Hi

Hope you guys can throw some suggestions my way. I have an old laptop my aunt was about to throw out. I was hoping to use it to access the internet, give us an extra machine to check hotmail on etc.

I installed the latest Mandrake but it ran so slowly and took forever to load anything on KDE.

I am not too sure about the various distributions and whether Mandrake is very hardware intensive.

But could someone suggest a linux distro that would better serve my needs?


any help appreciated.

Thanks
Haggis

What I would suggest to you, is to try Knoppix. Knoppix is a boot-from-cd distribution, however can also be installed to a drive. I would suggest testing Knoppix out before installing. If it is suitable, you can install it with the command knx2hd, if I remember correctly. If that isn't the command, at the console type knx (then hit tab) and you should get commands you can use. One of those should invoke the installer.

If Knoppix doesn't work for you, try out Damn Small Linux. This is also bootable from a CD, as well as the ability to be put on a drive. I'm not sure what the command to invoke HDD installation is though.

The good news, being both bootable, you can `test` them and get a general feel on if the system will be able to handle it.

NOTE, however, that it may and probably will go slower running from CD then being on HD. That's cause it's got to pull files off the CD. That could slow things down if your running from a 5x drive.

Another distro you could try is slackware, although it's not for those who are timid!

Some of the distro's I would not reccemend for a slow computer is
*Redhat 6-9
*Fedora Core (any)
*Mandrake 6-9
*SuSe
*Lindows
*Lycoris
The above listed distros are coded for faster systems.

If it is under 400 Mhz I would NOT reccemend use of:
*KDE
*Gnome

use instead something like ICEWM or Windowmaker

If you don't want to learn how to install something like ICEWM or Windowmaker, then again, would point to you giving out Damn Small Linux a try. It has a very basic window manager that will save resources.
good luck,
jon

What about from floppy? I have an old Digital HiNote which runs a 75Mhz 486 - 16MB of RAM, 500MB HD. No access to CD (unless I get a SCSI CDreader --- I have a PCMCIA SCSI card) but it does have a floppy. Would that install be unbearable?

brad

Pretty much so. I installed SmallLinux (a Slack-based mini-distro) on my laptop (older than yours) by floppy, and it was pretty tough. I suggest you try Slackware if you have some Linux knowledge, it's very fast on old PCs.

what about via ethernet?
Could I somehow put the first part of an installation on the LAN and let it boot and then run the rest of the installation from the LAN?

Brad, for a computer that slow I'd suggest a slackware equivilent. Ever hping to run KDE or GNOME is strictly out of the question, although perhaps you could run a very very basic window manager like twm or something, just don't expect anything.

I've attempted installing anything on anything so slow before, so results may vary. Wish you luck.