I have an old Smart-tec laptop, 400mhz, 128mb ram 6.4gb HDD that i was going to give to my gran and she only needs it for internet and mail. Can one of you linux experts recommend me a lite, easy to install, user friendly distro that would run on this laptop and would be easy enough to set up a dial-up connection on?
RECOMMENDATION FOR K6-400MHZ
- Thread starter Makavelli
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I'm guessing a skip isn't an option?
I think Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux might run on that machine with Puppy Linux probably just shading it in terms of user-friendlyness.
I'm not even certain that spec would run Xubuntu tbh.
I think Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux might run on that machine with Puppy Linux probably just shading it in terms of user-friendlyness.
I'm not even certain that spec would run Xubuntu tbh.
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DSL is the obvious choice. If you're adventurous try doinga debian stable minimal installation and add just the components you ned.
Arch is not an option in this case.
Arch is not an option in this case.
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Arch only compiles for i686 processors or better. The first AMD i686-compliant proc was the Athlon XP. The processor in question here is a K6-2, two generations too early to run Arch.
Gentoo would work if you want to go that route.
I still think Debian stable would be nice.
Gentoo would work if you want to go that route.
I still think Debian stable would be nice.
Soldato
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Try gOS, pretty slick should run probably.
Soldato
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Are you serious? Never mind user friendly, how long do you think it would take to compile on a 400Mhz K6 lol?gentoo if you want the most out of it.. but be prepared for a long night of reading
EDIT: ahh, just read user friendly... maybe not.. unless your grandma is down with portage.
On user friendlyness, you most have posted before my edit..
And you can get bin packages from gentoo if you really need to, just still with the added bonus of the use flag dep resolution.
But yes, I was half joking.
Having compiled Gentoo on such a machine a few years back, I think it took 3-4 days for a stage 1 install to get to a working command line. A stage 3 install would be quicker but it would still take a significant amount of time to compile updates and additional packages.
You could stick gentoo on it and give it a few hdds and use it as a file server. I can't see it being a sensible desktop/web browsing machine these days given the amount of flash/video content online.
I never really thought about that to be honest, although that said i don't know if she actually does that much browsing, she is 80+! The main reason she has a pc at the minute is because she has 2 sons living in Canada and she needs to be able to receive e-mails from them.
To those who have contributed many thanks although i should have said at the start that i am a complete linux noob and have no experience compiling etc so ideally i was looking for something lite out of the box. I had puppy installed but for some reason it doesn't work now plus it took a while to boot up. I have also tried DSL but it looked as though it would be complicated use. I hate to have to read up on things, not cos i'm lazy i just prefer to be shown how to do something.
