I have been a user of Suse 10 for about 6 months now, and I love it, just got my hands on an IBM A22m (few of them actually) $25 a piece....

stats are so far as I know.
128Mb RAM and 800Mhz processor 20Gb HDD, onboard everything else.

and I don't know what to load on the system for linux, I would like Suse, but as they Don't have DVD players, and I am not sure they will handle Suse 10.

WHICH do I choose, Please help

I do not see why you can't install Suse if that's what you want, will just need to get install media that'll work with the laptop.

With limit system resources, should ask yourself what are your plans for this system.

As a server, low stress functions like print or dhcp server would be ideal, and do not require a window manager.

As an internet appliance, would consider installing low overhead GUI like Fluxbox or similar.

Again, should be able to install Suse, just be picky and streamline what you install.

Thank you for repling to me so quickly, however, you unfortunatly haven't answered my question man ... hehehehe.

I was wondering, if suse 10 was to much, and I imagine that it is, so what would be a better one, should I move down to 9 or lower than that still...

plan on using it to look at PDF files, and surfing the net, word processor and IM's. certainly nothing as intensive as the gaming/developement dual boot that my desktop is

Your IBM ThinkPad A22m's will run all the newer versions of Suse, including openSUSE 10.2. You will not have hardware 3d video acceleration though, or be able to use XGL.

The one thing that will make it more pleasant though, will be to increase the ram. 128 megs will be aggravating, 256 megs bearable, 512 megs will be "not bad".

A22m uses: PC100 SDRAM, 144-pin non-parity SoDIMM, 100MHz, 512MB MAX

You can get the memory specs for most all ThinkPads here:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/si...IGR-55644.html

As far as installation media, go to http://download.opensuse.org/ and download CD1 - CD5, and the Addon CD for the x86 architecture. If you really must use DVDs, you can buy a DVD drive for an A-Series ThinkPad on eBay for $35 or less, just do your research.

You will find that the ThinkPads are probably the best supported laptop for Linux that there is, and that Suse supports them the best. Yes, I'm biased, but I'm objective, and it is still all true.

Hope this helps.

James

Thanks James, I am glad that someone likes suse as much as I do, it reminds me of my Mac .. hehehehee

I have an older Laptop as well, and was wondering the samething,
633Mhz, 128Mb RAM, 20gb HDD.

Hoping that you are right James and that Suse 10 runs on it.
is there a way that you can turn stuff off in the OS to save on processing power etc.

coo thanks for the link downloading the CD's right now.

Yes there is. I'm not where I can check right now, but I believe it is called ???"runlevel editor"???. Anyway, you get to it through Yast and it allows you to do what you are talking about. Actually, I usually use it to TURN ON stuff that I need.

Might I suggest that you do a little research and make CERTAIN that you know what each thing is and what it does. That way the expected result and reality turn out to be one in the same. I have had it NOT be, and that can be very sad and ugly. That is when you will learn about Linux faster and more indepth than you where anticipating when you sat down for the evening.

Yes it will run. I have ran it on as little equipment as a P-II 300mhz Panasonic ToughBook CF-27. It DID HAVE 384 megs of ram though. Keep that in mind. Also a 200mw Senao card, 500mw 2.4ghz amp, a 15db omni antenna, and a Magellan GPS. It was running Suse, Kismet, gKismet, and GPSDrive. Oh, and the TouchScreen worked.

I'm pretty certain your 633mhz will survive if you add some more memory. You won't get any speeding tickets, but it will do just fine. There are also other window managers besides KDE and Gnome. I often use TWM instead of KDE, because sometimes, "Less is More".

James

I have had good results running Slackware on older laptops similar to what you describe. With at least 256MB RAM I usually install Dropliine Gnome, but Slack includes Fluxbox and XFCE in the distro, which would be great choices for limited RAM systems.

Slack is simple, and doesn't load near as much stuff as some of the "full sized" distros. I usually compile a custom kernel (I prefer the 2.6.18 version included under /testing), and have very functional systems when I am done.

Just a suggestion...

Your hardware stats aren't too bad, actually. Modest by today's measure, but still adequate for the intended tasks you mentioned. If SuSe doesn't work out for that laptop, there are a number of Linux distros aimed at low-spec computers. These distros may have as much functionality as SuSe or Ubuntu by making adjustments, such as: running fewer background processes, limiting the number and/or size of included programs, using a minimum of software toolkits/API.

Some examples of lighter distros are PuppyLinux http://www.puppylinux.org/user/index.php, DamnSmallLinux http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/, VectorLinux http://www.vectorlinux.com/, Wolvix http://wolvix.org/, Zenwalk http://www.zenwalk.org.

If you want a quick look at the types of compromises and arrangements often tailored to such computers, you could download and burn the Multi Distro live-CD (http://multidistro.tlm-project.org/md_en.html); it has a slew of small live distros, conveniently bootable from one single live-CD. A number of the included distros are special purpose--maybe they'd give you ideas on uses for those other A22m laptops...

Oh yeah, and TuxMobil http://tuxmobil.org may have reports and tips on installing Linux on that laptop model.

Good luck!

I like Slack too. With your 2.6.18 kernel do you have support for
pcmcia wireless cards such as Orinoco Classic Gold card 802.11b 16 bit??? If ya got it to work, how did you get it to work? I have a ThinkPad T30 setup so I can boot either 2.4.33.3 or 2.6.17.13 ...
Everything is fine in 2.4x but I'm not getting hardware recognition in the 2.6x kernel.

TIA,
The GNUinator

Did you install the 2.6.18 modules package when you installed the 2.6.18 kernel? This additional step is required if you install either of the 2.6 kernels. You will also need to create an initrd to add initial boot support for your filesystem unless you compile your filesystem support into the kernel. Instructions can be found in the READMO.initrd file included with the kernel packages.

I believe I did get a Prism 2.5 card working with the orinoco driver, but I had to blacklist the hermes driver to get it to work correctly.

Bob

Thanks Bob, Yes I did install the kernel modules, ran the mkinitrd script, configured lilo correctly so I can boot either kernel. My problem seems to be cardctrl vs. udev, hotplug, etc. When I boot the 2.6x kernel my wireless card doesn't get turned on so the 'network is unreachable'. I wanted to keep running the 2.4x kernel to have a fallback position in case the 2.6x kernel doesn't work. Oddly enough my sound card is recognized and the T30's builtin lan adaptor is recognized too. It's just the wireless card which doesn't go.

For me, installing Dropline Gnome takes care of the hal, dbus, hotplug, etc, issues pretty much automatically. I do edit /etc/rc.inet1.conf to remove the auto dhcp assignment for eth0, and just let NetworkManager configure and connect to either my wired or wireless adapter depending on what it sees at startup.

Bob

Edited: now with more helpful suggestions!

Booting the 2.6.18 kernel, are the pcmcia drivers loaded at all? If you have any other PC cards, are they recognized upon insertion?

pccardctl ident resturns the name of the card just like
cardctl does in the 2.4x kernel.

iwconfig returns the name of the local hotspot (public
library, etc) just as before, along with signal strength.

ifconfig gives me eth0 plus eth1 and info about those.
The T30 has a builtin lan adaptor but if I'm using
a wireless card in the 2.4x kernel eth0 shows up as
my wireless connection. Booting the 2.6x kernel gives
me both interfaces. I guess I could slip in a pcmcia
modem and see if the 2.6x kernel picks it up.

The most noticeable differences: I get happy beeps when
the 2.4x kernel finds my wireless card. No happy beeps
with the 2.6x kernel. The 2.4x kernel gives messages
about starting hotplug, etc. I don't seem to get
those messages with the 2.6x kernel.

Any ideas what I should look for?

The GNUinator