Linux for VERY OLD laptop.

Discussion in 'Software' started by Speculant, Sep 27, 2009.

  1. Speculant

    Speculant The Confused One

    Pentium II 233Mhz, 32MB RAM, 4GB HDD, floppy and CD ROM drive.

    I was thinking Damn Small Linux or Puppy linux. Which of those two would work best?
     
  2. BoredOutOfMyMind

    BoredOutOfMyMind Picabo, ICU

  3. MoPaR

    MoPaR Private First Class

    out of the 2 you chose, definately puppy linux... just my opinion :) but hey, i'm a suse user ;)
     
  4. plodr

    plodr Major Geek Super Extraordinaire

  5. loonacycle

    loonacycle Private E-2

    Go with BOOMM's suggestion.

    keep it simple

    :major
     
  6. PapaDuke

    PapaDuke Master Sergeant

    I've used DSL for a couple of years now. Really like the simplicity of it. :)
     
  7. Mimsy

    Mimsy Superior Imperial Queen of the MG Games Forum

    What did you end up going with? I started playing with the Puppy CD on my old laptop last night, and I'm really enjoying it so far. I have it on the desk next to me right now, backing up the data from the hard drive before I wipe it, repartition, and install Puppy to the hard drive so I can ditch the external CD drive.
     
  8. BoredOutOfMyMind

    BoredOutOfMyMind Picabo, ICU

    Was this Pup 4.3? What are your specs Mimsy?
     
  9. MoPaR

    MoPaR Private First Class

    I installed and ran Pup 4.3 on a Dell Latitude c500 900mhz 256ram 20 gig hdd 4mb ati video, and everything 'just worked'
    Took minimal effort to configure the ethernet and minor stuff. It works good, i'll give it that.

    Just gonna take me some time to adjust, but I do like it thus far.
     
  10. Mimsy

    Mimsy Superior Imperial Queen of the MG Games Forum

    Yes, 4.3. I am running off CD right now, as I ran into weird and unexpected issues when I attempted a frugal install to hard drive, but from CD it works great. Due to my ATI chipset I ended up running Xvesa instead of Xorg, but aside from that everything was recognized, and wireless was a breeze to set up.

    My specs are higher than both yours and MoPaR's though: 768MB RAM, .2GHz Pentium Mobile CPU, 60GB HDD...

    In the Puppy forums I have seen several members say they can run it at your level of specs though. They either run an older version of Puppy, or they do a full install to the hard drive (loads less data into RAM) and create a larger swap partition. I can dig for more info, if you like?
     
  11. MoPaR

    MoPaR Private First Class

    I did a full install to a freshly formatted hdd, the only other issue i forgot to mention was the video at boot, the grub menu.lst needed a change from vga=790 to vga=normal
     
  12. BoredOutOfMyMind

    BoredOutOfMyMind Picabo, ICU

    Where did I post my specs? ;)

    I am using a Dell C840 these days and am quite disappointed that the free Compaq 700 was destroyed while installing a wireless card. Son-in-law too fast on removing heat shield popped a capicator off the MB. :-o

    He was kind to loan me the Dell and hot swapped the drive, reboot and we are off- sorta kind of.

    Did Pup 4.3 find your wireless card? I have a Broadcom Internal same as the Linksys PCM card...... works but too lazy to install/try it yet.
     
  13. Mimsy

    Mimsy Superior Imperial Queen of the MG Games Forum

    My mistake, I mistook you for Speculant LOL

    Yes, easily. I clicked on the Connect icon, and scanned for my router (made to broadcast for this special occasion), entered my connection info, password and other stuff, and I was online in less than a minute. Smooth and easy. I'm actually posting from my Puppy install right now, since the desktop has driver issues. :)
     
  14. barononeefdip

    barononeefdip Specialist

    personally i would suggest a few distros for a laptop like that
    -puppy, this has been know to work on systems from 1998
    - simply mepis tested it on a few number of systems and according to everyone else its good for old systems
    -damn small linus word going around with this one as well i hear its complicated to download and install but it works beautifully,
    you decide, tell us what you want to use this system for
     
  15. pclover

    pclover MajorGeek

    I would try DSL
     
  16. Speculant

    Speculant The Confused One

    i tried DSL, puppy, and xubuntu, none of them worked.

    since the point of this whole thing was to get new games on the old laptop, i just installed a bunch of older windows games i had lying around and gave the laptop back
     
  17. Tux_Rules

    Tux_Rules Corporal

    I had a laptop with those specs. It was an IBM Thinkpad, and I had installed Windows ME and Mandrake 8.0 on it. Mandrake 7.2 installed easier, but Mandrake 8.0 did indeed work.
     
  18. BoredOutOfMyMind

    BoredOutOfMyMind Picabo, ICU

    Installing Linux back then was kinda like steel wool on your knuckles. It felt so good to stop and do something else. ;)
     
  19. Tux_Rules

    Tux_Rules Corporal

    So very true! :-D
     
  20. Mimsy

    Mimsy Superior Imperial Queen of the MG Games Forum

    With the exeption of Ubuntu, Linux remains at that point , really.
     
  21. BoredOutOfMyMind

    BoredOutOfMyMind Picabo, ICU

    It is waaaaaaay easier than it was 10 years ago. I have tried Suse and Mandriva One and they are fairly easy to use. The issue is when you have issues like video. Bug #1 will need some ease of use to solve, not simply pretty graphics.
     
  22. utgeek

    utgeek Private E-2

    am a big fan of slax at the minute mate tiny OS but very good
     

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