slow laptop + absolute newbie distro

Nechos · 09-29-2003, 04:15 PM

i have a friend who hasn't got a clue about linux (nor windows, for that matter...) with a sony vaio (caveman's) laptop: pII 150MHz, 80MB RAM (16+64, planning to upgrade) and 4GB harddisk.
win98se + M$ office 2000 are terribly slow, so i was thinking of introducing him to linux society. what distro should i go for? itshould be as easy as mandrake, but as non-demanding as vector...
are there maybe some windows-like distros (lindows, lycoris, stuff like that) that could work on the laptop better than 98se?
thanx

quatsch · 09-29-2003, 05:53 PM

why not mandrake? Just don't use those huge desktop environments like KDE and Gnome. IceWM should be all right for a starter.

snype · 09-30-2003, 06:27 AM

when I saw this post i shuddered for a minute..... you want something like windows? i hope you just mean a GUI.
anyways you could put mandrake on with out kde or gnome but it'd still run slow... thats because of all of the extra stuff it runs.... Something such as slackware would run better. or one of the debian children (these arent as hard to install as you think) then I recomend using xfce as the gui as it is the most userfriendly that doesnt run heavy like kde... well im off to school hope i helped...

snype · 09-30-2003, 06:28 AM

oh yeah gentoo would be fastest... cause it compiles all from source and takes advantage of your computer I recomend you do some reading on it..

quatsch · 09-30-2003, 10:09 AM

slack, debian, gentoo are good but they are not newbie distros especially not for system maintenance. Mandrake does a lot of extra stuff but that can be disabled. The gui tools make it really easy for a newbie to maintain the system.

Nechos · 09-30-2003, 04:23 PM

snype, i don't think you understood me well - i'm trying to CONVERT a friend, not me (yes, i AM a linux newbie, but i installed mdk only to prepare for slack...)
he's REALLY a newbie, so i think he should do that 'half-step' (between win and *nix) lindows-like distro....
should be impressive though (speed, but also graphics...possible?), otherwise it'll be 'no thanx'...
i'm sure he'll turn to command line soon, and get himself vector or gentoo, but until then...

quatsch · 09-30-2003, 11:43 PM

go for mandrake. I'm sure IceWM will run at a reasonable speed plus it looks like win98 so no shock for a newbie. The gui tools will all run in icewm.

Nechos · 10-01-2003, 07:00 AM

ok, then i'll go for mdk - in any case, i don't think he'll be using it for a long time (before getting gentoo or vector...)
thanx guys