Distro opinion for installation on old dell laptop

Greetings,
With the Holiday soon approaching (Tomorrow) My wife has INSISTED!!! I remove the PC from the Dining room table. (Along with the external HDDs and CD's etc) And in her words....

:-D She has actually been very patient with me and let me keep it there much longer than I thought I would be able too. I don't really have the room to set up office anywhere else. She has her office but the other room is a guest bedroom. In the grand scheme of things, it's not important to you all.
So, I figured, all was not lost and I could pull this Dell laptop out of the closet, wipe off the dust, pull the cord a few times, prime it and get it running.
Was wanting an opinion on a distro to put on this OLD Laptop.
Here are the specs

Dell Inspiron 1100
2.40 ghz Intel Pentium 4
8 kilobytes primary memory cache
512 kilobytes secondary memory cache
20 GB HDD
384 MB RAM (1 256mb stick and 1 128 mb stick)
Linksys Wireless-G Notebook Adapter WPC54G V3 PCMCIA
http://img813.imageshack.us/img813/8824/140t.jpg
CDRW/DVD Optical Drive

I have considered upgrading the HDD to something larger and upgrading the memory to 1 GB (Maximum allowed) But I started looking at prices and my god. To upgrade just to a 60GB HD and 2 512MB Sticks is almost $100??? (The computer itself is not worth that much) I figured certainly that a couple of 512MB DDR PC2700 333Mhz 200 Pin SODIMM sticks would not be to expensive at all, but I was wrong. (Best deal I could find was $38.00) The best price I could find for a 60GB HDD was $67.00.

Now I do realize that many distros would require more than what I have above so I figured I would seek your opinion on what the best distro to install based on what this beast has. Thought that DSL might be a great option but they do not have PCMCIA support (yet)

Now, the processor is more than fast enough on this thing and the GUI installers will work with 384 Megs, but the system will swap like there's no tomorrow from what I have read.
What about just adding a 512MB stick in line with the 256MB stick to give me 768MB? I would like to possibly load PCLinuxOS and OpenSUSE but I have a few more distros on CD just waiting for a home like Fedora and Mint.

Thanks and Happy Thanksgiving for those of you that Celebrate it.

Ian

 

While I am a self-professed Ubuntu fan, I do beleive that Mint is a "one size fits all" for Linux users, unless you're a guru...but if you're a guru you wouldn't be asking.

I seem to remember you're a Mandriva and KDE fan? I have PCLOS on a VM and I like it alot, although I just tinker with it for fun. Mint recently came out with a KDE version, so that's a VM on my box now too! Both are pretty sweet, although I remain a Gnome fan.

PCLOS was forked from Mandriva/Mandrake, so that might look pretty attractive to you. Regardless of your choice, I'd definitely upgrade that RAM to the max, then tinker with the "swap" settings; I've done it on an Ubuntu Gnome desktop, but don't know if it's the same for other distros. Happy to share the info, though...

As far as hard drive, I'd just leave the internal alone. If it was me, I'd purchase an external HDD and save my home directory there. I have a Western Digital 350GB external with USB power that works wonderfully for that purpose. Bought it at target for $65 about 1 year ago. Same price as a new internal for the laptop, but with much greater capacity and the ability to use on multiple machines. Or, with wireless network, just access a network drive on another machine at home, thereby mimicking a "dumb terminal" on your laptop. Just a thought...

 

James,
No, I am definitely a big fan of Mandriva KDE, but wanted to play around with some other distros. Not having the immediate room anymore to have the PC, the old laptop seemed like it was a good option to continue learning. I plan on upgrading the memory, but I have 2 250GB Externals brand new in the box that has been sitting in the closet, and I have been researching how I can run multiple distros from this external. Seems very complicated for a noobie, but I am hard headed and plan on figuring it out. From what I have read, it can definitely be done with the recommendation of partitioning the internal drive so that the swap partition could be put there. That of course got my head spinning thinking that each distro would require their own swap file?
As I said, I will figure it out. Heck, If I can put 4 to 6 distros on the external, I can move this bad boy to any computer I want and have Linux to play with.

 

why not have a go of this, no live cd, its install only

http://www.slackware.com/

i have it in a vm, its a user install - not graphical,

once its done then you add the programs that YOU want, not ones that come bundled,

also, be aware that the less ram you have limits your choice of linux,

just as a note - i have a dell latitude lappy, an old beast, and threw this on it

http://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr/pub/linux/MandrivaLinux/official/iso/2008.0/

yes, its mandriva but it has kde3 - a different animal than kde4

you can use the same swap space for all - if you choose to go that way

 

Greetings Hawk,
Well I just ordered 2 512MB sticks so this laptop can be upgraded to 1 GB RAM. Actually found 2 for $29.00 Free Shipping!! :dancer That will solve a lot of my issues there.

So, I can use the same space for the swap for each distro? That is good to know. With only having a 20GB HD in this thing (It currently has Win XP Home on it, which I am getting rid of), how much space should I alocate for the swap?

 

that depends on the distro,

mdv2008 adds swap upto 4gb total, automagically - 512 physical on my lappy so 3.5 added,

i really don't know about others as i use redhat based systems and all the ones i have installed use the 4gb limit,
a very general rule of thumb is twice your availible ram

slackware on the other hand is done by user choice,

try this on your mandriva in a terminal

Code:

free -m

you will see your ram and swap, try running a few programs, you may be able to gauge an amount,
swap can be changed either way as well, so it may be worth just playing

 

Interesting. Great info! Going by what you mentioned

I could get away with 2 GB considering once I upgrade the RAM, it will have 1 GB. But I am going to have one distro on the internal. 16 GB is more than enough, then run some distros on the external.
Looks like this is going to be A LOT of fun. If anything else, I should learn a TON If I accomplish my goal. :-D

I do have another question. Is the Swap file anything similar to the Paging File in Windows?

 

Unless you are watching DVD, why upgrade RAM?

My recommendation for you? Mandriva XFCE Live

Is that Dell an 8200?

 

BOoMM, No it's a Dell Inspiron 1100. Thanks for the Link.

 

its one of the advantages of a free operating system with no install limit

probably but your guess is as good as mine:-D

just as another note, i've never seen my swap being used so i don't think it really matters,
mind you the lappy is only used for the 'net and playing music and my pc has more than enough physical ram to bother my swap

 

Dell systems have always been slightly fussy regarding matched memory. Crucial says 512 per slot is the max.

I had Mint 9 on my box and it was sluggish. It would not run compiz, and I am spoiled with Music on one side left of the cube, and applications one side of right on the cube.

You only need 4 GB to LOAD up a system unless you are storing music, and for that you can use shared folders for both OS.


If I remember, that Linksys wireless card is broadcom based chipset. I moved to an Atheros as mine would not work that well, and it was accidentally bent....

 

Swap file = Paging file.

Agreed: the paging/swap file is basically a throwback to the old days of small memory sticks. With the big RAM modules available now, the 'borrowing of memory from a hard drive' is pretty much a moot point. I know some gamers with 8-12 gigs of RAM disable the swap, so that nothing interferes with the flow.