Fred, I can appreciate your insistence, but as far as something big like Gnome or KDE is concerned, we got Mint and it doesn't beat Mint. Also I question whether a "free" 4.3GB Lxde download is within the spirit of small light and nimble. I am wondering why you are recommending something so big, or so standard (if you look at their smallest ISO available), when we are discussing small, fast and nimble.

"Just works:" http://www.alinux.tv/
Minmalist: http://downloads.wavefun.com/linux/INSTALL_08.htm

How much virtual RAM? I was referring to systems that had 64mb of ram.

ArchLinux is the fastest OS I ever used!

But it takes lots of work in the command line to get a usable system.

So was I. That winXP is not the topic here.

alinux is the replacement of Peanut Linux... but how did Peanut get so BIG? I wanted to try it until I saw the size... for 700MB of "just works", you can't beat Mint. BTW your link 2 is dead. can you reverify that and correct it in your post?
That link shows up as: Not Found
The requested URL /linux/INSTALL_08.htm was not found on this server.
Apache/2.0.54 Server at downloads.wavefun.com Port 80

Okay this is the last time for me, but you keep overlooking the ISO i'm referring to. It is a standard size livecd of 600+mb ISO, that uses LXDE.

Download the ISO at ftp://ftp.mandrivauser.de/mandriva_i...-LXDE-EDITION/

That's why I wrote "or something so standard" - because 600+MB isn't a light distro... and there's nothing light about KDE or Gnome either. All this was already written in my responses - I wish you'd read before adding unnecessary posts to the thread.

"That link shows up as: Not Found"

You're correct -- and I apoligize for not being more thorough -- I was looking for the old non-GUI distro, Spartan. It seems not to exist any longer, I'm afraid and disappointed to find. These GUI minimals do:

Crux
tinycore
TinyMe (when the bugs are fixed), or its bigger brother,
Unity
Ultilex (has three distros, incl tinycore, above, on it)

Yeah, Peanut became a breadfruit -- and that's the way thins are going nowadays, it seems.

Salix 13.1, if one installs the "basic" iso, may be what you're looking for -- it uses XFCE. Slackware is always good, with discrimination applied.
Best wishes and don't take yourself too seriously -=- just enjoy the ride!

OK, Timmi...

I guess the question here is whether it's the weight of Gnome/KDE that bothers you about a larger distro, or is it the hard-drive space needed? Because if storage is your only reservation, why not get a medium-capacity USB stick; one with more storage than the netbook's hard-drive?

http://www.pricewatch.com/gallery/fl...memory/usb_8gb

Personally, I'm running Puppy, installed from a live disk, created with a downloaded ISO (Yes, they do have them. Really.), on an old P-3 laptop with half the RAM you have, and it works well enough for me. Haven't any wireless capability, so don't know how Puppy performs in that area. It plays movies out of the box, with no sound problems, and runs Opera browser on the web, and comes with Abiword, so it's most of what I need for now.

One distro I haven't seen anybody mention is Zenwalk. It's a full distro, but the desktop is XFCE, and it's nimble. I used a live version for a while a few years ago, and it seemed very user friendly. My only break with it came when I found that I couldn't get a Dvorak keyboard layout. But for all of you still using that 19th-century QWERTY mechanical-typewriter-board, Zenwalk should be fine. Latest release:

http://www.zenwalk.org/modules/news/...hp?storyid=107

Seriously, give it a try. Good luck!

I think this thread is useful, because if we can find a distro that can run well on that machine (see first post), it will probably run well on anything, old and new machines alike!

If it runs in as little RAM and with as little disk space as on a minimalistic netbook (like my eeePC), it will also run well on old hardware. And if it supports my eeePC's webcam, wifi, sound, brightness control, it will probably run well even on most modern laptops as well.

Microsoft has re-issued XP in a version for Legacy PCs and netbooks, running in as little as 64MB RAM, which is a direct assault on the Linux operating systems that were replacing XP on the netbooks... it's time to go back to war! ;-)
_____

In reply to Drachenchen and Hilyard:

Drachenchen, because we have to go back to the first post in the thread (on the other page, in bold letters) to see it, I'll re-write it here for all to see: a slow processor (celeron 800MHZ), low ram (512MB), and 8GB solid state disk. So the answer to your question is: both, bloat and speed.

Hilyard, many of those mentioned are, by their own admission, for experienced users only - from my experience so far that means "configuration hell". I think that any expert can throw together a distro where nothing works, and ITNHO* there are far too many distros like that around by the hundreds. Puppy could have been the perfect distro for us here. But their WiFi management is very shaky, buggy, not always working. And instead re-implementing wicd in a way that it works like in Ubuntu/Mint for example, they persist in using their faulty wifi interface, and it just doesn't work on lots of hardware. It's too bad... it's small, fast, nible, and for those who hate the looks, there are so many "puplets" out there, that there would be a version of Puppy to satisfy everyone... if only they didn't all rely on the same faulty wifi process - but that's probably because it's compiled into the Kernel, right?

That must be the reason for Linux Mint's success - you "plug it in and it works" so to speak, and Ubuntu has gotten as good now as well (minus a few bells and whistles). However, as much as I love LXDE (after discovering it in Knoppix), I'm trying to stay away from ubuntu+lxde distros because it's a buggy marriage. As for xfce, it's right-click desktop menu bringing you into an ill-designed system configuration menu items instead of the applications menu first, with no possibility of correcting that yourself, is just frustrating to work with.

For the time being, Leeenux is back onto the EEEPC - a Ubuntu Netbook Remix (EasyPeasy) customised for the eeepc - awaiting more search+testing of other distros.

* ITNHO: in this noob's humble opinion (for what it's worth)

Ditto for Slitaz - that one's only a 30MB ISO, also requires some work - you may like to check that out personally, although it isn't suitable for the mission here where we want something that will run out of the box on modern hardware.

Thanks, Timmi, for your consideration. You are the second one I have heard of going with Netbook Remix, so it must work well with the minis (netbooks). http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/minimal has an interesting approach, as well.

Best wishes!

Looks like this machine: http://fruttenboel.verhoeven272.nl/linux/bromine.html or perhaps this one http://fruttenboel.verhoeven272.nl/linux/gallium4.html

So either Slackware 11 or 12.2 would do just fine.

Put it in runlevel 4 (http://fruttenboel.verhoeven272.nl/linux/kdm.html) and you're ready to roll.

Celeron 800mhz, 512MB RAM is by no means a "weak" netbook.

The size of the iso has absolutely no bearing on the speed of a distro. The de/wm will effect the speed and the amount of ram used, kde/gnome/xcfe being the big heavies, lxde/e17 the lighter desktops then the window managers.

Debian stable with E17 on a 8gb sdhc card runs on the OLPC XO 400mhz cpu 256mb ram

Debian unstable with LXDE flies on my Asus Eee 701 4gb, 15 second boot, suspend, camera, wifi , everything works.

As for windows XP seriously who cares what it will run on?