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 Channel Futures

Open Source


Will Linux’s Hardware Requirements Stifle Its Acceptance?

  • Written by Christopher Tozzi
  • December 12, 2011

Linux’s ability to run on old or budget hardware has long been a popular talking point among free software advocates. Yet in recent years, the system requirements of mainstream desktop Linux distributions have been skyrocketing. At the same time, Windows 8 is slated to demand fewer resources than its predecessors. What could this mean for Linux? Here are some thoughts.

Before we get ahead of ourselves — and I get flamed for spreading FUD — let’s state the obvious: Linux still can be plenty friendly to old or otherwise “slow” computers. The Damn Small Linux distribution, for example, can be installed in full on as little as 50MB of disk space, and run perfectly well on a 486 processor — with a graphical user interface. It’s not the Linux kernel that’s become resource-hungry, but the distributions that are built on top of it.

In addition, system requirements are always a fuzzy thing. A geek who tries hard enough can often get things working with fewer resources than those recommended as a bare minimum, and computers that meet the suggested standards sometimes perform well short of acceptably.

System Requirements, Now and Then

Nonetheless, it’s clear the official system requirements for leading desktop Linux distributions have been on the rise steadily in recent years.

The desktop edition of Ubuntu 8.04 demanded 5GB of disk space and as little as 64MB of memory. Fast forward to the present and the recommended minimum system requirements for Ubuntu are 15GB of disk space and 1GB of memory.

The hardware requirements for Fedora, another leading version of desktop Linux, are a bit lighter than Ubuntu’s, but still have demonstrated a similar trend over recent years. Circa Fedora 11, which debuted in June 2009, the operating system could run a graphical desktop on 192MB of memory. In Fedora 16, released last month, that number has more than tripled to 640MB, with 1152MB as a recommended minimum (compared to 256MB in Fedora 11).

What’s more, at the same time that disk and memory requirements have expanded, a 3D-capable video card has also become essential for a complete desktop experience. The current desktop interfaces of both distributions — Unity on Ubuntu and GNOME Shell on Fedora — are designed for computers that support 3D effects. Fallback options are currently offered for hardware that’s not up to par, but they compromise usability and likely will not be around forever.

The Mobile Turn?

It may seem unremarkable that the hardware requirements for Linux distributions are on the rise — after all, that’s been the clear trend in the computing world in general for decades and decades, and Moore’s Law remains on the mark.

But with the expansion of desktop operating systems onto smartphones and tablets, the situation has begun to change. Mobile hardware is not as powerful as traditional PCs, and developers have recognized that fact by slimming down the processor and CPU requirements of their code. The most obvious example is Windows 8, which — if Microsoft’s promises hold true — will demand fewer resources than its predecessor.

Granted, the projected system requirements for Windows 8 are still considerably higher for those than either Ubuntu or Fedora. And it’s silly anyway to measure the value of Linux only in comparison to its proprietary competitors.

Yet, given the stark increases in system requirements that mainstream desktop Linux has undergone in recent years, I wonder if these distributions might be setting themselves up for failure — or, at least, a more difficult ascent — as they hope to gain a foothold in the world of mobile computing, which Ubuntu Project founder Mark Shuttleworth recently earmarked as a goal for Ubuntu. If developers want to maintain consistency in the user experience across the PC and mobile versions of Linux — and to capture the attention of budget OEMs — they may need to stem the trend toward hungrier software.

Or maybe we’ll just end up running LXDE on our phones, which wouldn’t be that bad either.

Tags: Agents Cloud Service Providers MSPs VARs/SIs Networking Open Source Technologies

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11 comments

  1. Avatar Marco December 12, 2011 @ 5:23 pm
    Reply

    I don’t this this is FUD, I think this is way off the mark. Aside from Windows 8, what other desktop-oriented operating systems are running on mobile phones? Your iPhone isn’t running Lion, your Nexus S isn’t running Mint.

    There is no convergence in OS b/c the hardware and the UX needs are extremely different. Many of the Win8 previews have all mentioned the issues with looking at your PC as if it were your phone. The first thing everyone does is hits the ‘traditional’ desktop view.

    UX convergence masks the real convergence of data and applications. I expect different interfaces on different devices. I want data in app behavior to be consistent.

  2. Avatar Mike December 12, 2011 @ 7:27 pm
    Reply

    Why is it a surprise that today’s distros are bigger than ones from 2 1/2 years ago? Most general desktop users (not power users) tend to demand more features, effects, and gadgets with each successive release. That’ll happen. But, as you mentioned, there are distros that are small, too. And, like you also mentioned, even the largest distro isn’t as big as Windows. There’s a Linux out there for everyone. Find what fits your needs and go with it. This isn’t going to hurt Linux by any means. Linux has never been (or at least should never have been) about toppling the Windows monopoly. It’s just there to meet a need. If it fills that role for someone, it is a success.

  3. Avatar BT December 12, 2011 @ 9:09 pm
    Reply

    Yes, the big distros with KDE desktop and all the goodies are about as heavy as Windows. (maybe a bit less)

    In the past few years, the selection of low-end distros has improved dramatically, thanks largely to the continued development of LXDE.

    Surprisingly, when recently testing distros to put on my 2006 Acer (Sempron 3000+, 768 MEG RAM) …. LXDE-based distros used a bit more RAM than I thought they might.

    I ended up going with the full install of AntiX with ICEWm/ROX. Really nice desktop, about 80-90% of the functionality of the heavier desktops … astonishingly light resource usage. The other day, I had 10-15 apps open, YouTube going … streaming audio ….

    Never went above 300 MEG RAM usage! 🙂

  4. Avatar Adam Williamson December 12, 2011 @ 11:44 pm
    Reply

    On Fedora’s memory requirements: Fedora can *run* with far less than 640MB of RAM. If you use a light workload, the actual amount of memory used during operation has probably changed little since the RHL days. For e.g., my (F15) mail server is currently showing usage of 228MB, of which 50MB is spamassassin. My (also F15) IRC proxy machine (which runs bip and bitlbee and not much else) is using a grand total of 65MB.

    The reason the requirement jumped so high for F15 is specifically to do with the Fedora installer: a change in the way the installer is architected meant it wound up using much more RAM than previously. However, this is a temporary situation; the anaconda developers have been working on it ever since the implications of the change became apparent. In F16 the actual amount of RAM anaconda uses has been somewhat decreased, though no-one got around to decreasing anaconda’s hardcoded minimum RAM number, so it’ll still refuse to run unless it sees at least 640MB of RAM. If you comment out the requirement, though, it can actually succeed with 512MB.

    In F17, the actual amount of RAM used has been further decreased, and the hard floor will be changed too. We haven’t yet done enough testing to confirm precisely what the minimum is, but I expect it’ll be around 256MB-384MB.

  5. Avatar Jack December 12, 2011 @ 11:49 pm
    Reply

    Last time I replaced my laptop I did it because of the battery time. Otherwise, the laptop was more than sufficient for anything except from Vista. Shure, W7 wasn’t ideal either – but I could live with it. Old laptops that’s not upgraded is often limited by it’s hdd – not really RAM, and that’s a way bigger problem with Windows than it is with Linux.

    Virtually any laptop less than 7-8 years (heaven forbid Legacy ATI) runs well with Linux. The evolution wrt hardware is more than anything else, about powersaving and not performance for the time being. Otherwise it’s about weight/size (from 15,4″ to 13″), and debottlenecking of storage throughput by SATA 3 / USB 3 and SSD.

    Distros knows – as we all do – that spec is not really that important anymore. Thus they don’t really put a priority into it. It’s not a selling point.

    But performance is still a high priority within the desktop environments. KDE (which has an undeserved bad reputation wrt hardware demand) have indeed a strong focus on breaking down libraries and optimizing code to make it mean and lean. They do it because they want the same code to run on laptops, mobiles and pads.

    I just set up and tested a 4-5 year old laptop with a wide range of distros. None of them had any issues with hardware, drivers or perfomance. Even the real slugger – OpenSuse – was way way more agile and better performing on the old machine than W7 on my new one.

    If there’s a performance/spec problem with a (compatible) laptop and a modern distro today – the laptop must be rather close to be replaced.

    There are still plenty of sensible distros that let you avoid that, thus Linux is not forcing any replacement.

  6. Avatar Lawrence D’Oliveiro December 13, 2011 @ 1:19 am
    Reply

    You give the impression that these different Linux distros are somehow walled-off from each other, as though it’s difficult to switch from one to another. It’s not.

    “Some Linuxes’ hardware requirements have increased” ≠ “Linux’ hardware requirements have increased”.

  7. Avatar Henson Sturgill December 13, 2011 @ 2:21 am
    Reply

    I, 100% agree. I decided to go with Linux for my netbook (remembering, that it should run OK on 2GB of RAM and an Atom) and ended up ditching the major distributions for more customizable ones like Arch, Gentoo, and Crux. Finally, I settled on Debian because it fell somewhere in-between. Yay, for Openbox, Tint2, and xcompmgr!

  8. Avatar dave December 13, 2011 @ 11:33 am
    Reply

    The reason Ubuntu’s desktop package has been allowed to balloon in size is because we have smaller distributions, based on Ubuntu, that still have low-end requirements. The reason for the new, higher requirements are because of modernization. Compare the special effects of a default Ubuntu installation to that of a default Lubuntu installation. Lubuntu will show you the numbers you’re looking for.

  9. Avatar Jo-Erlend Schinstad December 13, 2011 @ 3:16 pm
    Reply

    «The desktop edition of Ubuntu 8.04 demanded 5GB of disk space and as little as 64MB of memory. Fast forward to the present and the recommended minimum system requirements for Ubuntu are 15GB of disk space and 1GB of memory.» You point to this document as evidence: https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/installation-guide/i386/minimum-hardware-reqts.html

    You’re mixing numbers. First you talk about required minimum, and then you compare that with the recommended minimum in 2011. They’re both facts, but it is a lie by omission. The recommended minimum of 8.04 was 512MB, not 64. If you’re going to compare numbers, compare the right ones.

    The requirements and recommendations are based on many things, such as average use, which includes browsing the web. The browsers have become heavier, but all the browsers we use in Ubuntu are also used on Windows. Indeed, most browsers that are used in GNU/Linux in general, are also used on Windows. The browser is most likely the heaviest software used on an average PC.

    By the way; three years ago, I was able to run Ubuntu desktop on OMAP3 which is used by mobile phones. Since then, the hardware has become much stronger, and running the full desktop environment with two screens in FullHD on phone hardware is not a problem at all.

  10. Avatar Angel Mendez December 14, 2011 @ 4:24 am
    Reply

    “Desktop=Operating Sytem” is a equation you cannot run from in the MIcrosoft world, but it is not so with Linux. The so-called “escalating hardware requirements for Linux” are more a reflection of eye candy bloat and trying too much to be like MS-Windows by the designers of KDE in particular and the graphic-intensive absurdity of Gnome 3.x desktop. XFCE, LXDE, Windowmaker, icewm, and blackbox are all far less memory-intensive than KDE, for example. Freedom of choice is the saving grace of Linux, and plenty still remains.

  11. Avatar gvnmcknz December 15, 2011 @ 12:31 am
    Reply

    I tried Meego for X86 on an eee701, worked nicely, but hated the interface.
    Pity Nokia dropped it though, on a phone interface would have been OK.

    Windows 8, interface even worse than Meego, (developer version free, try it).

    JoliOS would probably work well on a phone, and is very good on a netbook as well.

    Android of course, is Linux, heavily altered, but works great.
    Try the Bluestacks demo which allows you to run Android Apps on Windows,
    Now if they bring Bluestacks or similar out for Linux, I’m sold!!

    Regards,
    gvnmcknz

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