Lowest possible hardware for SLinux...?

Hi all,

Needless to say, I'm astonished at how good the Linux 'alpha' version is. Despite all the warnings to the contrary, I've found out SLinux to be as rock-hard solid as at least the Mac OS X version... which was astonishing.

Since for my RL work I need to try SL out on the lowest possible hardware, I first tried it today on a PIII @ 550 MHz (512K cache), 256 MB RAM, and a way-old Riva TNT AGP 2x graphics card(which SLinux claims to have 16 MB of RAM). This is a dusty computer from literally the turn of the century, which for ages has been used by my colleagues to try Linux on it.

I was actually impressed. In texture-intensive Neualtenburg I usually get 6 fps with my PowerBook (G4 @ 1.25 MHz, 768 MB, ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 with 64 MB) after grid reboots (like it happened today). Well, that old piece of hardware managed to squeeze around 3.2 fps on 800x600 and almost all settings quite low (ie. drawing distance to 64, no special effects, texture terrain on "some", detailed settings at medium, and so forth). It even seems to run the "Avatar Vertex Program" (although strangely the AGP option started with "off". These settings are actually very similar to the ones I use on my PowerBook as well! Oh, sure, very likely going to a busy club would give me 0.6 fps or something like that, but... who cares? SL runs on Linux, and that's what matters!

Tested on Ubuntu 5.0.4 (not upgraded yet), after all updates were downloaded, and support to OpenGL was added. Installation was a breeze... uncompress, double-click, and it runs. Even under an unprivileged user. No fussing around. It was almost disappointing in its simplicity!

I'm planning to do some tests on even older hardware, a few dozen PIII @ 350 MHz or something that we have lying around, and who can't run anything more recent than Windows 98 (but should have no problem with Linux, of course), an unsupported Microsoft OS. If SLinux runs under those old machines as well (even if only at 2 fps), I guess I have all my problems solved

What can I say? Despite everything, I'm absolutely flabbergasted at this amazing port. Why, after this, I almost think that LL will be able to implement Gecko's HTML renderer inside a prim... or even *gasps* Havok 2...

Excellent work, LL! Who should we cheer at?

The memory detection of cards is listed in known bugs, the other settings can be changed in settings.ini

I too am amazed at the functionality that already works so well and so efficiently in the alpha SLlinux...

I have used the Riva TNT card for years (in the past), it does have 16 mb The failure of SLlinux to detect it correctly, does nor prevent its being correct anyhow. The TNT2, if you get hold of one, has 32 mb Then you can change it in the "setings.ini" file, and have DOUBLE the graphic memory!

I originally tried running SL under Windows XP witha tnt2 card, and 768 MB memory on a 350 MHz Pentium and it was DEAD slow - I feel for you...

I am running ubuntu breazy badgar and cannot get it to run, it keeps saying it cant create the window because I am not in 32bit color mode, and I know I downloaded and installed the right packages for my nvidia geforce ti 4200 64mb graphics card
if there are any other packages I should look for could you let me know please?
thank you =)

I have a Geforce 4 Ti 4400, and it runs great.

Working just fine here on the same 4200 64Mb using fedora4, did you install the drivers from nvidia?

If you are sure you have the correct drivers, make sure that Xwindows is set to use 32 bit. By default, when I installed older linux distros on this machine, it would set to 16 bit color. After installing the Nvidia drivers, I would have to re-configure xwindows to operate at 32 bit color.