I have a PII 266 that I run Slackware 10.2 on and that use as a testing box for my real Slackware machine. It actually runs really well on the 266, even with KDE.

I agree with drwilsontx -- I've had Slackware 9.1 through Slackware-current installed on my PII 233 Mhz file/print server for the last 2 1/2 years without incident. It's takes a while to recompile kernels (compared to my laptop), but I've had very few issues with it. It'll even run X if I need it to, although I generally run either BlackBox or WindowMaker desktop environments to save on memory and CPU cycles.

I installed a few years ago debian sarge while it was still testing on a P2 with 133 Mhz and it worked perfectly.

I compiled the kernels on my desktop, 1 hr versus 9hrs on the laptop, I just like the looks of KDE, it takes longer to boot, and it's a little slow, I am comfortable with it.

Again, I installed gentoo on my machine whcih means everything is complied for this architecture.
This is a PII laptop 300MHz 164MB RAM (I was wrong the last time).

Perhaps the issue is the USE flags I used. I used -Os for optimization because I read is somewhere at the wiki...

It works real nice but I expected it to be better. Perhaps it is just what it can do.

Right now it taked a bit for each program to load and when switching from one open window to the other. Was that the same with windows 98 back then? As far as I can recall it wasn't, and that's why I expected better performance...

So, that's exactly my question- what should I expect???

thanks again!

Gil

I'd suggest dumping XFCE and installing something lighter, like fluxbox with its optional themes. I have a P-II/300 with 64MB ram (and a 1 GB HDD, ugh) running Debian Sarge with a fluxbox desktop. Not a speed demon by any account, but it's okay for web browsing (and leaving this reply).

- T.

Thanks, I'll try that...

I bought Toshiba Portege 7020CT P2 366 Mhz, 192Mb RAM. I tried to find good linux for this, I thought about SimplyMepis - I worked all my life on MAcOS, last few years on MAcOs X, I wanted something as simple and nice as this. But I heard, that it will not work. What else can you suggest?

I have also just got one of these with same spec and have looked at the following distros
DSL 3.0 - wouldn't load at all, havent yet tried it in another machine to see if its the CD at fault - MD5 sum checked out OK
Puppy Linux 2.02 - wouldn't load graphics - have done some searching and work is needed to update the graphics driver - cant be bothered for all that yet.
Xubuntu - runs fine as a live CD so should be OK installed - no apparent issues.
Hope this helps a bit