F21 Workstation Hardware Requirements

[Stephen Gallagher]

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On 09/01/2014 02:22 PM, Pete Travis wrote:
> 
> On 09/01/2014 07:19 AM, Elad Alfassa wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 4:09 PM, Bastien Nocera
>> <bnocera at redhat.com
> <mailto:bnocera at redhat.com>> wrote:
> 
>> Hey Pete,
> 
>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> 
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>>> I'm working on the release notes here - should there be any
>>> special hardware recommendations for Workstation?  The
>>> 'requirements[1]'
> drafted
>>> are deliberately open-ended, because Fedora can be stripped
>>> down or built up to run *something* on most any modern
>>> machine.
> Workstation is
>>> a specific thing though, and while LLVMpipe can [often?] get
> gnome-shell
>>> running, it isn't a great experience. Maybe not the UX context
> you want
>>> Workstation to be used in.
>>> 
>>> Thoughts?
> 
>> Can we split that into a "minimum" and "recommended" variants?
> 
>> The minimum would be what's mentioned in "minimum system
> configuration" plus the
>> mention of "CPU accelerated graphics" and minimum resolution.
> 
>> The recommended would be what's currently in "Minimum Hardware
>> for
> Accelerated Desktops".
>> Possibly with 2GB of RAM (so that integrated graphics don't
>> impact
> us quite as much).
> 
>> Does that make sense?
> 
>> Cheers -- desktop mailing list desktop at lists.fedoraproject.org
> <mailto:desktop at lists.fedoraproject.org>
>> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
> 
> 
>> Hey I think 2GB is a good "recommended" value, and that 1GB
>> should be the
> "minimal". From my tests in VMs, 1GB is barely usable (I assume
> that 1GB on actual hardware with non-integrated graphics would be a
> bit faster, but still).
>> However, "hardware accelerated graphics" shouldn't be in the
>> minimal -
> people will still run Workstation on VM platforms where it's 
> unavailable, eg. KVM/spice, we don't want them to think it's
> impossible to run our own OS on our own virtualization platform.
>> I think it would make more sense for "Hardware accelerated
>> graphics"
> to be in the recommended section.
> 
>> -- -Elad Alfassa.
> 
> 
> 
> When I was originally drafting the Hardware Requirements copy, I
> tried to stay away from the minimum/recommended distinction.  It
> isn't easy to draw a line and say "on this side you will have a
> great experience, and on this side you will have a merely
> functional experience, and across this other line it probably won't
> run at all."  I think users can generally understand "more is
> better", and make an appropriate judgment based on explanation of
> the factors involved and available options. Following that line of
> thinking, we could say *suggest* at least 2GB of RAM, with a caveat
> that less RAM might be a compromise some could find acceptable, and
> more RAM would be better.
> 
> WRT the actual figure, systems that are preconfigured with 2GB of
> RAM are probably going to be mid/high Pentium 4 era systems, or
> low/mid range Core2Dou era systems with i915 -ie 4 years or more
> out of production.  A suggest/recommend of 4GB RAM would put you in
> the area of modern low-end systems and older mid/high end systems.
> Looking at RAM in isolation, 4GB is probably excessive, but the
> class of system that comes with <4GB OOTB may generally not be able
> to deliver an "acceptable" experience.
> 
> Just food for thought - the stated hardware recommendations for 
> Workstation can of course be whatever the Workstation group deems 
> appropriate.
> 
> KVM/QXL/Spice is effectively hardware acceleration; I'll elaborate
> on that further in the thread.
> 
> 

The other thing to take into consideration is for both the live media
and netinstalls, a lot of the actual installation process is going to
take place inside a ramdisk. I know someone testing Alpha TC4 failed
to install Workstation on a 1GB VM[1]. So that tells me that 1GB is
probably NOT the minimal requirement.

[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1134524#c5
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