Why would I forget about Linux? The Question is about Linux in a Linux forum.

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hehehe

Well I don't really do slack, I use Debian mostly, unless I'm playing a game, as I am right now.

But My children also use Debian and I am actually teaming my 6 year old daughter how to build and maintain a Linux Desktop.

So lets get this thread back on point and as far as I'm concerned, it only takes one person with knowledge to setup a slackware system, and once that is done, then every users can manager their own desktop simply as they would any other system.

This is why I also suggest Debian, its highy customizable and not bloated from the start. You can only install what you need and manage a light weight system.

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I would put the question "Why would you teach an 8 year old installing software?" aside, it seems not to be relevant. Installing software using a package manager needs root privileges and nobody would give root privileges to a child, if the system isn't intended to be fixed/reinstalled frequently.
As I see it, Timmi will install and maintain the system, so he needs a stable (few bugs) and somewhat easy to maintain system, while having low resource usage and good availability of software.

Things that come to my mind:
- Debian with XFCE/LXDE
- Salix with XFCE/LXDE
- openSuse with XFCE/LXDE
Aimed at younger children, based on Debian, so stable, large software base and, since defaulting to LXDE, lightweight: DoudouLinux (as already mentioned by DavidMcCann).
Maybe also SkoleLinux, Debian's project aimed at education and also available with LXDE/XFCE.

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I would go with Debian. Wheezy is just as simple as any other OS out there. There was a learning curve with Windows at some point too ;-) Easy to install, amazingly intuitive GUI, and can be left as is, or tinkered with as desired. If a kid can operate a mouse, they can become fluent in anything.

Sl.Ops

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I like Red Heads and suggest them to everyone it's plain that they are better...

The DE/WM is going to make or break it RAM wise..

We really should be helping him pick out the best DE vs the best Linux. You like Debian but apt-get makes me want to poke my eyes out. I like Arch, some like Gentoo, half this forum are slackers everyone of them will run on the system given enough configuration. If the OP had lots of skills or was uber knowledgeable this thread wouldn't exist. Young Kids can adapts to anything my 8yo daughter uses Arch, OS X and Windows my 65 yo father-in-law if finally comfortable with Ubuntu after 18 months.

Pick a flavor and run LXDE.

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I would however still recommend Puppy simply because if you want a lightweight distro, it's very hard to beat Puppy. I have a 5 yr old daughter and she likes playing the online Barbie dress up games and she plays on an old laptop which has similar specifications as yours. And she's quite happy with it. No breakages and although Firefox is a little outdated, it works and that's all I'm interested in. I tried Mint xfce & Fedora xfce before trying Puppy and let me tell you, Puppy leaves everything else standing on that system.

Maybe you could try a live cd or pendrive to see how it suits you. Some of the default settings need to be changed, such as the one click to open folders, but that is easily done.

+1 debian.

If the intended user isn't going to be doing the installation and maintenance of the system. You can start with a base system and build up from it. You can slap it onto a usb device as well. I happily run debian on systems with 0.5G of RAM. To include watching youtube and hulu on an old single core 32 bit x86 cpu. If you have something older than that, you might consider going with something like a cubox-i or utilite or mk802 or whatever other relatively inexpensive, pay for themselves in power savings devices that come along. With equal or better specifications than those old boxes for about $100. And you can run debian on those too.

Thanks, but that's not going to happen. Back in the nineties, I used to do this computer setting up and configuring ad-nauseam, and I just can't do it anymore. Having to do it just makes me want to uninstall and turn elsewhere. Think Apple mentality: it just works, with no hassles. Such OSes do exist in this world. I just want a fast one with lower RAM requirements that is easy to use without taking courses, without becoming an expert. Surely there is something out there that no longer turns people away from Linux. Google succeeded with Android, Mint succeeded... surely there is a lightweight one that "just works" for not so recent netbooks.

In a very unscientific test, Mint XFCE took 1min50 to boot from SD, LinuxLite took 1m10 from SD, and WindozeXP took 45 seconds (from start to no more hourglass and the desktop fully populated). 160MB is definitely fine. But now speed becomes a concern. I'll have to do more testing.

It seems like Doudoulinux might be something to look at - how hard would it be to add the missing codecs? (so it runs flash, mp4, etc.)

Glad to see that some of you get it!
I've tried openSuse in the past, and it wasn't appealing, for some reason I settled on Mint, at the time. Salix had bugs that just had me go elsewhere (but that was years ago on another computer).
The thing is, the more we discuss, the more we widen the selection. And it's not clear why Salix or Debian or Skole... can we have an idea of memory footprint of all of these? I know Mint already... if they are similar, I may as well go with Mint. But I'm hoping to find something that is a little zippier.

The footprint of Debian and Salix should be significantly lower than that of (most) Ubuntu derived distributions. You need to make compromises, more convenience means larger footprint.
Regarding installing codecs in Doudou, I have never used it, but seeing that it is based on Debian it should be as easy as activating the non-free repository and just installing the needed things using the package manager.

On my debian jessie/sid desktop with cwm and iceweasel opened to this page:

$ free -h
On the laptop with a fresh install of debian wheezy running from an SDHC card. With pulseaudio running over jackd with iceweasel up and looking at a youtube video. Also running 3x Eterm's, 1x xterm, xclock, and oclock.

$ free -h
But I'm on a cwm kick at the moment. Very minimalist. The SDHC is currently at 3.5G usage. With 569M of that being downloaded .deb files that I have yet to purge from /var/cache/apt/archives/. I compiled cwm from sources so a lot of that storage device usage is development tools. And X and fluidsynth soundfonts are a bit of a hog too. And povray 3.7 sources that I'll get around to compiling someday.

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Hey everyone! Things have changed substantially since we were last participating in this thread.
What is good about searching for a good distro for old netbooks, is they were under-powered, often with less RAM and less HDD capacity than their laptop counterparts - if it runs well on a netbook, it should also run well on an old desktop too, and using power management and Fn-keys for controlling the hardware (referring to volume, screen brightness, etc), on old laptops as well.

Like before, seeking a distro that can be easily used by a child or a learning-challenged elderly person.

Mint, the ideal distro for modern computers, seems to have gotten less suitable for the older hardware as of late:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...at-4175508759/

So I came across Bodhi recently... but I have mixed feelings about it:
it runs like a charm on my daughter's netbook (eeePC1000HE)
but then I tried to help my neighbor revive his old Dell 1545 (single core, 2GB, 2GHz), and wifi doesn't reconnect automatically and it forgets that the default speed was set to Max and not Min or Auto. (it no longer has a battery, so we just want to run it at maximum speed all the time). this may be because I accidentally removed the menu panel (while clicking to remove the Thermometer), had to do some stuff to get it back, and now it's giving these new problems http://forums.bodhilinux.com/index.p...riginal-panel/
Important note: this neighbor is even more computer illiterate than most, and as I'm helping him out for free, I don't want to be stuck helping him every other day each time he breaks his OS.

So, the question:

What are your favourite Linux versions today, that are:

• easy to install, use, and maintain, for the average person (NOT Linux geeks who compile their own stuff)
• and runs really well on old netbooks

Note: If you don't have a distro to recommend for old netbooks or old laptops that ANYONE can maintain, kindly spare us the "I compile this for my old desktop, just teach your neighbor how to program" sort of posts.

There is also a new generation of Bodhi being readied (it went through alpha, beta, rc1 and now at RC2) - so I think this thread is by no means an end-all to the debate... consider it as a place for us all to share our experiences, for others, who are in the evaluation/decision phase, to benefit from your insight.

This is asking to satisfy multiple incompatible requirements.
1. If it has to be packaged ready-to-run by someone else, then you are limited to the choices others have made.
Those choices are often incompatible with low-memory and the older CPU. I often hear of the 1GB memory, 2GHz CPU being required.
2. There are distributions where all dependencies are figured for you. Any examination of the forums will show that such distributions are not problem free other. All the dependency checking also gets into trouble and figuring out what package version will tolerate another becomes the challenge.
3. You are limited to installing programs that someone else has packaged for your selected distribution. You can figure on getting most (but not all) the common ones, and rarely the special ones.


I ran Slackware 12.10 on a 486 machine with 32M of working memory.
I have installed Slackware 13.37 on older computers, such as 1.2Gz with 700MB.

If an unusual program supports Linux, it usually supports Debian, so a Debian package may be available.
They rarely support Slackware directly, but there are two sites that do the compiling and have Slackware packages ready to install.

There always is compiling yourself. This involves installing the compiler, which just another set of packages.
Then
>> ./configure
>> make
>> make install
will usually do it. You need to learn how to type these three lines.
If it does not work then you can always abandon the program until you find that someone else has fixed it
to compile on your distribution. But this allows many programs to be installed regardless of the distributions that you use.
Some of programs are just so demanding in their requirements that you will want a precompiled package, and I have run into plenty of those. I depends on which programs you are going to install.

Simple games are easily compilable, and complicated games have moderate requirements. There are some graphics and sound utilities that can be monsters.

Places like MicroCenter and BestBuy will also install Linux for you, for a charge.
The Apple "It just works" is a bit of a fiction, as they just don't let you see the ones that don't work to their qualifications.
It is no different than any Linux distribution vetting their own packages.

I have tried to port programs to Apple and it is difficult because they live in their own world and it is incompatible with ours. Their memory stick interface will even stick some Apple assumed junk on any memory stick it accesses.