System Requirements to Run PCLinuxOS

One of the most common questions new Linux users ask is "What are the hardware requirements must he/she have in order to run Linux?"

The fact is, there is no definitive answer to that question. When Linux Torvalds first created the Linux kernel back in 1991, he only had an 80386-based PC available for development.

The first Slackware Linux release became available in 1993, and was installable from 3.5 inch diskettes. The system requirements at that time were a PC with at least a 80386 processor, 8 megabytes of system RAM, and about 120 megabytes of disk space. Video display options at that time were limited to VGA and SVGA compatible boards with chipsets from S3, Voodoo, ATI Mach series, Cirrus Logic, Paradise, Trident and others.

PCLinuxOS started in 2003, and at that time was a 32-bit operating system. Potentially, it could run on a 80486 processor as the 32-bit binaries were optimized for that processor. Realistically, one would need at least a Pentium III (back in 2003) with 256MB of RAM and 8GB of space at an absolute minimum due to the selection of the KDE desktop (which was much leaner than today's Plasma 5 desktop).

One also had to pay attention to the video display requirements as support for newer video boards on Linux itself was spotty at beat, and nonexistent at worst. Also, one had to pay attention to the specification of the display monitor refresh rates. Setting the video mode with a refresh rate too high for the attached monitor would literally have fried the monitor in the worst case scenario. This applied primarily to CRT (or cathode ray tube) displays. Thankfully, today's flat panel displays do not suffer that fate. In fact, the refresh rate is primarily a non-issue unless you happen to have one of those old CRTs sitting around ready to use.

Today, PCLinuxOS is exclusively a 64-bit Linux distribution, with a single package (namely ia-32 in the repository providing some compatibility with 32-bit applications (and not just Linux, either). This means you will need at least an Intel or AMD x86 Duo Core processor, which should be available on any x86 machine (including Macintosh models powered with Intel processors) built since 2006. (The Intel Atom processor found in some netbooks also qualifies as it can run 64-bit operating systems.)

As for disk storage, PCLinuxOS requires at least a minimum of 15GB to 20GB of free space available. That only works if you are not planning to add additional software to the stock distribution, i.e. what you get on the live ISO image. Realistically, with hard disks now being measured in terabytes, the amount of space you really should allocate depends largely on what you will be using it for.

If this machine is going to be your only operating system you boot, then I would suggest allocating the entire hard drive for PCLinuxOS.

As for the system memory in your machine, 64-bit operating systems in general require at a very minimum 2GB to function at all, and optimally, you will need 4GB of system memory for decent performance. Of course, the more memory in your computer, the more you can do with that computer.

While PCLinuxOS requires 2GB of memory, I recommend at least 4GB of system memory, especially if you are planning to run MATE or the Plasma desktop. The minimum requirement is fine, if you are planning to run one of the lightweight desktops such as XFCE, WindowMaker, FVWM, Flexbox, or Openbox, and you are not planning to run Wine or VirtualBox, nor would you be planning to edit videos on PCLinuxOS. (Editing videos is resource intensive no matter what the platform.)

...and add at least 2GB of memory to the requirements if you plan to run another Linux distribution (even PCLinuxOS) inside VirtualBox. When you allocate memory to virtual machines in VirtualBox, that memory is taken away from the system memory available to PCLinuxOS. The same holds true if you are planning to run Windows 7 through 10 or recent versions of Mac OS-X in VirtualBox.