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I have an old laptop. P3, 500mhz, 128mb ram, 11gb hdd. Which distro should I use and which version?
Also I tryed a live cd of gparted and partition logic but they wouldn't work - FC6 install cds wouldn't boot properly eithe. Too new probably. DSL linux worked and so does windows 98. One of the things I want to use is ViaVoice. Any advice?
I think it is not so old laptop. So it will not be problem to find distro. Look in www dot distrowatch dot com for distributions. Try booting install/live cd with boot noacpi nolacpi in boot dialog, which helps me in my older desktop pc. Or you could find some info/help by pressing F1 - F12 in the live/install cd boot dialog.
the distro thingie is really a "try and see" type thing, but I would note that the Linux version of viaVoice has been out of circulation for many many years, mores the pity.
A couple more to take a look at are Vector Linux and Zenwalk Linux. Each is based on Slackware, and each is supposed to be great for older computers. I also think that they each have a Live CD, but I may be mistaken on this.
I'm using Ubuntu on my laptop and it detected everything. I have been using Ubuntu on this laptop for the past year and am very happy with it.
cool so many success stories i would like to know the on which machines you guys were able to install these distros my best success is with suse. anyways older laptops run debian (many success stories on net) very well but you should know how to config it
Unless you upgrade the RAM, you're going to need a pretty light weight distro using just CLI or a light window manager like Fluxbox or XFCE. Several ones have already been mentioned that would be good choices as would Slackware if you're willing to learn. I would avoid distros like SuSE or Fedora as they tend to be a good deal "heavier" on resource usage and won't run well on 128MB RAM out of the box.
Try several until you find the one that works best for you.
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