# Specs Needed



## Josh_ZA (Jul 24, 2012)

Hi all,

I'm thinking of buying a 2nd PC, just to install FreeBSD 9.0 & fool around with the OS. Get to know it. Will probably put Gnome or KDE on.

Specs:

3.2GHZ Intel ( 478 socket )
 1GB RAM ( DDR400 )
 80GB SATA hdd
 onboard vga ( These are IBM Thinkcentres )

Now I KNOW this is outdated hardware, but I've searched and cannot find specs needed for FreeBSD 9.0

PLEASE could someone tell me.....

Are these specs way too slow? I know the PC won't be fast, but it's a learning PC for FreeBSD. 

These specs can run Gnome right? I'm sorry for asking a question like this, but I really need to know & hope someone will be able to help.

Thx guys!


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## vermaden (Jul 24, 2012)

Depends what You want to do with it, FreeBSD can run on 1-core 66Mhz 32MB RAM machine and on a 64-core 3000MHz 128GB RAM machine ...

About Your setup, 1GB RAM is little to low for GNOME/KDE, get at least 2GB, besides that, FreeBSD will run ok.


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## Josh_ZA (Jul 24, 2012)

Thank you for your reply. I just want to learn the commands, basically do everything from the shell.

I just want to use the GUI desktop to check mail on a daily basis, browse the net, run Mumble etc etc

So I think Fluxbox will be ok right? ( With those specs )


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## Beastie (Jul 24, 2012)

Definitely. I've run similar window managers on machines with much lower specs than yours.


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## SirDice (Jul 24, 2012)

Josh_ZA said:
			
		

> I've searched and cannot find specs needed for FreeBSD 9.0


http://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.0R/relnotes-detailed.html


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## vermaden (Jul 24, 2012)

Josh_ZA said:
			
		

> So I think Fluxbox will be ok right? ( With those specs )


I have used Fluxbox/Openbox on FreeBSD with 350MHz CPU and 160 MB RAM, along with Opera, Nautilus, GIMP and OpenOffice.

Windows manager will be better sollution for such older box, but it may also provide better desktop, for example I now sit in front of a dual-core 8 GB RAM laptop and still use Openbox because its far better for me then any DE


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## wblock@ (Jul 24, 2012)

A 3.2GHz P4 is at least as fast as an Atom, and xfce and other lightweight environments are usable on Atom netbooks.


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## mwatkins (Jul 24, 2012)

vermaden said:
			
		

> I now sit in front of a dual-core 8 GB RAM laptop and still use Openbox because its far better for me then any DE



Likewise, my desktop is an 8 core 16GB machine and I run x11-wm/dwm most of the time, not because I'm stingy on the amount of RAM used (most of mine sits idle, most of the time) but because I like simple tiling window managers. I even run dwm on my laptop, normally with just one window per virtual desktop, because M-1, M-2, M-3 etc is so convenient for switching "windows".

My machine is largely overkill for what I use it for when running FreeBSD but of course when I do run Windows the extra horsepower is appreciated. The best part of the faster machine on FreeBSD is that building ports is very quick. 

When I do want a little more of a desktop environment experience I start up x11-wm/xfce4.


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## vermaden (Jul 25, 2012)

@mwatkins

I sometimes use tiling on Openbox too, in the past I tried *pytyle1*, wanted to move to *pytyle3*, but I haven't figured how to make it work on FreeBSD, so I wrote my own tile.sh for tiling windows on Openbox


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## Josh_ZA (Jul 26, 2012)

**UPDATE**

OK so this is the PC I got... ( For free )

1.7GHz Celeron
256MB DDR400
40GB HDD

This is still ok right? To be used for getting to know the OS. Mostly terminal shell syntax entries ( If I can put it that way )

I would like to run Fluxbox.

Please let me know if this is still ok as opposed to my first post with that system's specs.

& once again, thank you to all who have replied so far.


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## vermaden (Jul 26, 2012)

Its still ok.


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## wblock@ (Jul 26, 2012)

For free, it's fine.  Additional memory wouldn't hurt.


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## Josh_ZA (Jul 28, 2012)

Thank you so much to all who have replied.


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