Lighweight distro for laptop

alex24

alex24

alex24

Soldato
Joined
1 Jan 2008
Posts
11,592
Hi guys, i'm after your expert opinions on lightweight linux distros. I'm in a similar situation to this guy, but have a slightly different spec and reqs.

Machine:
Toshiba Tecra 8200
PIII 750Mhz
128mb
10GB
*No internal cd drive*
Floppy
Wireless b

I'd like to make use of this machine again (after failing to justify the cost of a netbook) and use it for general web browsing, nothing more. Just require firefox + a few addons (flash, adblock plus, pdf etc.) to run. As you can guess, it runs XP like a dog, and i've tried nlite with mixed results. Basically i'd rather get a 'true' lightweight system, that has support for the wireless b adapter also.

I've tried xubuntu, but it ran very badly and the inbuilt wireless did not work properly. This is most likely ignorance on my part, so any help would be useful. Also tried puppy linux, was snappy but looked horrible, i'm used to redmond-style desktops...:p

Note that I have no internal cd drive, and the laptop does not support booting from my usb cd-drive or usb stick, just HDD and floppy. I can easily take out the HDD though, and I have a 2.5" usb caddy, so that's no problem. Thus, any suggestions about how to get the OS installed would be appreciated. I hope that if I can get this working I can persuade a few people to hold back on their netbook purchases and re-use their old laptops!

Thanks
 
I've not tried this distro yet, but it may suit your needs: Foresight Linux. Apparently it's won awards this year. They do a lightweight version too.
 
BigglesPiP said:
Xubuntu

It's not so much the distro that's lightweight, but the xfce desktop environment.
Click to expand...

I see, would explain why it was still prettyy sluggish.

tophee said:
I've not tried this distro yet, but it may suit your needs: Foresight Linux. Apparently it's won awards this year. They do a lightweight version too.
Click to expand...

Thanks, i'll look it up. EDIT: Looks like it's still too heavyweight for my old lappy. Need something really fast and snappy.

Keep the suggestions coming!
 
Last edited:
Ubuntu was my fav, or mint, so I did try xubuntu but I fear the machine is too slow for it, as it ran terribly slowly. In fact, about the same as XP.

I'm looking at damn small linux, and it seems to fit the bill quite well, it's very customisable, so I should be able to what I want from it. Anyone got any ideas how I get DSL installed with no usb or cd booting? Is there a way to copy the system straight to the HD and invoke installation, perhaps from floppy?
 
I installed Xubuntu on a laptop of similar age/spec a short while back. It used rather more memory than I thought it would. In the end, I went for a basic install of Debian followed by an install of xfce. It used a good 60MB less RAM than X/Ubuntu did and felt markedly snappier, so I think the distro has some bearing on things, not just the desktop environment that's running.
 
That's interesting, if these lighweight claiming distros don't pull through i'll look into something similar. I am probably most familiar with debain.

I'm going to try DSL using one of their provided boot floppies and see where that gets me. The biggest problem I foresee are the wireless drivers. Any ideas to how to get this working (if it doesnt out the box) would be greatly appreciated, i'm still a linux n00b!
 
Last edited:
I had a look at DSL, but couldn't get it close enough to a regular distro for my likings. The filesystem was layed out differently and stuff.
 
AJUK said:
TinyME or AntiX might be worth a shot. Vectorlinux or if you are feeling brave Arch may also be worth checking out.
Click to expand...

Thanks, these suggestions look better than DSL, and after what BigglesPiP said, I might try one of these. I don't have an awful lot of time to learn linux manipulation atm, so arch is probably the deep end for me. Liking the look of vectorlinux though, any suggestions as to the best way to get it on the laptop, bearing in mind I have no cd or usb boot, but have floppy and usb cd-rom?
 
LabR@t said:
puppy linux http://www.puppylinux.org/

nice and light fully featured runs off a usb stick\ cd so u can try before HD install
Click to expand...

As I said in my original post, I tried it already, but wasn't much of a fan of the interface. I can't boot from USB btw, it has to be some conveluted method of using floppy boot manager.

OK, so i'm giving vectorlinux a bash using the 3 install floppies and copying the iso to my laptops hdd. I'll let you know if it works!
 
Last edited:
alexhull24 said:
I can't boot from USB btw, it has to be some conveluted method of using floppy boot manager.
Click to expand...
Set up a PXE server and never have to burn boot media again. Surprisingly easy to do.


I have Arch on a Pentium 3 750 which runs rather nicely and has a memory footprint of about 90MB when idling *running KDE 3.5* - when using fluxbox, it's substantially less.

As others have suggested, choose a distro, perform a base install and then add whatever you want to it... or do it the other way round by installing everything and then pull it out after install (the former is easier/better).
 
Last edited:
Crunchbang is quite nice. It's based on Ubuntu but is nicely stripped-down. Furthermore it uses the Openbox window manager and GTK+. It looks clean and classy, unlike Puppy which is a bit tacky IMO.
 
If you can hack your way through the install documents Gentoo would work pretty well in this case, i had a really good gentoo install on a p2 450 with 128meg or ram :), just needed xfce4 and a bit of a wait on the compiling and i was sorted.

Id test out some of the above options above to see if they are fast enough as gentoo is a bit of work to get right (but i found it produced ncie results)
 
pingwing said:
If you can hack your way through the install documents Gentoo would work pretty well in this case, i had a really good gentoo install on a p2 450 with 128meg or ram :), just needed xfce4 and a bit of a wait on the compiling and i was sorted.
Click to expand...

+1 for Gentoo - if OP is prepared to RTFM ;)

pingwing - use distcc next time. Spread the compiling load between your *nix boxes. linky
 
TinyMe is good and easy to use. However I would highly recomend giving Archlinux a go. Suprisingly easy to install. Also if you look in the wiki there is a fantastic begginers guide which practically holds your hand.

Then just use a window manger like Openbox.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom