distro for a Pentium MMX laptop
 

hi all,

I have read a couple of great threads on the above topic but I thought it would be better to get confirmation with the experts here.

I'm looking for a nice and very updated distro that will work on a Pentium MMX 266, 64MB RAM, 4GB harddisk laptop. This one is for an old sturdy Toshiba Satellite 330CDT machine. Currently it's on Win2K but no matter how much you tweak, it's still damn inefficient. I've given up on Windozzzzz.

It's currently connected to the internet via a 3COM 802.11b wireless card (it's an old card probably manufactured in the year 1999). No ethernet card on this laptop. Good thing is that the CD still works. Which kernel would be good for this sort of config?

The laptop is meant to be used by someone who doens't know what a distro or linux means to her. So I'm thinking of easy to use GUI apps like XFCE4, Abiword 2, XMMS or CPlay, Firefox (or Dillo - some sites are pretty badly rendered but fast!) and packages that are easy to install/emerge/pacman-ize. :D Just trying to keep the interfaces similar to W2K or Win98. Don't want a rude shock like Command line or Fluxbox/Openbox architecture stuffs.

I've worked with Gentoo. Built one from Stage 1 on an Celeron 466Mhz and 128MB RAM machine. Took a long time to complete. I probably use Gentoo stage 3 as a last choice for this laptop.

I read about Arch linux but it's optimized for i686 or Pentium II or higher. Pentium MMX is probably a bit ancient for this distro. Is Pentium MMX = i586?? What do you guys think?

Vector linux 4.0 is something i'm considering - but the packages are not updated (i think). Heard that Vector SOHO 4.0 takes up too much resources and will not be released in the near future. RC2 is not even out there yet.

Can't wait to hear your opinions! Thanks!

You have luck with 64MB, most modern Distros need them for the Installation-RAMdisk !

My favorite is Knoppix: A live System, running from CD without installation, so you can test it on your laptop. And you can try Kernel 2.4 and 2.6.

But with a P1 MMX don't expect too much performance... (You've been warned ;-)

Hi!

an updated distro with gui on a MMX 266?! uuuh......have fun! ;-)
interesting topic....

How about Cobind? Based on Fedora, so it should work on i586, comes ith XFce4 as the only desktop, Firefox for browsing... follows the 'one app in each category' rule so poor user does not have to suffer that hell of having to make choices :) Seriously though, it might be just the ticket.

Try : http://www.vectorlinux.com/

Hi Ferrix: Sounds like a good distro (Cobind). Concern is that the website says only P2 machines and above are supported. Not sure if they have all the hardware support for this Toshiba laptop. I will it give a try nevertheless.

Megamieusel: I did try Vector Linux Live CD on that laptop. It works just fine but i want to get new packages and probably more updated stuffs like Abiword 2. I believe VL 4.0 only provides Abiword 1.0.3. Can VL 4.0 do that with TGZ package management? I haven't tried that yet.

I like the quick and easy way to update the packages like what Gentoo 'portage' did. It took care of all the dependencies. I had a lot of issues with dependencies when i first used Suse 9.0 and RedHat (when i took the first step to try out linux and that got me entangled until now) Managing dependencies are a headache. All I wanted was the application, but no .. you got a bunch of libraries that you need to compile and test.

Any more great distros out there?

Yes , it can.
VL4.0 is fully compatible with Slackware 9.0 packages. Slack 9.1 and later packages may or may not work ; it's gamble with these.

Btw-Veckpkg is actually "installpkg" , hidden in a script. ;)

I was thinking of trying out Slackware 10 for the laptop. What do you guys think? Is it easy to customize so that only small packages like XFCE or Abiword are installed, leaving out bloated packages like KDE and GNOME?

Bummer about Cobind - I didn't notice that bit on their website, knowing they were based on Fedora I just assumed they would be OK for Pentium I... Well I guess you'll have to do it the hard way: take a full general-purpose distro, and install only the parts you want. Sure, you can do that with Slack - you can pick exactly the packages you want to install, and nothing else... it's just a question of how much time you've got on your hands:) Or else, you could install just the base system, no GUI - then use Swaret to get the desktop bits you want. It will be probably easier this way.