Revision [31850]
This is an old revision of Xenialpup 4.1vs4.9 kernel made by s243a on 2017-12-31 00:50:19.
Intro
The most recent version of puppylinux Xenialpup has run well on computers between 10 and 14 years old. However, even upgraded computers that are 10 years old may preform slow with xenialpup unless the kernal is substituted with an older kernal. For instance one form member ran xenialpup on the following specs:
Computer:
- HP Compaq 6715b, releasedin 2007
- Puppy installed on a 220 Gb's Solid State HD,
- 4 Gb's of RAM installed with a 2.5 Gb's sap partiation.
Now while this computer was nearly 10 years old at the time of the post. It didn't originally come with a solid state drive and the ram was likely upgraded from 2GB to 4GB. The user found this setup slugish with the stock 4.9 kernal but found that it ran very fast on the 4.1 kernal with two big aps open (e.g. Opera 12.16 + PaleMoon-2.27, or U_Light browser + apacheOpenOffice) running at the same time.
Another user said that a 13 year old computer ran very well with xenial when using the 4.1 kernal.
The minimum specs given for xenialpup on the puppylinux.org blog are:
Minimum System Requirements: 1000MHz CPU 768MB RAM
Recommended: 1600MHz 1gb RAM
From the above discussion it seems clear that to run large aps like web browsers with multiple tabs open then one, almost certainly requires that for machines on the lower end of the above ram specification that puppy must be installed on a fast storage medium (USB 3.0 or SATA).
The ram specs on the puppylinux.org blog suggest that the computer is likely 2007 or newer (if it is not upgraded). And the fast write specs in the above example suggest it is not being run off slow media like USB 2.0. By constrast Tahrpup runs well of USB 2.0 with only 1GB of ram.
A dividing line for the 4.1 kernal vs the 4.9 kernal
If in the above example we take a 2005 era machine as near the lower end of a machine to likely be running Xenialpup and take the mid point between then and the current date 2018 as the deviding line of which kernal to choose then we get the following suggesting:
- 2005 to 2010 Using the 4.1 kernal with Xenialpup
- 2011 to 2018 Using the 4.9 kernal with Xenialpup
Some discussion of how old a computer is likely to be running Xenialpup
The average installed ram for a 2005 computer was 600MB so to meet the above specs the computer was most likely upgraded. SATA II was relased in 2004 so in this example of a 14 year old computer running puppylinux puppy may have been installed on a SATA II drive but even SATA I is a fair bit faster than usb 2.0.
Puppy 1 was released in 2005 so it is rather remarkable that the latest version of puppylinux (released in december 2017) still runs on computers built at the inception of puppylinux. However, even as late as puppylinux 2, 2006 the ram requirments to run puppylinux were 64MB or lower (Probably a later Pentium I computer around 200MHZ around year 1998). So in in 10 years, we are requiring 10 times as much ram. However, at the time of puppy 2 it was suitable for computers 7 years old and the latest version of puppy linux will work well on computers 8-13 years old, albient with possibly some tweaks.
So in principle puppy being designed as an operating system to run well on older hasn't changed if if you still one is running puppy on a comuter where they find the latest version of puppylinux unsuitable then older versions of puppylinux have been maintained quite recently.
