It's currently running mepis and I like it a lot but I'm wondering if I could get a better performance out of another distro...here are the specs.

p3 1ghz
256 ram
20gb hd.

Thanks!

If you like mepis, why not try mepis-lite, it got a good review on linux-watch.

Of course, I'd recommend slackware, but that's not entirely helpful.

Or, if your desktop environment is slowing you down, maybe try a less resource-hungry window manager. I use fluxbox on an old P III with 128 MB RAM and it's quite quick. Be warned however, it's often not a trivial job to set these up to your taste.

Cheers

Edit: It seems as though you have to subscribe to use mepis-lite, only testing versions are available for download........

I came to linux because I tried and like Mepis. I too think that you should go slackware, but I am biased tho after a hunt for performance on old pc's. I have many old pc's here.

However, to be honest I tried the mepis lite and did not like it even for older pc's. Although it put in xfree86 and not xorg...I didnt feel any performance difference really.

Now in mepis lite they took out open office and put in ...uh from memory here...kwrite or abiword it was. Which is a must have for everyone.

You could try it...but I think you'll find it's still not good enough.

If you never tried any slackware's before try out "Slax" or "Mutagenix" okay. They are bootable live cd's. You could see how your hardware is picked up and is run off a cd and then make a choice.

I warn you tho...once you go slack you never go back

Good luck.

Hmm maybe..what about damn small linux? That looks interesting. Also, could I get a graphical installer for slackware from slax I'm not much of a text based guy. And one other thing. Does slackware have a package manager? Or do you have to go from source?

I am currently using slackware 10.2 on a dell laptop with 1.0 GHz, 256 Mb ram, and a 40 Gb hard drive. I don't experience any lag during day to day activities, but when I get into gaming I don;'t get the performance I would like. My battery life last longer than a friend of mine who just bought a brand new XPS laptop (don't know if that's has anything to do with the distro or not, but he's running Win XP).

I'm not sure about the graphical installer, but the installer that comes with slackware is pretty easy to use. If you choose to do a full install (3 gigs) you pretty much just hit next as the prompts come up. At the end, it will ask a few simple questions.

Slackware does have a package manager called pkgtool and uses the extension .tgz for it's packages. It is very easy to use. Also most anything I have installed from source was even simple. Normally I only supply ./configure, make, and make install. The only times that were different were when I was installins apache and php on my server...

I am really enjoying slackware on my laptop and would higly recommend it for other laptops.

To be honest with you at 1 Ghz you dont want a graphical installer

Slack's installer is thru your up/down on arrow key and hit space to toggle on and off.

Just do the full install newbie, it only takes about 2.X gig or less and you'll be into linux in 20 minutes.

Those graphical installers are nice dont get me wrong, but most distro's do about 2-3 gig and it takes resources away from installing.

Blualien - have you tried recompiling your kernel to optimize it? Although you didnt mention your games ,etc no matter point the same. Look into compiling, you really customize your kerenel just for you

Oh one last thing. I didnt recommend DSL as I've had some really good successes and some bad ones. But overall I didnt recommend it as it is a chopped down version of linux. You are kind of limited to what software you can install. I know there's a debate on this, but DSL people themselves tell to use software from their repositories as it's optimized for their system. You could give it a shot. But in the long haul, anything written for linux can go on slack, and maybe not DSL.

No, I haven't done any kernel changes, because of the fact that I am still a newbie. I've been reading up on recompiling the kernel and trying to muster up the balls to do it. Maybe I will try this week if I get bored.

I'm no guru either.

I basically made myself a cheat-sheet. I basically got this from the slacker's bible.

I use ext2 on my hard drive....everything in their. I'm not doing advanced stuff for my partitions, but basically this is my cheat-sheet notes. Obviously compare to others, but this does work for me. Obviously change the numbers for the kernel you use.


1. download kernel file to /usr/src

1a. gpg verify the kernel.

2. in console 3. in console 4. you can paste a previously made for this version kernel config in /usr/src/linux-2.6.15.3 to modify tweak and it gets copied over. I've even copied over a kernel config file from the 2.6.13 the slackware testing kernel.
5. open up terminal in KDE environment use: or
in text mode console (shift F6) use 6. go thru setup program. be sure that "show all options is shown". be sure you have the file system you are using with a checkbox and not module.

7. save config when done

9. go to console now go get a pizza.

10. in console: 11. then 12. now in console 13. then 14. then go to "/usr/src/linux" in console:
15. now 16. now 17. now create new symlinks to new kernel
18. run "" in console.
17. you can edit lilo with text editor to be sure.
18. you can use control center in KDE to do a double check of your lilo for you.

Good luck. Back up before you do it