You can use various tools to install a gui in debian. Tasksel, dselect, aptitude, debian-installer (or whatever they eventually called it). Although I doubt that your 400mb image of it contains all that is necessary package wise. If you want access to all the packages from discs without a network, you'll probably want to download the entire set. It looks like the torrents for that atm is 53 discs(CD images), or 8 DVD images(plus 2 update dvds) for the i386 version. The higher discs were packaged by popularity, so you probably wont need more than the first 6 discs(CD images). Depending on the popularirty of what you're trying to install. When I last did that type of install, there were 18 CD images (plus 4 update discs). And almost all of what I wanted was on the first 4 discs with IceWM as the WM.

This doesn't mean that you'll have to burn these discs. You can mount the images and copy the *.deb files to /var/cache/apt/archives/ and use dpkg -i to manually install them. Or if you do burn the discs and have the space you can do that to prevent being prompted to insert a disc so the installer can do that step. You can purge all the debs from there after you've got the system that you want.

i have downloaded from the website

There are several different version on that website, including netinstall CDs that come without GUI and DVDs that come with most GUIs.
We need the exact description, what is the name of the file you downloaded?

there is a lot of dvd like or 7 which one is include the system because internet connection is bad so i can only download one dvd
here is the link: http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.6/i386/iso-dvd/

What you've got is the DVD for installing Debian with the Gnome desktop. You can try it, but the Debian manual recommends a minimum of 512MB, and you've got 384. That's why I didn't recommend Debian.

I'm afraid you're seeing some of the features/bugs of sites like this: those who don't read all of the question, those who wander off into a discussion of their own, those who recommend something they've never used, those who always recommend the distro they use themselves, those who expect you to do complex operations in your very first installation... We're only human, after all.

If your internet connection is bad then I recommend the small "netinstall" CD, which will result in the least bandwidth used total. (Unless you have already downloaded the entire DVD 1, then just use that )

If you can get a network working in debian after install, then all you need is the netinstall. You can install most other things as you need them as long as you have network access. Then again if it is as slow as you hint, you might find the discs less of a headache. Especially if you can download them during periods that you are away from your computer. As in at work, sleeping, going out to eat. Various tools like wget, jidgo, torrents, and others that let you grab it and continue where you left off to help in the process.

I fell in love with debian when I was on dialup. Being able to bypass the -dev and -doc packages until you needed them, if you needed them. That really saved a lot of time and bandwidth. In a lot of cases the -bin is smaller than the source tarball. And while your lack of RAM will make a gui environment less desireable, you shouldn't lose hope. My laptop has 512MB and runs IceWM with 311MB free(according to /proc/meminfo). Although that's a fresh install and it's basically idling. I wouldn't hold out too much hope of running KDE and maybe even Gnome. But openbox, icewm, enlightenment, should be possible. Maybe even XFCE.

In my view, the difficulty you'll face isn't finding the right distro. Any distro can be customized to the point that you'll be able to strip down some of the services that are running and run a lightweight window manager (even MATE might run reasonably well on that thing) to the point that your desktop will feel reasonably responsive.

The difficulty you'll face is that most of the applications you'll want to use - Firefox and LibreOffice come to mind - will be quite sluggish, especially when it comes to displaying CSS-heavy webpages and Flash/HTML5 videos. So use any distro, but be prepared to make some sacrifices when it comes to web-based multimedia performance and running LibreOffice for long or media-rich documents.

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I see its already been suggested, but I tend to stick with plain old Debian, and just do a minimal install. The problem with those "lightweight" distros is that they tend to come and go, I mean DSL linux hasn't been updated in years! Download the small net-install CD, and go through the regular (non-graphical) debian installer, and when it comes up to ask you what software you want to install, (task-sel I believe it is) uncheck all those boxes. This will leave you with a minimal base system. Then, boot into that and install some lightweight programs, such as lxde, and slim if you want a login manager. (You could just type startx). This is how I always set up any of my machines even the newer ones, just cause it makes things a lot simpler... Those specs are fine! LXDE is a new really nice lightweight envronment. As for apps, I find midori to be a good (fairly) lightweight web browser, gpicview is a light weight photo viewer, and Abiword is good for word processing. I have used this setup on a very similarly speced PC, (A 933 MHZ P3 w/ 512 MB of RAM) and an even older system (an iMac G3) with great sucess.

What is the easiest way to find a distro that will support my slightly antique notebook workstation? (My other workstations all run some flavor of Linux Mint starting with Mint-10.)

If some linux distro can run on this box with a reasonable user experience, I'd like to blow the dust out. I would use it for:

• web browser
• email
• LibreOffice & friends
• review and markup of document files
• over-IP voice and video
• light tasks in close support to the above

Since it is an antique, I'd likely use this when I'm out in the bush instead of a more valuable workstation.

All of the parts work fine. Like my 61-year-old self, it has lots of grey(gray) hair and some creaks and groans.

The hardware is: (some of these I could upgrade if needed)

• IBM-branded
• Thinkpad T42 (2374-A63)
• Pentium M/600
• 512 MB RAM
• 40 GB disk
• wifi: 802.11 a/b/g
• wire: RJ-45 (10baseT likely; 100baseT maybe)
• even a new battery

Merci d'avance,
~~~ 0;-Dan

My IBM A22M and T23 runs AntiX 13 full iso

I am sure you will get other suggestions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R-4DQGexVs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8WO8NaM2tM

I'd bookmark http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T42 (old but still a nice list of issues and tweaks) then contemplate adding as much RAM as possible (should take max 2 GB) as the more you add the (relatively) smoother the experience will be. Relatively because browsing and text editing OK but I wouldn't be too surprised by anything that tries to stress the CPU limits of 'ol greybeard too much. You probably will want to select something that comes with a DE like XFCE or LXDE or whatever else that's light on resources. Even then running Firefox, Thunderbird and LibreOffice really don't require all the bells and whistles any complete DE offers. A WM like IceWM or BlackBox will do just fine.

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While your why explanation was true for a short time, that policy and changed. The end-user now has reasonable controls over when and who they share with.

~~~ 8d;-/ Dan

Lubuntu or yes #!. But, what do you want to do on it? VLC++ works with both++ on my older than yours...

What do I want to do with this? I'm a writer and want to use this laptop when I go walk-about and want something that I won't cry over breaking or losing.

• LibreOffice
• Firefox (browser)
• Thunderbird (email)
• Calibre (e-book management)
• e-Book reader

I don't play games or watch movies from a laptop. I have a good 'droid tablet for those activities.

~~~ 0;-Dan