl, and there is a quite significant difference in footprint between opera 6.0 vs. 7.11, IME.
To me software kills the purpose if it has features which obstruct it from being reasonably fast. If I had a PC with such specs I would probably first try links - as Jason W suggested - in combination with elinks, both of those have different strengths.
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Links (links.tcz) is my favorite for old machines that need access to gmail or other https sites. Of course, no flash, but there is plenty of functionality, stability and security in a light package. I would use it for secure stuff before the older but more full featured browsers for sensitive business.
Thanks! And what would you suggest as a reasonably light word processor for TCL? Beaver is really a text editor and Abiword seems huge in such a small OS. I wish there were a Ted package, but then, again, Ted comes with a tremendous amount of library dependencies....What's your take?
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As curaga said in Reply #1 all will crawl, and there is a quite significant difference in footprint between opera 6.0 vs. 7.11, IME.
To me software kills the purpose if it has features which obstruct it from being reasonably fast. If I had a PC with such specs I would probably first try links - as Jason W suggested - in combination with elinks, both of those have different strengths.
I'm beginning to think that's probably the very best solution... As Jason W pointed out, reasonable reliability and functionality and the peace of mind of logging into secure sites with updated software...
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re office suite:
The Siag suite is quite small, but it's fairly limited as well.
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re office suite:
The Siag suite is quite small, but it's fairly limited as well.
How's the Pathetic Writer (part of the Siag suite) - anybody has tried that one out? Perhaps as a standalone if that were possible... But if they named it "pathetic" there's probably a reason for it...LOL
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Here are 2 threads where "lightweight browsers" have been discussed already:
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=6300.0
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=6956.0
And here something to look out for if planning to run links in framebuffer graphics mode with microcore - which might be a choice for a box with 96MB RAM:
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=7314.0
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Excellent, thanks!!
The consensus seems to be links in graphics mode (extension by Jason W) plus perhaps elinks (and netrik?) on the side. I think they'll all do very well on a 233 MHz, 96 MB RAM machine (still waiting to resolve the last details with my TCL install, then I'll start downloading extensions :) ).
On a side note, tinypoodle, you actually seem to be using TCL a lot, and on older hardware... What's your choice for word processor? That'll cover my basic needs: a functional browser and a word processor.
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First of all, I have never used TC on less than 256MB RAM or P III @ 700Mhz, so I could only make estimations about upper specs.
The answer to the question about my choice of word processor is most simple: "None."
The combo of those specs and "word processor" sounds most painful in my ears... :o
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Ummm.... vi ?
(just kidding! ;) )
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Siag Office would be the office suite I would use, siag.tcz. It is pretty light though it depends on what kind of word processing needs you have as to how useful it would be. Abiword may be a little heavy for those specs.
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Ummm.... vi ?
(just kidding! ;) )
Not necessarily kidding....it's already installed as a busybox applet and could be a viable alternative....
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Siag Office would be the office suite I would use, siag.tcz. It is pretty light though it depends on what kind of word processing needs you have as to how useful it would be. Abiword may be a little heavy for those specs.
Well, I looked into it and the siag suite (from 2006) is not very appealing....it seems like very few have good things to say about it.... Of the four applications provided, I'd really need only PW.... The suite weighs in at 2.8 MB as an extension, which is rather pricey considering the low value it provides. All taken into account, I'm gravitating toward nano or even vi, using the busybox wc applet for word counting... I'd be writing articles on it, so I don't really need a full blown word processor as long as I have a word counter (wc). Bluefish is also very tempting as it appears to be easy on hardware resources and provides the conversion of the writings into html format, which is a plus for me.
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If vi or nano are sufficient for your needs, you could as well use e3 which has a vi and a pico mode - amongst others - and uses roughly 22x less of memory than busybox vi ;D
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Oops, just saw that Curaga already mentioned Siag office.
Anyway, the only way one will know what apps suit their taste and fits within their available machine specs is to try things out and see.
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And concurrently monitor sytem resources usage (e.g. with htop) might be a good idea.
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If vi or nano are sufficient for your needs, you could as well use e3 which has a vi and a pico mode - amongst others - and uses roughly 22x less of memory than busybox vi ;D
These are all certainly not ideal, just compromises when dealing with limited resources, expecially ram, and one is forced to make do. One other way to look at it would be to look for alternative ways to run TCL (other than in ram). Then the hardware will be able to handle more demanding software.
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Oops, just saw that Curaga already mentioned Siag office.
Anyway, the only way one will know what apps suit their taste and fits within their available machine specs is to try things out and see.
Ultimately, yes. Nano, vi and similar console ones I'm very familiar with already and will run as a breeze on my system, but not take advantage of Xwindows. Abiword I love, but it's kind of a behemoth for this combo of OS and hardware. Was hoping to discover something useful in between.... When my "high security TCL" is ready to go, I'll perhaps give PW a try, and definitely bluefish....
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I have used e3 exclusively as a text editor on TC for a long time, it does the job I need. Lately I use geany with most features disabled, just for the tabs (and the auto saving of session) and the ease of toggling full screen - having more than a dozen of aterms open with docs in e3 bacame a bit messy, and always being reluctant to close any which may later be needed.
I doubt your conclusion.
Data residing in tmpfs can be swapped out whenever a need arises, so it is not really taking up RAM at the expense of apps which require it.
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Wireless? Why not.
Suggestion: use ethernet home adapters in order to change your electricity network at home in a LAN network.
My poor man PC had wireless too (working with USB 1.1 Fritz WLAN and TCL 3.x). Since I bough the adapters, I will come back to wireless only in very exceptional case where the adapters are not running. And my preferred webbrowser to go to the internet with my old boy is "links". Good luck.
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Wireless? Why not.
Suggestion: use ethernet home adapters in order to change your electricity network at home in a LAN network.
My poor man PC had wireless too (working with USB 1.1 Fritz WLAN and TCL 3.x). Since I bough the adapters, I will come back to wireless only in very exceptional case where the adapters are not running. And my preferred webbrowser to go to the internet with my old boy is "links". Good luck.
I've got no wireless network at home... I use wireless to connect to AP's at places such as the public library and WIFI spots.
Yep, I've come to that same conclusion: on older hardware links is the way to go. Thanks.
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I use links and nano frequently on my netbook and recommend them both. They are very fast and fairly easy to learn. I think they will both work well for you. You should also download ispell so that you can spell-check your documents. I haven't tried to make it work from within nano, but it is very easy to first save a text file and then run it through ispell.
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..seems the amount of ram is the key here - I use an old PII 267MHz desktop and opera works fine..
..with 512mb ram