Any Linux for an antique notebook?

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alienstew

58 posts

Master Geek

#15567 29-Aug-2007 11:26

I’ve an old (10yr) and slow notebook, I’m thinking it might be improved with Linux installed – any thoughts appreciated as I know absolutely nothing about Linux, but would like to learn. I’ve looked at the other posts here about older PCs but don’t see anything as ancient as mine, maybe I’m expecting too much of Linux?

It’s a Digital HiNote VP500, 1GB HDD, 48MB RAM, Pentium 120, running (slowly) under Win 98 SE and with a compressed HDD. Works OK with Word/Excel/IE on dial-up

I’d like to get a PCMCIA WiFi card if I can find a cheap one that works OK and generally speed things up. If running Linux, will it network fully with a Vista PC (Win 98 won’t)?

Any idea what version of Linux would be best to use with such limited resources? I see “Damn Small Linux” as a possibility although I’d like to keep life easy and have a Windows like desktop if possible; I don’t think DSL does that does it?

Filterer

489 posts

Ultimate Geek

#84248 29-Aug-2007 11:52

DSL should run on it and does have a very basic" desktop" type enviroment

If you download the DSL and burn it onto a CD you can boot straight onto into it without installing anything, so you can have a look at it without actually installing anything or loosing your windows install

pɐǝɥ sıɥ uo ƃuıpuɐʇs

OpenD

18 posts

Geek

#84838 1-Sep-2007 21:30

There is a linux desktop called XFCE - described as a "lightweight desktop environment for older machines"

It is included with Fedora and, I would expect, other distributions.

The question you will come up against though is is not just whether you can get a light version of linux with a light desktop - but what applications you want to run as well. If you are just after browsing and a bit of editing/ printing documents - then you will probably find some things that work. If you want to run some of the 'killer apps' for music, photo editing etc then you will be struggling on an old machine.

But I would suggest searching for the XFCE home page and seeing what it provides.

To explain a bit more how linux installations work:

Linux is a networked based OS. It has a kernel, which has the core OS, that then supports a network environment (which can just be on one PC) and user logins. On top of that is loaded X-server, which is the GUI interface that then supports your desktop environment of choice - KDE and Gnome are the two common choices. Each distribution will have this all packaged together for you and you select what you want as you install. So when you load Fedora, for example, there is an option to load a mini version with XFCE as the desktop.

I would do a bit of research on the net and then try out some different distributions.

There is a guy on trademe that runs off linux distributions for about $4 each and will do a triple package for you for a discount.

One word of warning though with notebooks - is you do need to check the supported hardware lists for the distributions first - there is an aweful lot of proprietry stuff in notebooks, which may or may not have linux drivers.

frup

12 posts

Geek

#88305 27-Sep-2007 13:35

There are lighter options than XFCE. Instead of using a desktop environment I would recommend using just a Window Manager if responsiveness and speed are the most important part. The trouble with a laptop that slow is that many of the programs you would want to run probably won't run well. I have heard of people running Firefox on systems of similar speeds but apparently Firefox took something like 3 minutes to open and was not very responsive. I think Open Office would be horrible.

http://themes.freshmeat.net/screenshots/55565/59702/ is an example of IceWM with a windows theme which might make things more comfortable in relation of Win98.

as for the Wifi... check the ndiswrapper website first for compatibility, I do know that ones from Dick Smith Electronics work well with Ndiswrapper. They aren't too costly.

To get a OS as light weight as possible you might want to get quite familiar with linux first (you didn't mention you already used linux so I am presuming you don't) Maybe downloading a major distributions LiveCD and playing with that on your main computer will provide a way to learn Linux details in depth with more initial ease of use.

I think Samba should network with Vista ok but keep in mind Vista is a terrible OS, you would be better using XP although in my opinion you should only use linux. :P