I have a 233Mhz, 64MB RAM, 12GB HDD Dell Latitude CP Laptop and I am looking for a distro to put on it. It started off running Win98SE, then moved to Mandriva, now it's back to 98SE.

It has a CDRom drive but it hates burned cds and won't read them properly.

So I need a distro that will run well on these specs AND be able to start a internet install from floppies.

The best distro I have found so far is Mandriva but it takes a whole 5 minutes and 30 seconds to boot.

I happen to like mandriva and would like it to have permanent residence on my laptop.

It's the boot up that kills it. 3 and a half minutes waiting on "udev". Another 45 seconds are spent after "ok" is displayed for eth0 and before the next line appears. The remaining minute is spent actually booting at a decent pace.

I'm more set on finding another distro than fixing mandriva. I'm such a that I'm afraid to dig under the hood.

hmm... mandriva like but light... hmm... on a side note- you wern't using kde/gnome, where you? better something lite- I like icewm. Ahhh... I would reccomend slackware (it's better than debian) but... umm... you might not think it's newbie friendly or mandrake like. found this link though, hope it's helpful:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Leanux/
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...04/05/1/174085

sorry I couldn't be of more use- my advice would be to learn slackware- it's not that bad- and it has one of the friendlyest forums- right here at LQ!

titanium_geek

I agree with titanium_geek , but if you think Slackware is hard give a chance to Zenwalk Linux formerly MiniSlack.

I started off with Gnome then switch to windowmaker or it may have been IceWM. I then switched back to Gnome after getting very little of a speed boost. My problem is that is takes 5 minutes to get from lilo to the gnome splash screen.

Once booted the system is very responsive. If this was a desktop box I'd just leave it on and eliminate the boot time.

I just noticed the thread search function on the bottom of the page (Suggestion: copy the "thread jump, rate thread, and thread search" to the top of page. I stop scrolling at the point where the tabel that contains the topics end so i never saw it before.) so i went into the mandriva forum and search "udev". And found a thread on making it boot in the background. If that will shave off 3 and a half minutes from the boot time, reducing the boot time to just over two minutes I can live with that. It will end up taking just a little longer than 98SE.


I've had rather bad luck with yahoo groups. The 10 I have tried tended to be more of a annoyance than helpful. The users weren't newbie friendly.

Slackware huh? I'll check it out if i have bad luck with making udev background boot.

i also think slackware is a good choice (or vector), but i wouldn't discount debian. any of those will boot lightning fast compared to mandriva. (probably run faster, too. )

Slackware is especially good for older computers. I'd recommend Vector also as a newbish Slackware.

Slackware with Fluxbox. You could try also Slax Live CD and install it to HDD after initial boot with Slax Installer

I too have an oldish laptop, so I know how frustrating long boot times can be. If you configure acpi (I'm not sure if Mandriva does it automatically) you can just hibernate your laptop instead of shutting it down, which is a hell of alot faster. I do this all the time and I find it to be very fast and stable.

Wolf

Doh! forgot about vector!!

titanium_geek

I got udev changed to background startup and boot time is fast now.

I got my wireless card drivers setup, now i need to get wpa working....but i got this going in another topic.