Click to See Complete Forum and Search --> : Reccomended Distribution/WM for Old Laptop
london_nrg
08-13-2003, 08:46 PM
Hi,
I have an old IBM Thinkpad (233MHz, 196MB RAM)
Can someone reccomend a distribution/window manager that will run well on this kind of machine. I will really only be using it for OpenOffice and Mozilla. The quicker the better!
Thanks.
kshim5
08-13-2003, 08:55 PM
Try slackware or gentoo
download either at
www.linuxiso.org
plattypus1
08-13-2003, 08:59 PM
Search the formus. There are so many "which distro should I use?" posts that many of us are frankly sick of them.
That said, I'd reccomend Slackware or Gentoo, running blackbox or one of it's variants. My personal favorite is fluxbox but many people don't like the tabs.
I would go for Slackware/Debian, or Gentoo. As for the WM, any fast WMs such as *box, IceWM, Enlightenment, PekWM.. You have to try some and see...
Also, do what plattypus1 suggested, you will find lots of recommendations on what to use.
personally i would go with slack over gentoo. compiling the programs from source that you want (openoffice, xfree) might take a long (long) time on a 233 with that amount of ram. i would recommend mozilla-firebird or opera for a browser over mozilla unless you are wanting the whole mozilla suite (mail, news, etc.).
Actually, I wouldn't install Gentoo on that comp, it would take very long to compile stuff like Mozilla as trc well said. It's not much fun leaving your laptop on for days.
You should be ok with Slackware/Debian, or other binary based distro.
Sepero
08-13-2003, 10:29 PM
I have a desktop with 233mhz and 96mb ram. I run Debian on it.
That 196MB RAM should be reasonable to run IceWM, but if you want the greatest performance use one of the Boxes (Fluxbox, Blackbox, Hackedbox, Openbox).
Three choices really for a distro: Slackware, Debian or Gentoo. If you don't want to leave your laptop on for hours, then don't pick Gentoo.
Make sure you look for all the performance tips you can get for your old machine (look in the "How I did it" forum).
Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379
08-14-2003, 02:42 AM
Seriously, though, I'm not trying to be a cynic or anything, but like plattypus1 stated, this subject has been talked into the ground around here.
Try this forum search for "old laptop distro"-- (http://www.justlinux.com/forum/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=710703&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending) over 400 hits!
Again, not trying to be mean; I'm just trying to keep everyone from wasting their efforts.
Kaligraphic
08-15-2003, 03:29 AM
I've got an old Thinkpad (Celery 300MHz/96MB Ram), and I run Debian on it. (IceWM runs just fine, thank you very much.)
How long have you been using linux?
Gaxus
08-15-2003, 04:27 AM
Don't use gentoo unless you want to wait days/weeks to get your box fully-functional/operational.
I agree with those who said Debian or Slackware.
For window managers check out:
*boxes/*box-like: openbox, fluxbox, waimea, etc
WindowMaker
XFCE4
Icewm
I THINK these should run fine on your box.
psi42
08-15-2003, 04:40 AM
You might also want to take a look at the "speed up openoffice" thread in the How I Did It forum. That will get you a great deal more speed in openoffice, epspecially on that old system.
But openoffice (and mozilla) will still be a tad sluggish. :)
As mentioned above be sure to check out XFCE 4 (http://xfce.org/)... it works great on old hardware.
~psi42