Hi,

I would like to use my old IBM thinkpad A20m to try my first Linux install. Can you suggest what distro would be the most appropriate considering the computer is quite old and only has 256 MB RAM? I want to make sure the hardware is recognized.

Thanks

I think you will find this resource very handy: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki

With such limited hardware, I recommend a "lightweight" distro designed specifically for older machines. This is a very Frequently Asked question on these forums (and elsewhere on the web) but my personal picks in this category include Puppy, SliTaz, and AntiX. Of course, knowing nothing about your needs/wants/habits/must-have-applications, this is nothing more than a guess on my part.

Thanks.
The needs are simple: this is for use as a simple machine for basic web browsing and word processing.
I guess I'll try SliTaz first.

SliTaz rocks! Good choice.

I used to use the same thinkpad till I upgraded but I used to use Debris linux openbox on it and it ran great with it.

You might also like to try out Absolute linux on it as it uses ICEWM which should run O.K. on 256 mb ram.

http://debrislinux.org/index.php?PHP...cc&page=22

http://www.absolutelinux.org/

Thanks
I think that I will compare Debis and SliTaz and see which one works the best.

I ended up testing SliTaz, Debris and Puppy, all as LiveCD.
Slitaz did not recognize my PCMCIA wireless card.
Puppy did not recognize it automatically either, but I was able to have it detected manually.
But then, the system froze as I tried to get Firefox activated...
Debris performed the best and detected well my hardware. I was able to connect to the internet in no time.
I think that I will install Debris directly to the hard disk.
Does anybody know how to do this? I don't see instructions about this on the Debris website.

This being said, I would have liked to have OpenOffice included.
Is there any other distro that is similar to Debris, but with both Firefox and OpenOffice?
Thanks

You can install OpenOffice in any Linux distro. I have not personally tried Debris, but their website implies it's based on Ubuntu. Therefore you should be able to easily install with:

If Debris includes the Synaptic Package Manager or Ubuntu Software Center, you can use either of them as a GUI for adding/removing software.

Good luck!

Yes Debris does come with an easy installer. I can't remember where it is right off bat but its in the menu someplace...try administration.

As for Openoffice Debris does come with Synaptic but Open office will bog that system down some when opening but It might be fine.

Once you have installed Debris to your HD be sure to run the updates...it will appear as an icon on the menu bar....there will be 84 or so.

Also with Debris if you live in the US you may want to open Synaptic and search for Ubuntu restricted extras and install those so you will have flash, java etc....

If you need more help post back to this thread and I'll see if I can assist.

I ended up installing AntiX, because it has many more utilities included, including the Synaptic Package Manager. The install went very well, except that the copying of files to the drive stalled at 95% for quite a while. But in the end, it made it through. Seems like a great distro, feature-rich, but working well with an old machine. I'll post more about the performance of the various applications soon.

I have done the numerous updates through Synaptic.
However, how do I go about installing Open Office through Synaptic?
What version of OpenOffice should I download?

Thanks

I like AntiX a lot, good choice!

Simply use Synaptic to search for and install the 'openoffice.org' package. It should pull in all the components (word, spreadsheet, database, etc) as dependencies.

Or you can use the terminal commands I suggested in post #8.

I have a similar machine (a COMPAQ Armada M700 with 256MB oh RAM) with http://crunchbanglinux.org/downloads/statler/alpha-02/ - and it works very well

Could any of you tell me how to select or install drivers for a French-canadian keyboard?
This choice does not appear anywhere.

Everything now works great.
The main applications are relatively fast and responsive.
Thanks for everybody's help.

just wanted to ask a question in this thread, i have an old thinkpad, with i believe a pentium2 128mb ram, and maybe a 10gb HD, its all messed up because someone installed XP on it and split the HD into 3 or 4 partitions, so far i deleted the xp partition, unintentionally, and it rebooted to win98, the thing has one usb port,no ethernet connection, has space for a phone jack, but its blocked off, and used an old dlink pcm (discontinued in 2004) card for a wifi connection. i just want this for homework and web browsing for someone, that is easy to use, the thing has 3 connecters on it that i dont recognize in the least. still extremely new to linux, but i think i just need the right distro, and the driver (if needed) for the card (a dlink DWL-650)