Hello all,

I'm an old hand at MS platforms (IT industry), however, when it comes to Linux I am a total newbie!

I have an o-l-d IBM Thinkpad iSeries PII365MHz, 325MB RAM, PCMCIA Netgear wired & wireless NICs

It just doesn't have the horsepower anymore that I need. (Believe it or not, I'm running XPPro on it)

I've always heard that Linux required far less resources than MS systems and that it could often run nicely on older computers.

Is there a GUI Linux distribution that would run well on this system?
Would I be able to find the drivers I need?

I don't need it to be a workhorse. I have desktop systems for that.
I would just like Internet & word processing. It'd be nice if it could play DVDs (the laptop has a DVD player) but no problem if not.

What d'ya'll think? Is it worth it? If I can install a Linux distro on this LT, would I see a significant performance enhancement?

Thank you in advance for your support.

Pterocarpous

Slackware with Gnome(dropline gnome would be best) or XUbuntu

"P"

I have a T-21 Thinkpad that I had Red Hat 8.0 on. I have since replaced RH with Xandros 3 OCE.

Both of these distro's run just fine.

Thank you MusicMan_Ace & OldBob
All of this is greek to me so I'll be doing a lot of research to
learn as I go along.

So, "Slackware", "Red Hat", "Xandros 3 OCE" are "distributions" and
"Gnome", "dropline gnome", and "XUbuntu" are ???

Is there somewhere I can go for basic directions and explanations
of Linux terminology etc? I see a link off to the right here to
Linux Tutorials. I'll take a look there. If you have other
recommendations as well I'd be grateful.

How are hardware drivers handled in Linux?
I'm particularly concerned that my PCMCIA Netgear 10/100 wired and
802.11b wireless NICs work running Linux.

I was also referred to DSL and Puppy distros. I checked them out
and, yes, they're lean but I want the OS installed to my HDD. HDD
capacity isn't an issue. I just need the distribution to run well
on a PII365MHz/320MB system. I'd like as much functionality as
possible w/o ending back up in the position I'm in now w/
overloaded resources.

Are the distributions and such ya'll mentioned free? I know that
Linux is open source but I've seen Linux distributions in the
stores for sale. (e.g. Red Hat)

Thankyou RickH. I'll check that one out as well. Sounds like I have lots of options.

"P"

According to Distro Watch there are 400+ versions of "Linux" -

http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

So the question "What is the BEST version" is almost impossible to answer.

Here is a good site for some basic Linux knowledge.

http://www.linux.org/lessons/beginner/toc.html

As far as hardware goes, the newer the version the more likely it is to cover the latest hardware [scanners, cameras, etc...] So I can't recommend something as old as Red Hat 8.0, although it is easy to install and work with.

Wow! 400, huh? I see whatcha mean. I think the best thing to do is to pick one and go for it. Hopefully, I'll have time to give it a shot this week.

Thankyou, again for your help and patience.

Try Tuxmobil and Linux-laptops:

http://www.linux-laptop.net/
http://www.tuxmobil.org/

see what other uses with your model laptop have done

a few personal recomendations:

Kubuntu
http://www.kubuntu.org/

Uses KDE desktop, one CD install works both as a live and Install CD. Be wary it is a bit bloated.

Mandriva
http://frontal2.mandriva.com/en/downloads/mirrors

This is what PCLinuxOS is based on it is a BIG distrobution with all you will ever need


PCLinuxOS .92
http://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/metalab/dist...glish/preview/
ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/metalab/distr...glish/preview/

This is the distro I use and recommend, Why because it works right out of the box. No need to configure Everything, everything just works. It also comes as a 1 CD install that is a live CD that you can install later if you wish.

BeatrIX
http://www.watsky.net/download.html

Mephis
http://www.mepis.org/

if your looking for some smaller distros try:

Vector Linux 4.3
http://www.vectorlinux.com/

DSL
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Puppy Linux
http://www.puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=3

Slackware
http://www.slackware.com/

SLAX Live CD
http://www.slax.org/

BeatrIX
http://www.watsky.net/

Elive:
http://www.elivecd.org/

Deli
http://delili.lens.hl-users.com/

hope this helps,

Jake

Wow! Thank you for going to all that trouble Jake. I really appreciate it. It's amazing all the directions one can go w/ Linux. It's both wonderful and overwhelming.

I'm hoping to have the time to finally try one out this week. If not, this week end. I'll let you know how it goes.

Thank you again! Your support is much appreciated.