maybe this is silly question, but i want to ask it anyway!!

so, now i`m using Windows XP on PC:
Celeron 1200 MHz / 128 MB of ram / 16 MB video card

and if i change this all to some old laptop with 64 MB of ram and some small linux inside ------- >>> will i get much slower machine????

so, Windows XP on PC (1200 MHz, 128 mb ram) compare with older laptop with small linux inside (using X).

That depends on a lot of factors.

First of all, you only list the amount of RAM for the old laptop. If we should predict performance variation based on that, we need to know how much ram you're using currently.

There are two issues with RAM: how much can you cache, and how much do you force swap.

How much RAM does your applications need? If you're already maxing out on RAM, cutting it in half *will* hit performance, because you'll swap more and swapping is slow.

The other issue is how much you can cache. If your `working set' of files is sufficiently large, there's a chance they can't all be in cache at the same time, which means reading from the disk more often.

It also depends on how long uptimes you aim for. Let's face it, some programs leak memory. The longer they run, the more they leak. If you run it as a beige toaster, you can do a bit more than if you leave it on. This, of course, means more time spent booting up, but I guess you're used to that.

The short version: pretty GUIs costs RAM. How much is anyone's guess, but truth be told: you don't always need pretty GUIs.

In any case: best of luck finding out what works you

--Jonas

I have an older PII laptop with 128MB of RAM set to dual boot Windows 2000 and DSL. There is a very noticable difference between them. DSL runs pretty nicely, where Windows seems rather sluggish even doing something as simple as browsing the HD.

Also something to consider is that while a Windows box requires the use of a firewall and AV program running in the background, Linux can be safe without them. Why the decision between a desktop and laptop? If there is really some need for a laptop then that can't really be taken into account just with OS.

You would also need to consider what packages would be installed, what services would need to be running, and which window manager you would be running.

i need mobile computer, so i`m thinking about laptop. my PC is just too big, to be mobile.
i need computer for surfing in internet, writing texts and to play some audio files. and about linux, maybe i can use DSL or something about that, which don`t need power compuetr.

and is there difference on what laptop i use linux: on apple ibook OR ibm laptop??

3) playing audio files:
shouldn't cost a thing. My mpd currently uses 1% of a 2.6 GHz CPU, and 8.9 MB RAM. IOW, a modest amount of resources playing a large amount of music.

2) writing texts--as in plaintext? (simple test: could you write your texts in notepad?) emacs and vi spring to mind. If not those, there's gedit. If you're looking for a word processor, have a look at oowriter (part of OOo). It's a bit bulky, though.

Surfin' the internet is mildly expensive: my elinks is up to consuming 20 megs after four days.

so that's 30 MB ram for music and internet. Your box probably won't roar with speed, but it'll be quite alright.

---

Assuming that an apple ibook isn't intel-compatible , then yes, there will be a difference.

I'm not sure how much, but some. Take Mandrake, for example--they optimized everything for the i*86s.

best of luck --Jonas

Well that pretty much answers the question. If you really need mobility then go for the laptop. Install a light Linux distro, and you should be good to go. If all you need is the ability to listen to some tunes, surf the web, and write documents then you don't really need a very powerful computer. The only problem might be with HD space, as I would tend to think an older laptop would have a small HD, not leaving much space for music after installing Linux and any additional apps you may need.

An apple ibook can be used with linux.

I use an 500g White apple ibook with usb and cdrw , it works fine with ubuntu. (You need a linux PPC version!
I previously installed Yellow Dog (4) but that didn't recognize sound. The modem can be a problem. If you have an older version, with the 10g lan card, you can work with it. For as far as I now the newer lancard is not supported. The newer the hardware the greater the chance things are not supported, because Apple does not give much information about its hardware.

On the other hand the above system can work on its battery much longer than any notebook I had until now (4). It is lite and you can use apple panther as well (dual boot).

The drives are not so big, but I found a comprehensive story on the net about changing the HD and I replaced the 10Gb with an 80 GB.

CloudBuilder

A Pentium 2 is enough for modern graphical linux distribution if you use a simple windowmanager instead of a desktop enviroment, like Gnome and KDE.

64MB of memory should be enough if you use only light applications. You should not start several "large" applications at once (firefox, thunderbird, abiword, gnumeric etc.).
You can forget about OpenOffice with 64MB of RAM. I've tried - it was constantly swapping.

As what comes to Windows XP and 128MB... if it connected to internet and is running some typical resource-hogging firewall/virusscanner application then your Linux box might even seem a bit faster.

I used BeatrIX, a Debian based distribution, on a Compaq Armada 110 - (700 MHz + 128 MB).
BeatrIX uses Gnome 2.8, and performs admirably. I only switched over to SuSE 9.1, because I was trying to get a USB camera connected, as SuSE has hotplug running - Also, the original kernel of BeatrIX, 2.6.7 doesn't support udev which I needed, but a quick kernel update to 2.6.12-6 fixed that.

SuSE 9.1 is a bit sluggish, but once i get BeatrIX running udev, on another PC (500 MHz desktop, + 640 MB of RAM), I will reinstall Bea.

BeatrIX needs as little as 64 MB RAM; and fits onto a 200 MB miniCD.