Hi, i'm Darren, i've just gotten an old laptop i want to fix up and run slide shows and possibly emc2 from and right now i'm not sure if this is possible.

Spec :

800mhz celeron
120mb ram
40gb hdd
2 usb ports
1 parport
analog video out
vga out

As you can imagine Its not very high spec and i've done a lot of searching online and tried MANY different distro's to try and get some life out of this machine. So far i've not managed to get a single desktop up and running. I've tried :

Lubuntu
Puppy Linux
!#
Tiny Linux
Bodhi Linux

I think theres a few others but you get the idea, i've tried as many lean systems as i can think of. I am hoping i dont have to build a linux distro from scratch to do this as its something i've never done before and for a single system this seems overkill. Can anyone suggest a version of linux that might boot into a desktop with only 120mb ram? Failing that i guess i need 256mb of SDR SODIMM

regards

Darren

Hi, welcome to LQ.

See this thread.
Or this one.

I've got the same thing going wit a 800 p3 and 30gb Hdd Here's my thread

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...op-4175412412/

With Lubuntu did you use the ALTERNATE-install CD for low spec computers?
It's a text-based installer but if you follow it carefully you should have a working system in the end. Although 120MB is low, the doc says that the minimum for the install is 64MB but it would be great if you could up it to 256 at least.
I have an Lubuntu system running nicely on a P3-933 with 384MB.

The lightest out-of-the-box system is AntiX. I've run the Dillo browser and the Ted word processor in that with just 60MB of RAM being used.

Might as well try slitaz.

For a machine like that I would recommend antiX. You also can use a general purpose distro like Debian or Slackware with a lightweight window manager (*box, Enlightenment, FVWM2, WindowMaker or one of the tiling WMs) or desktop environment (LXDE).
Since you are low on RAM I would not recommend to run any distro that wastes your RAM with copying itself to run, like Tinycore, Slitaz or Puppy (and derivates).

I've been messing with Slitaz and it's a PITA. Even using an ethernet connection I'm having problems getting the browsers to work. It can call home for packages but so far that's all I've accomplished. I haven't been able to figure out wireless yet. I guess that's Slitaz's biggest hurdle. I think I'll try antiX next. Possibly Wary Puppy.

AntiX worked pretty good for meand it wasn't too hard to set up the wireless. It even had a wizard at the end of the install to help me along. I don't have an ethernet port so wireless is my only option for internet. I use a $10 Rosewill model UBE150 usb adapter ant it works great. Get it @ Newegg.

I just tried Salix live and like it too it will be installed next and also supported my wireless adapter out of the box.