Best Linux distro for Gateway Solo 2500 laptop? Suggestion, please.
 

A friend gave me an old laptop he had laying around. There isn't a lot of memory on it to run anything more than Win98, so why not use Linux, right? Went to Linux-on-laptops.com and it is suggest there to use Mandrake 10.0, but I'm hoping to find a more modern version of Suse for my laptop, especially since I'm having a hard time locating a copy of Mandrake 10.0 to download. Maybe you could suggest some pointers on how to find Mandrake, or how to download it from here? or even better, do you know of any versions of OpenSuse that will work? I can't find any info on it as of yet. Let me know! Thanks!

Hello

First of all you don't mention the laptop hardware. What processor does it have memory etc
Please read how to ask a question forum. http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/...Ask_a_Question

Also read this thread: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...laptop-815171/

Personally i suggest to use Dawn Small Linux. Read the above thread for more information or google it!

Kostas

Ah, that's a nice one. http://www.thehayesweb.org/jhayes/solo2500.html

200 MHz Celeron, 128 MB RAM. 4 GB disk.

To cut a long story short: Slackware 8.1 or 9.x wil do just fine. But, Slackware 11 is better if you want to run a WLAN card in the PCMCIA slot. See this: http://fruttenboel.verhoeven272.nl/linux/gallium4.html a similar machine. I have Slack 11 running on more modest machines as well.
Do not install the development system to save on diskspace. Later you may insert a USB stick to mount your /home filesystem.

I believe that slackware is a difficult distro for a newbie or an openSUSe user

It is logical to say "I should use an older Linux distro since my hardware is old," but I disagree with that logic. ;) Older Linux distros (like Mandrake 10 or Damn Small Linux) are, simply put, obsolete. They use outdated applications, they receive no security patches or bug fixes, and there is little-to-no official or community support.

Rather, I would recommend using an actively-supported, current Linux distro targeted specifically towards older hardware: Puppy, SliTaz, AntiX, etc. Since you do not mention your hardware specs, it's impossible for me to give a specific suggestion, but the 3 I just mentioned are personal favorites. :)

If you want to believe, go to a church.. :)

Slackware is easy. Period. If you want to run something silly easy, go to Windows 7. This guy is smart enough to pose the question so he's also smart enough to run Slackware. It was my first distro (and my last) and I never had trouble with it.

I did have lots of trouble with SuSE, Ubuntu and Debian (the socalled 'easy' distros).

Hi,

I've got a GW SOLO 2500, sweet little machine. I've used nothing but Slackware on it. Max the memory and hdd space if you can find a drive. I used Xfce on it as a desktop, stay away from KDE. I used Slackware 12.2 but that was temporary with a lot of work but earlier versions, 8 through 10.2 or even jump to 11. It's the legacy hardware that will be the problem, plus a slow processor. My 2500 has a PII/333 with 192MB and a 60GB hdd.

GW 2500 will require a PCMCIA card for the network, either wired or wireless. Stay away from the '8129/xx' based units as you will have one heck of time with any distro. Tweaking for Slackware wasn't that difficult. If the OP wants to use Slackware then I suggest some searches here on LQ will get information as I know that I had several posts concerning the 2500. I ran that thing for a long time.

I'll bet it will still power up with no problem(s).

:hattip:

Still got a few of those lying around here. Xircoms.

No matter what you take (LAN or WLAN) always get a Xircom since it is always recognized immediately. For WLAN, you can also rely on TP-Link.

I have Xircom WLAN adapters and Xircom LAN adapters. The latter has a connector for RJ45 and a Phone In/Out connector (has a modem built-in) so it can be used ANYWHERE.

Many Thanks to All
 

Thank you everyone for your quick responses.
I appreciate your patience with a newbie, especially since I did neglect to mention the hardware specifics. It is a basic, out of the box machine with no upgrades having been done to it since its initial release. Fruttenboel hit it right on the nose, though (200 MHz Celeron, 128 mb RAM, and 4GB HDD).
I'm going to take up on the most common suggestion and install Slackware since many of you have had success using it. Now I just need to get a copy of 10.2, or 11.
Thanks again, everyone!! :)

Is installing an old distro really the best you can do? Is Slackware 10 or 11 still getting any support for newer versions of programs and security issues?

I'm just wondering will it take that much work to get a current distribution (which is very light) to work on a Pentium/Pentium II laptop. Something like puppy, slitaz, etc.

Would be interesting to hear some success stories.

Hi,

Slackware supports back to around version 8.

:hattip:

Better than this, is hard to find: ftp://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/ftp.slackware.com/

Hi,

rkski was asking about support & security. For security it will depend on the package(s) but typical is around 10 but I've seen it back to 8. As for Slackware versions, there's a thread query lately for kernel 1.0 and I think that user will need to get Slackware 2.0 if possible. The closest will probably be Slackware 2.1 with a 1.0.9 kernel. So legacy Slackware is available on some mirror(S) back to 1.1.2
:hattip: