Prev: Dillo 2.2 geometry mystery = solved
Next: Printer Setup on CUPS
From: William Poaster on 23 Apr 2010 14:51
On Thu, 22 Apr 2010 23:24:44 -0400, jch wrote:

> I've got an old laptop with a 500MHz CPU and 128M RAM. What version of
> linux would run on such a limited system? Right now I have Windows ME
> but would like to replace it with linux just to play around. I don't
> want puppy linux which from what I gather resides on a CD. I actually
> want to load linux on the HD and run it from there. What would you
> receommend?
>
> Thanks.

See:- https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu

From: J G Miller on 23 Apr 2010 15:56
On Fri, 23 Apr 2010 12:22:21 -0500, John Hasler wrote:

> The only different thing about the "light" distributions is that they
> install a lightweight desktop environment by default instead of KDE
> or Gnome.

Yes that is indeed the big difference.

However, and I may be wrong on this, but do not some of the specialized
"light weight" distributions have some kernel configuration tweaks,
as well as perhaps some specialized sysctl settings?

> Others have suggested suitable window managers.

Fluxbox may well be the one of lightest standard window managers,
but one may also consider icewm, fvwm, and oroborus, and if one
really does want a "desktop" LXDE.

My understanding is that XFCE is not as lightweight as it
once was.

From: Bit Twister on 22 Apr 2010 23:30
On Thu, 22 Apr 2010 23:24:44 -0400, jch wrote:
> I've got an old laptop with a 500MHz CPU and 128M RAM. What version of
> linux would run on such a limited system?

Have you heard about a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) search engine?
If no, bookmark this one
http://groups.google.com/advanced_search

Putting best linux low power hardware in the first box returns
Results 1 - 10 of about 280,000 for best linux low power hardware.
From: John Hasler on 23 Apr 2010 17:44
J G Miller writes:
> However, and I may be wrong on this, but do not some of the
> specialized "light weight" distributions have some kernel
> configuration tweaks, as well as perhaps some specialized sysctl
> settings?

No doubt, but the effect of such things will pale into insignificance
when compared to the impact of graphics.
--
John Hasler
jhasler(a)newsguy.com
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI USA
From: Mike Jones on 23 Apr 2010 18:08
Responding to Steve Ackman:

> In <pan.2010.04.23.18.52.09(a)dasteem.invalid>, on Fri, 23 Apr 2010
> 18:52:09 +0000 (UTC), Mike Jones, luck(a)dasteem.invalid wrote:
>> Responding to Steve Ackman:
>>
>> [...]
>>> My wife had a 200Mhz with 32MB RAM a few years back.
>>> I put RH 7.1 on it, and it ran everything just fine though I did leave
>>> Gnome off, and put on a menu system that would only open one app at a
>>> time directly in X. No Window manager at all. It was greased
>>> lightning with that config (compared to an AMD K5-75 w/12MB RAM
>>> running fvwm2).
>
>> Come on! Out with it! How did you do that?
>>
>> I gotta play with this now! %)
>
> Did I say a FEW years back? ;-)
>
> She didn't like remembering commands, so I changed
> her shell entry in /etc/passwd to point to a bash script menu.
>
> Options were displayed, and when she'd hit '1',
> netscape would launch, '2' and OpenOffice (or it might have been Star
> Office then) would open, '3' and her favorite game, etc... There were
> only about a dozen things she wanted to do on the laptop anyway, so it
> all easily fit on a single screen menu.
>
> Command for each menu item was along the lines of
>
> xinit `which firefox` or
> xinit $(which firefox)
>
> As soon as she closed firefox, she'd be dropped back into her shell
> (menu) again.


Heh! Playing with it now. :)

Some WM functions are missing, and Seamonkey is a tiny thing in the
corner, Dillo uses a reasonable amount of screen estate, and Pan runs
fullscreen.

The mouse-over=focus is weird!

So, did you tweak your commands to set up the screen real estate? I'm
looking at man xinit, but its only "how to hotwire" info.

Dayam! I'm flipping back to IceWM. %)

--
*=( http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/
*=( For all your UK news needs.
First  |  Prev  |  Next  |  Last
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5
Prev: Dillo 2.2 geometry mystery = solved
Next: Printer Setup on CUPS