Anybody use Linux? For old hardware, which distro?
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From: Greegor on 2 Jun 2010 16:35 Is there a Linux distro that is particularly good for media player use - DVD, .FLV, MP3 etc?
From: RayLopez99 on 2 Jun 2010 16:59 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. > 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? RL
From: RayLopez99 on 2 Jun 2010 17:14 On Jun 2, 7:52 pm, noi ance <n...(a)siam.com> wrote: > Since you're running WinXp most distros should run on that laptop but > check the requirements, start atwww.distrowatch.orgas suggested. I've > been impressed with LinuxMint, it contains most of the applications you > need to replace an WinXp machine, ie, video player, folder.sharing, web > browser, etc. This is not looking too good for me...I think I have 512 MB, but might have as little as 256MB RAM, but in either event KDE is too slow in LinuxMint says their forum. Maybe your hardware was better? One poster* suggests "Freespire" for low RAM systems--ever heard of it? RL http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=628 3. How little memory is need to run Linux Mint? It works fine on my machine with 512MB RAM. well im not much help but i can say on 450mhz amd k6-2 with 393MB ram gnome is really slow. i seem to have plenty of ram... i average about 150MB of used ram without anything but the distro running. with firefox gaim and the distro i use about 250MB ram. the funny thing it seems is i recently tried freespire which uses KDE as the desktop and it seems as fast to me as ubuntu edgy with xfce4 desktop. my overall opinion with a 450MHz k6-2 is that its too slow for decent daily use using gnome. using xfce4 its decent and runs well. // * Freespire 2.0 begins with Ubuntu (Version 7.04) as its baseline and then adds software from six broad categories, further expanding Freespire's capabilities:
From: GlowingBlueMist on 2 Jun 2010 17:17 On 6/2/2010 3:35 PM, Greegor wrote: > Is there a Linux distro that is particularly good > for media player use - DVD, .FLV, MP3 etc? > I don't know as I don't use my computer for that kind of stuff. With that said you might check out some of those that claim to be "Home Entertainment" as their purpose in the LiveCD list at: http://www.livecdlist.com/ With as many people using Linux in one form or another I'd hope that someone else can give you better info on the best distro for your needs or point you to a newsgroup that deals multi-media and Linux.
From: RayLopez99 on 2 Jun 2010 17:18
On Jun 2, 11:12 pm, GlowingBlueMist <glowingbluem...(a)truely.invalid> wrote: > You might want to check out the list of ISO images available athttp://www..livecdlist.com/. > > Burn a couple to disk that look promising and give them a run directly > from the CD or DVD and check them out. Most should work just fine with > just about any hardware capable of running XP. Find what you like and > then you can install it to the hard drive. > > I'd start with a download of the Puppy Linux. WAIT. I did that, and documented my efforts a COLA. Puppy Linux failed to recognize my CD-ROM drive. Now my Windows Pentium II desktop is a paperweight (and not a good one), whereas before it was running WIndows 2000 fine. No Puppy Linux for me. In fairness, perhaps it's OK, since the CD-ROM was nearing its end of life, so we can blame it on a hardware dying problem. But I'm not sure. > It's small, easy to > download and will run from a CD which you burn, don't waste a DVD as it > is a really small download. I also have a copy of it running from a > flash drive with no problems, on computers that support booting from > USB. Exactly. This laptop is from 1998--probably the BIOS is too old for USB booting. > that you like. Then you can burn a CD\DVD version if you need one. I must burn on CD/DVD only. So please recommend one--what about Freespire 2.0? I need a concrete recommendation, not "pick one". Pick one only works if you have modern hardware. RL |