Anybody use Linux? For old hardware, which distro?
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From: David Brown on 2 Jun 2010 19:07 RayLopez99 wrote: > On Jun 2, 4:32 pm, David Brown <da...(a)westcontrol.removethisbit.com> > wrote: >> On 02/06/2010 14:36, RayLopez99 wrote: >> >>> Thinking of using on an old 1998 laptop PC that presently has a >>> Pentium II, with a built in generic Dell modem, USB mouse, 512k RAM >>> (!), DVD/CD, running Windows XP fine now (very slow), some distro of >>> Linux. >> I take it you mean 512 MB ram? Otherwise the machine could barely run >> DOS... >> > > Yes, it was 512 MB ram. Or it may be 256 MB. In any event, it's > enough to run Windows XP, which is pretty demanding, so Linux should > (I hope) run fine...but which distro? > > BTW it has a 100 GB hard drive. > You can run a lot of Linux standard distros in 512 MB, although you'll want to turn off desktop effects since you probably have a slow graphics card. If it is 256 MB (which is quite likely from that era), it gets a little harder - you should actively avoid the big desktops (Gnome and KDE) and larger apps. It will still work, if you've got a decent swap disk, but it will be /slow/ at startup. >> Have you looked atwww.distrowatch.org? They have lists of distros in >> various categories, including those for small systems. > > Where? I looked at the home page. Can you point me to where I can > find a search engine there to enter parameters such as HD, RAM, etc? > Go to the search page, and choose "Old computers" as the category. <http://distrowatch.com/search.php?category=Old+computers&origin=All&basedon=All&desktop=All&architecture=All&status=Active> Try <http://lubuntu.net/> - get the live cd and give it a shot. Note that live cd's suffer more from lack of ram than hard disk installations, since they suffer more if they don't have the space to cache files, and all files written must be stored in a ram disk. Another good choice would be the LXDE variation of Mint <http://www.linuxmint.com/release.php?id=13>. It's currently only a release candidate for the latest Mint version (Mint 9), so you can either try that or get the Mint 8 version. Mint is much like Ubuntu, but greener :-) It also has out-of-the-box codecs and other unfree but useful software.
From: "nobody >" on 3 Jun 2010 00:46 On 6/2/2010 3:15 PM, Frank Steinmetzger wrote: > RayLopez99 wrote: > >> On Jun 2, 4:32 pm, David Brown<da...(a)westcontrol.removethisbit.com> >> wrote: >>> On 02/06/2010 14:36, RayLopez99 wrote: >>> >>>> Thinking of using on an old 1998 laptop PC that presently has a >>>> Pentium II, with a built in generic Dell modem, USB mouse, 512k RAM >>>> (!), DVD/CD, running Windows XP fine now (very slow), some distro of >>>> Linux. >>> >>> I take it you mean 512 MB ram? Otherwise the machine could barely run >>> DOS... >>> >> >> Yes, it was 512 MB ram. Or it may be 256 MB. In any event, it's >> enough to run Windows XP, which is pretty demanding, so Linux should >> (I hope) run fine...but which distro? > > I could run Gentoo with KDE 3 on a Pentium III with 256 MB. KDE 3 took > ~120MB after boot (that's half of Windows XP) but it was not very fluid. > And no, I'm not suggesting to install Gentoo on your friend's laptop. ;-) > > So RAM may not be a big problem here, but speed definitely is. You also said > your friend doesn't even know what a USB stick was, so I gather she is not > very computer-literate. This yields to the following criteria: > > - you need a small, fast graphical environment (such as LXDE or XFCE) > - you can't necessarily use something much simpler, like Openbox, for it > doesn't provide much of a modern desktop "user experience" with today's > conveniences > - you need something that is easy to use and manage > > I don't have personal experience with it, but my conclusion would reveal > something like Xubuntu (that's Ubuntu but with Xfce instead of Gnome). > > > Oh and something else: having everything on Google servers does not save you > from needing to process it. Had I to chose between an office suite and a > javascript-based web application on a 90 MHz CPU, I'd go for native machine > code, it's just faster and may need less memory. Also, laptops from that > time don't have much screen resolution (I'd guess it has 800x600 at most), > which is another point against the browser way. OpenOffice could not be the > ultimate answer here. There are smaller things available, such as AbiWord or > Gnumeric. I'm not a linux guru; but I've been playing around with a few "Ubuntu-like" distros trying to find something that I can get my teeth into first. THEN... I can start putting that onto "friends 'n family" or "donation" machines to get them into using pooters. I stumbled onto Mepis 8.0 a couple of months ago and was quite impressed with how the big-boy version of Mepis installed, looked, acted, performed and was extremely impressed. It's very "Windose-y" as installed, so transition should be easy for those with some M$ experience, but appears to be very easily configured into something approaching the "PHD Experience" (Push Here, Dummy). http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mepis There's a lightweight version called antiX-M8.2 that looks quite good http://desktoplinuxreviews.com/2009/07/29/antix-m8-2/ "antiXi is ideal for older computers and needs the following as a minimum requirement: 64MB old PII 266 systems with pre-configured 128MB RAM with 1.2GB hard disk size." Hmm... I've got a pile of boxes with that or more (or lots more), could be a good way to get rid of them in a good way. I'd planned on snagging that (as well as the new Mepis 8.5) to play with, but almost everything related to http://www.mepis.org/ has been up-down like a yoyo (unfortunately mostly down). It was down as I started this post, Now it's back up :) "after 3 1/2 days, the MEPIS server was fixed, first they ignored the problem, then they wished for the best, then they replaced it" OK, Now I can say "TRY IT" !! (going over to the other machine to start downloading the isos now)
From: RayLopez99 on 3 Jun 2010 07:34 On Jun 3, 1:13 am, Mike Easter <Mi...(a)ster.invalid> wrote: > I still don't think I understand what she needs a computer for - email? > Yes. RL
From: RayLopez99 on 3 Jun 2010 07:35 On Jun 3, 1:15 am, Mike Easter <Mi...(a)ster.invalid> wrote: > RayLopez99 wrote: > > Yes, it was 512 MB ram. Or it may be 256 MB. > > There is a gigantic difference between those two. > > You absolutely have to get crystal clear on how much ram. > > > BTW it has a 100 GB hard drive. > > -- > Mike Easter I think it's 512M RAM. Anyway XP runs on it. Windows 2000 was running on it, both fine. So can Linux run on it? RL
From: RayLopez99 on 3 Jun 2010 07:36
On Jun 3, 1:15 am, Frank Steinmetzger <War...(a)gmx.de> wrote: > I dont have personal experience with it, but my conclusion would reveal > something like Xubuntu (thats Ubuntu but with Xfce instead of Gnome). > Aha. That's the problem Frank. You "heard" Xubuntu works fine...but no experience with it. RL |