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I am putting together a desktop for a 13 year old nephew with 3GB RAM and a single core 3.2 Ghz CPU (originally outfitted with Windows Vista). I have reviewed the system requirements for 16.04. An SSD has been ordered: I am unsure if 16.04 with the Unity desktop will run effectively on this machine.

I expect that the machine will be used for:

  • Word processing
  • Youtube
  • Email

My daily driver is an 16.04, however it is on I7 core with 8GB RAM.

I have the machine running with a USB install stick: is there a good test to tax the machine so that I see it performs under high demand? It is desirable to understand if the machine will perform for the student before shipping it out of state.

gatorback
  • 6,523

1 Answers1

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Here is an excerpt from the System requirements page.

A good "rule of thumb" is that machines that could run XP, Vista, Windows 7 or x86 OS X will almost always be a lot faster with Ubuntu even if they are lower-spec than the minimal requirements.

TexStudio will work just fine. So will browsers like Chrome/Firefox which require a processor that supports SSE2. I can't say anything about LibreOffice :(

The only challenges you may face is with the single core CPU. For manually stressing the system, install the stress-ng package.

To test the CPU run the following command :

sudo stress-ng --class cpu --sequential 0 -t TIME -v --tz

Replace TIME with the duration for which you want the stressors to run. For example 100s, 20m or 1h. The --tz option collects temperatures from the available thermal zones on the machine. For more information you can use info stress-ng. Also, take a look here which describes another yet similar sounding package for testing the CPU.

NPsoft
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