[ug-bosug] Belenix CD - very slow.

[bish at touchtelindia.net]

On Tue, Dec 06, 2005 at 07:47:44PM +0530, Manoj Joseph wrote:
> 
> Shamit Bagchi wrote:
> >
> >    Actually the Belenix CD boots  up and the GUI starts to
> >    come up  - but then  afterwards for almost  15 minutes,
> >    the windows never get rendered.
>
> What  is the  configuration of  your system?  I believe  the
> minimum  requirement is  128 MB  RAM. But  256 MB  (or more)
> would be a good idea.
> 
> I did get my system up (with 128 MB RAM, P3 800 MHz) but the
> boot from  the CD was not  very fast, though not  as slow as
> you found it to be...
>

Just joined the list today. I am no expert here, and perhaps a
bit too early to chirp in !  However I though if I could share
my  experiences  with  Belenix  (thanks to  the  Sun  guys  at
foss.in).

I have tried it on three boxes.

The  disk I  got was  fine without  scratches (this  should be
remembered for problems annotated above). My CDR/Ws are almost
as good as new (another thing to watch for).

Box 1:

Genuine Intel P4, 128 mb  RAM, Riva-TNT2 video card. The thing
booted,  came into  GUI,  but  it was  painfully  SLOW !  Just
not  workable. Cannabolised  another  128 MB  from my  hapless
Celeron (difficult getting SDR these days) and things improved
dramatically. The Riva TNT was automatically configured. I was
impressed. I would believe that  the min RAM configuration for
Belenix would  be 256  MB ...  I had  problems with  my serial
mouse ... the helpful guys at the Sun show at foss.in gave the
clue to  the mount point,  after which it worked.  Serial mice
are NOT picked up by the boot process. Pain !

Box 2:

My son's game box. AMD-64  with ATI-Radion-9800 video card and
1 Gig RAM. Did  not boot at all ! Just kept  trying to start X
after 30 odd  min ! For some  reason, it did not  fall back to
the xorg 'vesa' (failure mode). I pulled out the ATI and tried
with  the  onboard  graphics  card. This  time  it  went  into
1024x768  vesa, and  I could  hardly make  out the  difference
between this and  the Ubuntu-64bit or Win-XP  (32 bit) already
installed on that box. The available software on the CD worked
fine ... good enough for a feel ...

Box 3:

Acer laptop 256 MB RAM  (belonging to a colleague). Booted and
worked fine. The  touchpad worked! Video was  1024x768 vesa. I
don't know  how to  change resolution  ... it  was a  test run
after  all! Did  not experiment  much.  To me  appeared a  bit
slower than Box 1 described above.

Remarks:

I am  not very  familiar with Solaris  commands, so  could not
proceed  with  much  experimentation. But  installed  software
worked fine. I was a bit  disappointed with the absence of tty
terminals, which  we get  under linux by  pressing Ctrl-Alt-V1
through V6.  Neither did I  know the  method of dropping  to a
console boot (whatever runlevel 3  equivalent out here is) ...
but then these are things to be learnt, so I leave it at that.
For a guy who spends 80% time on console this was a BIG PIA !

Being a  locally developed stuff,  and still in early  days, I
admit  I was  quite impressed.  Give  the guys  some pep,  and
proper  negative  feedbacks (or  kicks  where  you think  they
deserve), and  I am  sure in the  coming months,  things would
change. If Belenix aims to reach the position of Knoppix under
Linux, there would be lots of refinements needed, and ofcourse
resorting to compressed  file systems, and more  accent on h/w
detection. The fall-back modes MUST be proper and functional.

Frankly, i  would say,  the present baby  looks real  good and
promising.

Keep it up guys ...

Bish

--
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On 21  Nov 1783, when  the Montgolfier brothers  undertook the
first manned  flight on a hot  air baloon for 22  odd minutes,
lots  of cheers  were  raised.  Some wise  men  at Paris  then
questioned  "What good  is  it?".  There was  a  man from  the
distant lands  who remarked  "For that matter, what good  is a
newborn baby!". His name was Benjamin Franklyn.

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