Hello
I want to have the use of a laptop - for WP and access to a network. What are the absolute minimum specifications I need on a laptop and which distro should I go for? I'm a newbie but SuSE 7.3 is up and running on my desktop. I'll need something that resembles a word processor and I need to connect to my desktop.
Thanks

I had a lot of luck with a bunch of old P1 133's with 24-40Mb of RAM and 1Gb Hard Drives. Of course, I had to be stodgy on disk space during installs... of every current distro using both Gnome and KDE. They were a little pokey, mostly on X startup, but more than wieldy enough to use. The more or less best word-processor ad-nauseum for Linux (well, inarguably the one that does the most formats, including .doc) is StarOffice. This runs like snot on anything short of 1Ghz. Koffice, and especially AbiWord, are much less RAM piggish than StarOffice.

Anyone else who posts after me is going to recommend at least a P2 and 64-128Mb of RAM.

Old P1s, heck 486s make great Linux boxs (even in X-windows, as long as the graphics card is at least 1Mb+), with either going with a slightly older distro, one of the oddball distros tailored for older hardware, or just resolving yourself to installing 4-8 times and being very very very picky about what you install.

Also, don't end up paying silly laptop prices. Ebay is double vision... even with older gear, as is used computer shops. Middle-end P1s with CDROMS shouldn't beat $150.

Good Luck,

Finegan

Where could one find an old P1 laptop for $150?
I've looked around some and have a hard time finding laptops this old or cheap. Enlighten me please.

thanks
Eric

I got my IBM P3 500 for $500 about a year ago from the closed auction at a casualty of viet.com. Admitedly the carrion-fest has slowed somewhat, but that is still a viable source. Also, lease returns to hardware lease companies. They usually try to punt their stuff on E-bay these days (take a look at the mountain of Ultra Sparc 5's currently up for auction!), but some of the smaller items they don't consider worth posting, or they'll sell it locally to avoid the shipping hastle. Also, if you go to a University, or know someone who goes to one nearby, they almost definately have a blah.blah.ads USENET style newsgroup where the CS geeks swap gear for on average of 10% below pricewatch.

The P133s I was mentioning cost me nothing, zilch. They belonged to a financial consulting firm that had upgraded a year or two before and shelved them. When they finally got around to wanting to donate them... they realized it would cost more to process the tax-break claim than they would get back... so they decided to chuck them. Luckily a friend of mine had the sense to grab them when he could, all nine of them.

Also, if your state is allowed to do this, and most are, although not the one I am in, there are state property auctions. You know that old myth about buying a card for 1/4th of book? Well, think about picking up 20 early Pentium 2's for about $100. Can we say Beowulf cluster? Admitedly this only works well with Universities, and preferably richer ones, but still state organizations as privates tend to donate to charities (the bastards). A couple years ago a friend of mine picked up a Sparc 4 for something like $50 from one of these auctions, which is about what you would pay on E-Bay now... but this was a couple years ago, Pentium 1 era.

Cheap gear isn't easy, but it beats the heck out of the mugging by morons that tends to classify most trips to CompUSA.

Admitedly most of this is possible for me bacause A) I work for a University, and B) I live in a major city. If you inhabit rural nowhere, then it looks like you're stuck buying gear from the internet, which means paying too much for it.

Cheers,

Finegan

If you like RedHat, 6.1 is a good distro for an older machine, I had it on a 486 66 when I started.

Still Have one running somewhere around here if I can remember where I left it.

Hey!


I found an old one laying around,

It is a compaq aero, 486 33

has monkey linux on it.

kernel 2.0.30

Even has netscape,

The screen is too small.


It was my first computer



My other one is a P75 laptop. with RH 6.1 I think, It's been a while.

I got an IBM Thinkpad 360cse w/ 20MG of DRAM, 50MHz Processor and 500+MG hard drive for $35 + shipping for myself and a Thinkpad 755cx w/ 24MG DRAM, 75MHz Processor, 5GB HD, PCMDIA 56K modem and PCMCIA CDROM for $150.00 + shipping for my wife, both from EBAY during January 2002.

You just have to look and be patient. Look way ahead, search for something like "IBM Thinkpad", be patient and possibly use "Buy it now" if its something that will exceed that price by the time its all said and done.

P.S. Not trying to step on your toes DavidPhillips.