Hi folks,

I've got an older laptop that originally had Win98 on it. It has only 128MB RAM so I'm going to have to be pretty sparing of the hardware. According to http://www.mepis.org/node/10197 there is supposed to be a lite version, but I can't seem to find it to download. The other most obvious candidate for this weakling of a box seems to be DSL, which I will probably install, especially if I can't find MEPIS lite, but I would like to see if I can find it and try it out.

Any pointers would be very welcome.

adv10Qance,
Paul

Hi Prn, for MEPIS lite you need to donate money to download. Sometimes there is a Beta version for everyone though. But MepisLite is useless, the update pools afaik are no longer up and running so you can't maintain it. If you need MEPIS then you should install it and then install ICEWM from the Mepis 6.5 pools. Or use a lite distro...

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the info. It's not MEPIS that I "need" for that machine, it's simply a very limited, light, distro that uses comparatively little in the way of resources. Since MEPIS lite isn't being kept up, I'll go with a different distro for that box and try MEPIS on a different box with more oomph.

Thanks much!

Paul

Have you looked at Damn Small Linux or Puppy?

MEPIS has been known for running a little lighter than other distros (the Ubuntu base may have changed that). However, instead of using KDE, you could use IceWM (as someone said before) or XFCE.

If you want to customize your distro, grab a copy of debian etch and install which packages you want. (I do a base install & then apt-get what I want)

Hi Guys,

@halw: yes. Puppy and DSL (including DSL-N) are among the distros I have downloaded and burned to CD. I was going to try out a bunch of live CD distros over this past weekend, but a sinus infection had me so muzzy that my brain was running on about 35% power.

@angryfirelord: I'll try to take a look at the Debian etch also.

I've got hold of this (ancient in internet years) Compaq Armada 7400 with a 300MHz Pentium II and 128MB RAM. It has no built-in wifi, but I have a Netgear WG511 PC card. I've been looking around and it turns out that Compaq did some very funky things with this laptop, like putting the BIOS into a HD partition and not on a chip. This apparently somewhat complicates installation as it does not want to play well if I take over the Master Boot Record. I'm still hazy on exactly what the alternative is, so I'm trying to be very conservative before I try to install anything to the HD and make the kind of mistake that would wipe out the required partition. Of course, the more often I try installing to the HD on this system, the higher the probability that I wipe out the HD partition table and then have to restore that from a floppy that I'll need to download from HP. (Which, of course, also means putting a floppy drive on that box. )

I suppose I'm lazy, but I'm looking for two things here. First, of course, it has to run OK on this limited hardware. I don't intend to make it work very hard. I figure this box can be a pretty light-duty machine for some web surfing, email and such. If it can handle that at an acceptable level, that's about the most I'll ever ask of it. So, I would probably want to use xfce or ice as window manager, but I will undoubtedly want to have some of the gnome libs available because my work email is a M$ Exchange server and evolution seems to be about the only mail client that can really do well with that. (If the statement about evolution is wrong and there are other email clients that work well with Exchange, please do let me know. ) As far as browsers are concerned, I'm sort of partial to Opera because I have found it comparatively light and quick, and I like the way it handles tabs and mouse gestures, even though extensions like Forecastfox and Adblock Plus are way better than anything Opera has in the way of "Widgets". Still, I don't expect this to be my primary machine for anything, so I'm not too concerned about compromises.

The other thing I'm hoping for from a distro (and this is where the "lazy" comment really comes into play) is that I'm hoping to find a distro that will recognize the wireless connection painlessly. So far, I haven't, but then I haven't really pushed very hard yet either. I did put in the DSL-N CD over the weekend during a short period of comparative relief from the sinusitis, but so far haven't seen the wireless card from it. That is, it can see that there is a card in the card slot, but if it can see it as a potential connection to the outside world (eth1 or wlan0 or...) I haven't seen any evidence of that yet. The part where I'm being lazy is that I'd kind of like to find a distro that I can simply use and then install that to the HD rather than installing a number of different distros to the HD and then fiddling to make them work. This may prove to be futile, but I'll see.

Anyway, that's probably more than you really want to know so I'll stop rambling now. If and when I find a really good solution, I'll post the story with a moderately detailed description of what I did so that the next person who wants to do something similar might benefit from it.

Thanks,
Paul

An older version of MEPIS may work for you on that older machine. Try 3.3.1-1 or 3.4.3. Both will be slower than normal with the low ram that you have. I heard that slackware will run on low ram so that may be an option.

prn, am running ubuntu 6.10 on an old Toshiba Satellite 2545xcdt w/ 192 MB ram, some of which is shared with video. Naturally it is slow but still works. Also installed icewm which makes things move a little quicker.

I have, in the past, had SimplyMempis on this system and it does the best of any at recognizing my hardware. As a matter of fact I'm contemplating reloading with SM6.5 and then using icewm as the main windows manager.

Obviously, will try the livecd first. Painfully slow but necessary to make sure everything works before loading.

Thanks, halw! I will certainly try that.

Best,
Paul

Hi all

I've just installed Mepis Lite 3.4.3 on an old IBM thinkpad that I bought in 1999. Downloaded it from the Virginia Tech mirror. Although I contribute to Mepis....I didn't have to in order to get the download.
By the way, Installation on this old I-series thinkpad was quick and flawless. Everything I tested worked great, except bios doesn't have function for wireless...and OpenOffice ran slow, but Abiword was a great alternative.
I would agree that Puppy and DamnSmall are great distro's for older machines...but I was not disappointed with Mepis Lite 3.4.3.

Hope this helps

Tom

You can also try adding more RAM as well. Most laptops can get at least 256 MB of RAM. Many older laptops can even run 512. Installing RAM is simple, painless, and usually requires no software adjustments besides turning the computer on when you are done. With RAM, get as much as you can afford and the machine will take. I'm running Mepis 6.5 with 768 MB of RAM (the max) and a Celeron 1.3 Gig processor. Even though XP is a little bit sluggish, Mepis 6.5 runs fast and smoothly.

Also with a desktop, it is worth you money to use a Promise SATA 2 card and SATA 2 drive. It makes a big difference. I dual boot with XP on just one physical hard drive with no problems !!

Thanks, mdlinuxwolf.

Adding RAM is an option. I haven't wanted to put much money into the system because it will still be slow even afterward (PII, 366MHz), and it does take a max of 256 MB, but if I can do it cheaply enough, I may do that anyway. It would relieve a little bit of pressure on the system.

Best,
Paul

Here is a link for RAM. Usually Tiger has RAM. If not, Newegg will have it.



http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...asp?CatId=150&

Thanks, mdlinuxwolf.

Actually memory is easy to find -- google "memory", brand and model. Tiger has something that may be good, but isn't clearly suitable and newegg doesn't appear to support memory for systems as old as this one. That isn't a big surprise, though and isn't a problem, either. a few minutes was all it took to find a dozen or so suppliers and compare prices. It really is just a question of how much I want to put into this antiquated laptop (not much). But you're right in any case that it would certainly do better with 192 or 256 MB than with only 128, so I'll probably break down and spend a few bucks.

Best Regards,
Paul

I have wanted a freindly, up-to-date, lightweight distribution of Linux for my old laptop and for older systems in general. Feather Linux was the ideal distro to meet the needs of the average user, but it seems to be inactive now.

The two useful really light distributions are DSL and Puppy, as have been mentioned. I've used them both on systems with 96MB of memory and 166-233 MHz processors.

The problem with MEPIS Lite is that (like regular MEPIS) it uses the KDE GUI environment, which is a resource hog. (So is Gnome.) To run on less than 256MB RAM, you need to use a distro without KDE or GNOME. Try one that uses IceWM or JWM, for example, which don't use as much memory.

What I recommend for older laptops (let's say 300-700 MHz and 128-256MB RAM) is Xubuntu. To quote the blurb on Distrowatch.com, "Xubuntu is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu. Unlike its parent, however, Xubuntu uses the light-weight XFce desktop environment and is optimised for lower-end machines."

Xubuntu (along with Ubuntu and Kubuntu) are actively maintained and user-friendly from the user's perspective and in their compatibility with modern hardware.