Need Advice for possibly installing Linux for someone else...
 

Hey, I been looking around on these forums and can tell you all are great at helping people get into the awesome world of Linux and I would like some advice.

I have an IBM Thinkpad T23 and these are the specs: Windows XP Professional SP3 Pentium III, 1133 MHz 256 MB of Ram, S3 Graphics SuperSavage/IXC 1014.

I am fixing it up for my older brother who needs it for web surfing and music for his iPod, he is a basic computer user and I was wondering if there is a distro that would run better on the system than Windows and that he would be able to easily use without having trouble for web surfing and music(iPod)and whatever else he may need.

I have had a little experience with Linux by booting from a USB drive and I like it much better than Windows and plan on switching to a decent Linux distro in the future.

Thank you for any advise you can give and I hope you all can help me out with getting Linux set up on the laptop, but if not I appreciate all any help or advice anyways.

Hi,

Welcome to LQ!

Look at 'So you want to be a GNU/Linux Newbie! What do I do next?'.

:hattip:

I think I'd look at slitaz and maybe puppy linux. There are a number of other light weight distro's too that people here may recommend. One might be vector or slax.

Consider using live cd's or live usb's until you get to one that you like. Distrowatch.com may offer a good selection of choices.

Thanks! I looked that over and offered some useful info.

With this hardware specs you should be able to run any distribution, if you run a "not so heavy" desktop environment.
Personal opinion: Try Debian with LXDE-Desktop.

A Windows user will expect to be able to run flash and (as stated) music. Debian might not be a good choice for a new user that doesn't really want to get involved. They won't care in the slightest about the Debian mantra.
Perhaps a derivative like Mint (with LXDE) might be a better fit.

Thanks all for the advice! My main question is what distro is best for performance and for someone who is not familiar with Linux and can pretty much just be able to use from the get go without a steep learning curve or issues? I was looking at DSL and Puppy, what do you all think? Any ideas or advice?

You are right, I have not thought of this.
Maybe Mint-LXDE is really a good idea.

@thewriterben: DSL is not developed anymore and somewhat outdated, so I would not recommend it. Puppy-Linux is very leightweight, but it is no multiuser-system, so there maybe security issues, because you are always root.

Puppy (lupu5.11) is a slick fast distro for your hardware. I don't know if there's a package for gtkpod or Rhythmbox for your ipod.
You could also run a fuller distro like Mint with a lighter desktop.

Any distro will do, the main thing is to setup the system, so everything works.
Once setup properly, the learning curve is only the use of a different GUI.
I installed slackware on the laptop from my son (29 years old)
He had no issue adapting, since I installed everything he needed for daily use.
They only need to know, windows apps can't be installed.
And as said before, use a lightweight desktop.
However, using ipod with linux could be tricky.


Kind regards

Hi folks, my problem is similar to Thewriterben's. My old pc (10 years old) with Pentium 3, 644 MHz and 128 MB RAM was running on Windows 98. Since 1 month I tried following Linux-distros : Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Ark Linux and now, since a week, Puppy Linux. This last one runs pretty well, but since some days, after installing JSE and Frostwire, several crashes stopped the PC running. Some advice to avoid those crashes ?

Welcome to LQ

Yes, start a new thread for your problem.


Kind regards

Hi,

Welcome to LQ!

This is considered as 'hi-jacking'. Poor 'netiquette' !

I also suggest that a new thread be started after reading 'How to Ask Questions the Smart Way' so in the future your queries provide information that will aid us in diagnosis of the problem.
:hattip: