Linux on "old school" notebook

dangerstat · 14 May 2009 at 17:58

Hi All,

Looking for recommendations as for what to put on a newly obtained laptop. It's a bit under powered (1.2Ghz Centrino chip with 512 MB RAM). On my main box I run Debian but I'm guessing this laptop would be suited to something a little more light weight.

I'm not really bothered what distro it's based on (though clearly one based on Debian would be nice). Though I'd be looking for excellent wireless support and XFCE.

Perhaps Xbuntu?

Cheers

Dangerstat

quackers · 14 May 2009 at 18:56

Well on my old lappie (1.5 celeron, 51mb ram) I've got PcLinux, open solaris 11, ubuntu 8.04 and a small xp install. Works fine

yashiro · 14 May 2009 at 19:04

Xubuntu isn't that light these days. You'd get better results installing a minimal system then adding the desktop environment manually.

http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20081215#feature
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090504#feature

You can do the same with Debian too obviously, but working out your wifi chipset and getting the required stuff together is often a pain.

dangerstat · 14 May 2009 at 20:08

Well I've decided to chuck Debian on it anyhow, will remove gnome and just run with xfce. Will be interesting to see how it copes with gnome on first launch though :0

yashiro · 14 May 2009 at 20:17

Install it manually, like in the guides I linked. Running the default setup, then installing XFCE afterwards is probably the worst thing you could do.

Look into Crunchbang Linux too.

dangerstat · 14 May 2009 at 20:26

yashiro said:
Install it manually, like in the guides I linked. Running the default setup, then installing XFCE afterwards is probably the worst thing you could do.

Why?

yashiro · 14 May 2009 at 20:46

Because you will be installing a ton of crap you don't need on an underpowered machine?
Upto you of course, it's your machine to do with as you wish.

Let us know how you get on with the wireless.

dangerstat · 14 May 2009 at 20:52

yashiro said:
Because you will be installing a ton of crap you don't need on an underpowered machine?
Upto you of course, it's your machine to do with as you wish.

Let us know how you get on with the wireless.

True, but it's not really hard disk space that is an issue to be fair.

Wireless = no luck, though it is recorded properly in lspci

To be honest - performance wise it's not coping to badly with gnome :eek:

yashiro · 14 May 2009 at 20:59

Usually on Debian it's a case of finding out the chipset, downloading the firmware blob and modprobing the required crud. Then install network manager gnome and see how that pans out.

eXor · 14 May 2009 at 21:26

dangerstat said:
Well I've decided to chuck Debian on it anyhow, will remove gnome and just run with xfce. Will be interesting to see how it copes with gnome on first launch though :0

Just do a barebones Debian install. Select nothing.

Then... xorg and openbox / fluxbox / xfce.

dangerstat · 14 May 2009 at 21:45

Well with a little bit of playing it's flying now, got the wireless working as well. All good.