I recently got a laptop and have it set up as a dual boot system (WinXP and Mandrake.) However, I am less than impressed by the performance of Mandrake. I used to have Mandrake installed on my desktop and liked it quite a bit. However, on my laptop, it boot slowly, KDE starts slowly, the system tools (like the updater) freeze while downloading packages, the internet connection is lost easily, the touchpad has to be turned off and then back on for it to work, and two thirds of my 256 MB of RAM is used for the system alone. I know that 256 isn't a lot of memory, but isn't 170 MB for a Linux system a bit much?

So, what I am looking for is a distibution that is useful but won't hog all of my computers limited resources. Debian sounds like it might be a good choice but I have also heard stories of it "being stuck at full speed" which creates issues with power consumption and heat. Has anyone heard of this?

Gentoo also seems like a good idea for getting the most out of limited resources but might be a little over my head.

Slackware might be another option as it is a fairly "bare bones" bistribution but I wonder how useful it would be. Does Slackware work well with package tools like apt? Does anyone have much experience with Slackware on a laptop?

-Brandon

Hey,

A couple of years ago, I bought an old Thinkpad 600x. Ever since I've had it I have been running Slackware on it quite happily. The advantages I can see are that it runs fast and stable and I have gotten everything on the laptop to work, Power management, the ltmodem, etc. It has taken me a little work, though. Once it was up and running, it has remained running well for years now.

As far as packaging systems go, Slackware's is my favorite, the packages are simple tarballs that you can get pretty much anywhere and install very easily. there is also a couple of tools (swaret, and slapt-get) which will do downloading and installing of packages both from slackware's ftp sites and from other package repositories (linuxpackages.net).

As far as other distros, I haven't tried any on this laptop. But I have found that I tend to dislike most of the others for reasons that aren't necessarily reasonable. Anyway, good luck getting everything to work out.

I have a Toshiba laptop with Slack 10 installed on it. Slack has a package tool called pkgtool. There is also an upgrade util called swaret.

To be honest, once you give Slack a shot and learn how things are done. My bet is you'll wont go back to Mandrake.

just curious, what version of Mandrake are you using? I finally got Mandrake 10.1 CE working in an orderly fashion, and I haven't had any problems. I have a laptop that is probably 5 years older than yours (HP Zt1130 with 256MB RAM, 8MB Video card, 1.13Ghz CPU) the bootup is a little sluggish, but I figured it's because of my really slow CPU. Have you tried to use Mandrake 10.1 offical? That would be the best mandrake version to use. All the bugs from the CE version should be fixed.

I have also ran fedora (core 1) successfully with no problems on this laptop. If Mandrake totally fails you, then you can use Fedora. I don't know if Core 3 is out of devel, but you might want to try that.

I just got a 700m and am currently using suse 9.2 pro. But I am having a hard time getting the wireless card to work along with the 100 base t card. I was thinking about trying core 3 what do you guys think?

I tried it. I haven't given wireless a try yet so I can't comment on that but the built-in Realtek ethernet worked just fine for me and I didn't have any sound detection issues like I did with Mandrake 10.0 Official. Hopefully someone else can comment on wireless.

I would not consider 1,13GHz sluggish in a 5 year old laptop! my current laptop, not yet 1,5 yrs old has 1,8GHz.

Just another vote for Slackware here.

my laptop (IBM Thinkpad R51) is the only one I ever tried Linux on and it works great.

Also, Slack is not really a "bare-bones" distro because it has all the graphic stuff on the disks, but you can choose at install if you want them or not.

I had a chance to run Slackware 10 and XP-pro on identical laptops side by side and the Slack one won hands down on performance.

hth,

mark

Seriously! I bought the laptop that I bought because it has a lot of nice features for the price (USB 2.0, nice sized screen, 60 GB HDD, 802.11g) but it is only 1.6 GHz... although, it's an AMD so that number scales up a bit.

Sorry. its 4 years old as of this December.

IMO SuSE 9.2 Professional is by far the best laptop distro.

I've tried Mepis, Fedora Core 2, SuSE 9.1 Professional, Mandrake 10, Xandros 2, Slackware 10, Ubuntu Warty, and SuSE 9.2 Professional.

I am running FC3 on a Dell 700m in a dual-boot with XP. A quick patch for the unusual screen resolution, ndiswrapper for the wireless and an RPM for ntfs and everything was up and running beautifully.

RT

Lots of opinions here and I can only echo what's already been stated: I'd go with Suse or Slackware. Those are two extremes obviously, so I guess it comes down to how much "work" you want to put into your install.

I personally like Debian, it works well on my Compaq 2100US laptop. The only problem I have is the Conexant Winmodem, but I think its able to be fixed.

IMHO slackware is the only way to go with laptop distros, and I've tried lots. I had high hopes for SuSE 9.2 after a stellar recommendation from a friend but on my hardware it just seemed bloated slow and i never did manage to get swsusp2 working properly!