[TriLUG] Linux version recommendations for OLD laptop...

[Steve Litt]

On Monday 19 July 2010 01:22:32 Dave Cowan wrote:
> Hey Luggers,
> 
> I have an old Dell Latitude CPt S (yeaah, I know,  don't laugh). It has an
>  500 MHz Intel Celeron processor with 256 MB of  ram. I was able to
>  successfully install Windows XP SP3 but I'd like to  try a version of
>  Linux on it.
> 
> I want to load Linux on it just to play around but have had issues  with
>  Ubuntu 9.04 and 10.04. Any recommendations on a fairly recent 
>  distribution of Linux that I might be able to successfully load on this 
>  dinosaur? Doesn't necessarily need to be Ubuntu.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Dave

Hi Dave,

Depends on what you want to do with it. The DSL and Peanut distributions, 
among many others, are meant for underpowered machines and I'm sure they'd 
install just fine. My perception is I can't get much work done with those 
distros, but your mileage may vary.

You could also try Xubuntu, which is Ubuntu sporting a light footprint xfce 
window manager. I haven't used it, but my guess is it would be a much more 
ready-to-work distro than Peanut or DSL. According to 
http://www.xubuntu.org/getubuntu, it will work with 192MB of RAM, although 
they recommend at least 256MB.

Whatever you install, my guess would be you'd need to be careful to run very 
few apps at a time. You'd probably want to not install Mozilla Firefox or 
konqueror, but instead go for lightweights like dillo or midori.

You might like Umenu as a partial user interface and occasional front end. 
It's a console app that's very lightweight. 

http://www.troubleshooters.com/umenu/

Please let us know what you end up doing.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt