Click to See Complete Forum and Search --> : What's a good disto for a new laptop?
ZAmodeo
04-05-2003, 10:54 AM
I have a new (few weeks old) laptop which has a 1.7Ghz P4m processor, 16 MB Radeon mobility video card, and 128MB of RAM. What would be a good distro for me? I was wondering if Slackware would be good because it works ok on really old computers so I'd think it would fly on mine. Maybe Gentoo would be better with all the optimization stuff. I want a fast distro and one that I can install without trouble. I've tried RedHat8, and Mandrake9 (mcc is great!) but they both run pretty slow, not much faster than on my Celeron 566 desktop. I'd also like 3d to work well with my card. Btw I am a newbie, but I am figuring stuff out as I go along so a little bit of technical stuff would be ok. Thanks for all your help!!!
irlandes
04-05-2003, 09:17 PM
You didn't say which make of computer, did you? Always include this, because until the answers come in, you won't know if that is relevant. For example, Dell Inspirons have Conexant modems, which require a different modem driver than other machines.
When one uses an uncertified (for linux) computer, results vary. What might be slow for you might be very fast on another machine with more RAM or different video card. So, the best way is to try a number of them and decide for yourself. IMO.
If you don't have fast service, to download a number of distros, there is www.cheapbytes.com which sells the preloaded CD's at a modest price. Edmund's discount in FL is even cheaper. That way you can try a bunch at modest cost.
ZAmodeo
04-05-2003, 11:39 PM
Sorry, I didn't know that mattered. I have an IBM R32. I have a broadband connection, so modems aren't really an issue. (I think I have a Conexant one, actually.) I was hoping someone would reply with experiance, but I do appreciate your advice! I've downloaded Mandrake 9, tried to dl 9.1 but had some CD issues, maybe my connection got messed up while downloading, I have RH8 on CDs, also Knoppix, which is very nice but CD based (maybe I should try its base, Debian???) and Slackware 9, which I got messed up in the install... I think I might have caused that, but text based installs aren't as nice and easy as graphicals. Thanks to irlandes and in advance to anyone that replies!
I would suggest you to try again with redhat, and figure out why it was going slow. Redhat has a lot of hardware compatibiilty.
ZAmodeo
04-06-2003, 12:13 AM
Should I try RH9? Maybe my hardware is newer than what RH8 supported. I wouldn't know how to find out what would be slowing it down so much. Maybe I'll give Gentoo a shot for the optimization. I don't have much to lose. BTW, does anyone know if Gentoo includes RPM? If not I could always dl it from RedHat's site, right?
irlandes
04-06-2003, 12:32 PM
Originally posted by ZAmodeo
Sorry, I didn't know that mattered. I have an IBM R32.
It may or may not, since you don't know the answer to your question, it is better to include that sort of info, because once in a while, someone knows something special about that computer. This was written as much for others who may read this forum as for you...
bskahan
04-06-2003, 12:45 PM
mandrake or redhat should run about as fast as XP on that machine, you would probably see a speed boost from gentoo (if you configured it properly) but its not a simple install. Slackware will not be any faster than reshat or mandrake, most likely.
The speed is determined primarily by the programs running not the distro. Go through drakconfig/setup and turn off all the unimportant services that start on boot. Don't run KDE with the Keramik theme, drop shadows and alpha blending.
i always found redhat slow too , i stuck with knoppix (u can use it to do a hard disk install)