Your opinions?

oktober · 03-25-2005, 12:36 PM

I have an older Compaq Presario 1621 laptop that I would like to run
linux on. It is has an AMD K-6 233mhz processor with 32 meg of memory.
It has a 2 gig harddrive.

I'm still a novice linux user, though I've been expirimenting with it
off and on for years. I am running Slackware on my home machine but
find that it's just too big for this laptop. It will install, but it
doesn't give me much room to move.

I will be using this laptop for educational/expirimental purposes only
and am expecting a lot of trial and error. I'm not looking for anything
fancy, just command line stuff with the option to use X-windows. I
would like to be able to use the pcmcia card slots for use with NIC's or
maybe even wireless if possible.

Any recommendations on which flavor I should use? Any suggestions/comments/opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Bob

XavierP · 03-25-2005, 12:47 PM

Slackware or Gentoo would go fine on that machine - you will need to install with a minimal set of programs. I'd also suggest using Fluxbox, XFCE or similar minimalist WM rather than Gnome or KDE.

Atmchicago · 03-25-2005, 04:06 PM

Never tried it, but apparently Netbsd (at least I think it's netbsd - other 2 are freebsd or openbsd, but I'm pretty sure it's not freebsd) runs really well on old hardware - it's portable and requires very minimal disk usage. It isn't linux, but it uses X-windows. And slackware uses the BSD style init scripts anyway

Half_Elf · 03-25-2005, 10:12 PM

Debian would be my guest. I have debian on my "router" and it takes less than 500 MB of space, so you should be fine to get a complete debian system (this include X and some very lightweight WM like blackbox) on your laptop.
Also, I once tried Slackware (it was version 8.0 back in that time) on a P166 laptop so you should be fine. 2GB of hdd is plenty, only your RAM is a problem to me)

masonm · 03-26-2005, 05:44 PM

Install any base system, Slack since you're familiar with it, and only add what you need such as a light window manager such as fluxbox, dhcpcd if you need it, etc...

Any Linux distro can be stripped down to easily fit on a 2G drive with room to spare.

KDE and Gnome take up a lot of space, leave them off.