please recommend a distro for this older laptop...

specs [compaq presario 1245]
===========================
k6-2 333mhz
neomagic vid card. 2mb 800x600 @ 24bit native
160mb ram
3gb hd
ess sound card
56k win modem [lucent chip]
touchpad
24xcdrom
floppy
1 pcmcia slot type 2 & 3
usb Linksys 100TX ethernet card. mdk8.2 dected no problems.

============================

mandrake 8.2 is SLOW.......... not even funny.
currently running windowsxp, it has been quite good/decent in terms of speed/graphics.

is there a older version out there that can help me?

i have found that mdk 7.2 worked well with this laptop detecting all the parts with no problem.


any input is appreciated.

thank u.

Mandy 8.2 slow as dogmeat... nahhhh, never. Yeah the French seem to have a rather bloated pig on their hands there:

On a P3 500, less RAM, more drive I've got RH7.2 running rather slick, minimal install, kernel recompile, but I like to play. It was registering USB services just fine, but I don't have any USB devices.

I used to have Mandy 8.0 on the same machine, 2.4.3 kernel, and later 2.4.18 so I could get some newer wireless offerings, worked great.

I've heard SuSe does well on laptops, and 7.3 I've played with a lot on my Sparc and have actually got to hand it to the bloated corpo distros for once.

I usually install Slackware on everything, but its pants for laptops unless you want to do a lot of compiling... which I do, but hey. If hardcore is your leaning, nothing runs slimmer than Slack.

Basically any distro will do as long as you're careful during package selection, but I guess Mandrake is getting to the point where you can't be lean enough to keep it from being a pig.

Anyway, there's my $.02, cheers,

Finegan

hmmm. so i guess i should revert back to a older kernal?

well i dont have a problem with that... so SUSE 7.3???

sounds good.

how about a distro where i would have to compile everything right from the begining. (LRS) which is a new distro based on LFS. it compiles everything right from the cd.

would that improve the speed of my laptop?

but i dont think its the mhz thats the problem. this is because win xp seems to be doing fine. i belive its XFREE86 thats to blame.

well.. any more feed back would be appreciated.


ps. finegan, p3 500mhz vs k6-2 333mhz is a big difference...

LFS, is above all, a learning experience the first few times, and after that its a functioning machine. I recommend it, it entertained me immensely back during flu season.

My SuSe 7.3 experience is strictly Sparc, so your mileage may vary, but I was just surprised that I went kazoo with installation, had X, KDE, a compiler, all the necessary libs, and I had barely broke 1.2Gb... and the binaries for sparc are twice the size because I'm dealing with 64-bit processing.

Also, don't buy into the Mhz hype... Athlon 1.74Ghz processors spank 2.2Ghz P4s every day. The biggest factor I've found is RAM. I've got something obscene, like 400+Mb in an old P1, and that little kid smokes... even though its 50ns EDO.

Cheers,

Finegan

nice to hear some ppl are still rocking with the old P1's!!!

ya i know about the anthons vs the p4 story... and yes i do agree bc my main system is a anthon 1.333 + 768mb and is rocking with mdk 8.2 + winxp.

any hoo.

i believe the lack of performane on this old laptop is bc of the neomagic card and xfree86 4.2.0

just wondering will reverting back to an older X yield better performance?

thx.

Which window-manager are you running? On a low-spec machine, you really don't want to be running KDE. I know that Mandy 8.1 had blackbox, WidowMaker , this, that and the other on the CDs, so try those first, before you completely bag X4.2. X, is in effect, only the set of graphics drivers used - so reverting back to an older version is less likely to help than trying other options.

i really wanted to fun fluxbox knowing that its pretty low on resources...

however, the performance was so poor... i dont think i would have made it through to installing fluxbox..

when i have time, the next thing i will try is...

LRs Linux

and compile everything for my system... then i will install just fluxbox.

(setup will probably take me like... 2days?)



....

I've got 5 of them doing serious work; well okay, 1 sitting in a corner, 1 looking for aliens, another holding down the coffeetable and keeping guests annoyed (Linux tends to do that to my friends), and two NAT'ing.

The coffee table machine boots into LFS as well: kernel compiles are 1/3 as long, nothing is taking up resources so it can even hammer out SETI work units quicker than when booted into Slack 7.1

Yeah, reading back I sounded like a pedantic jackass, that's easily the best known factoid in geekdom. (768MB of RAM? Calculating the trajectory of every neutrino since the big bang? My 1/2Gb is already overkill.)

Like Thymox said, they've actually made 4.2.x better than its proceeding 3.3.x counterparts, so on low memory vid cards there isn't that much of a performance hit. Its all about the window manager. Personally I love the extremes, which is why none of my machines boot straight into X. Either the command line or the big hulking KDE wonder-pig!

LRS, again, I haven't played with: But, if its as intensive (you compile everything), as LFS, then I did LFS the first time on the P1 200, 64Mb in 2 days. Gcc took about an hour, glibc took nearly 4. The kernel took about 20 minutes. X I compiled, but I was lucky and should have taken notes, most install from pre-compiled binaries, which I recommend as if you poke around the LFS threads you'll find the hair-tearing experiences of those who tried to compile X ground up. After that you just need the 4 major graphics libs, and then I think blackbox will go right on.

Luck,

Finegan

wow! thx for the very nice and detailed response fine.

hmm, sounds like u been having alot of fun with those p1's...

well as i am writing this, my main machine is installing LRs, more like compiling LRs... im asuming i have like mmm... 10hrs to go?

well if ur interested, i guess ill post a little note on how it goes.

on thing i found to be very interesting, is that LRs offers you a optimization right before u compile ur system.

i found that K6, K6-2 and K6-3 was on the list, along with the others. even 486's etc.

i guess if my experience with LRs goes well, ill once again shell out some more hrs into instlaling linux back onto this laptop...



hopefully all goes well.

snow day in T.O.