256 MB not enough RAM for Desktop-FreeBSD, a strange experience

[Jorn Argelo]

On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 14:59:18 +0200, Freek Nossin wrote
> Hello list-member :)
> 
> I had the same experience with OpenOffice. I do have the same amount 
> of RAM, but I think it is not related to the size the machine's 
> memory, UNLESS the use of virtual memory is a problem. The thing is, 
> the 256 of RAM is often used for 100% on my system and therefor it 
> has to swap a lot. OO.org didn't even start in XFCE properly on my 
> machine and I too couldn't kill the process. Even with kill -9. 
> Unfortunately nobody was able to help, I did sent a message over 
> this list but nobody came up with the cause of the problem or a 
> solution. I do think it is BSD related because the process was 
> unkillable. If you find the cause, or even better a solution, to 
> this problem I'd like to hear about it.

I am running FreeBSD with KDE 3.4 and OOo on a P3 700MHz with 192 MB ram. 
It's not really great performance, but it works all right. And it's not even 
swapping that much. Ok, it swaps for about 100MB, but it's still doing fine. 
And if I use XFCE in combination with OOo it performs just fine. It doesn't 
even need to swap. Ok, my AMD64 with 1 gig ram works better, but hey, it's 
workable. 

So it's not always BSD who is to blame ;)
> 
> Good Luck,
> 
> Freek Nossin
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Benjamin Thelen [mailto:bt at ccgis.de] 
> Sent: woensdag 27 april 2005 16:20
> To: questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: 256 MB not enough RAM for Desktop-FreeBSD, a strange experience
> 
> Hi list,
> 
> I started using FreeBSD as a Desktop in December 04 with the hardware
> configuration below
> 
> FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE-p2
> Asus TUSL-C with PIII-1133
> 256 MB RAM
> WDC WD800JB
> KDE 3.3.2
> OOo-1.1.4
> 
> Very often OpenOffice-1.4 died on starting, just showing the splash screen.
> I couldn't kill the process, even not with "-9". So I had to reboot. 
> Because of KDEs behavior to start applications, which have been used 
> before, OpenOffice was started automatically on KDEs startup. Mostly 
> successful. OpenOffice started a bit more	reliable using XFCE4...
> 
> In combination with this FreeBSD was hanging on the end of a 
> shutdown: No buffers busy after final sync
> 
> I didn't find very helpful information on the net, but since I added
> 256 MB of RAM I have never seen one of these errors.
> 
> Does someone have any idea what that could have been caused? Adding 
> more RAM, gaining stability, gaining speed, ok...
> 
> Ben
> 
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