[HLUG] choosing a distro

[Julian Robbins]

Matt Ramsay wrote:
> Hi
>
> I'm a fairly new to linux - have installed Mandriva alongside xp at home.
>
> At work, I have a number of old laptops running Win 98-W2K but want to wipe these and run a linux distro on them instead. They're not very powerful - probably got the following spec: 
>
> 128 RAM
>
> Intel P111 processor (1GHz)
>
> 20 Gb hard drive
>   
Hi Matt

I was the main person helping to setup VectorLinux on the original 
350MHz PII and 64MB RAM for Sian last year.
Pleased that the newer PC's have a bit more punch!

You could probably run most types of Linux with that spec to varying 
degrees of speed.
> I'm looking for a distro that will run fast on this type of laptop. And
> am only really looking for it to run office type software.
>   
I think firstly you need to check that the laptops are ok with Linux. 
Generally, laptops are straightforward installs, but can give more 
problems than desktop pc's. that said most new linux installs are 
problem free in the main.
The only proviso I would give may be laptop modems, which will take a 
bit of doing to get working generally, and power management is still 
quite hit and miss. Apart from that they will probably be ok.
We could do with knowing what type they are specifically, and whether 
they are all the same or different.
When I set the original Linux PC's up, I installed and configure the 
first and then cloned each one as all the PC's were exactly the same. 
This worked ok after some teething problems. Installing Linux on a slow 
pc will always take long enough anyway.
1GHz is much better though.
> Any idea what distribution I should take a look at??
>   
You will need OpenOffice to get the most accurate results in place of MS 
Office. But this always runs quite slowly, and requires as much ram as 
possible to help. You could use Koffice or Abiword/Gnumeric that are far 
far speedier applications, and still pretty good. I would use GNOME over 
KDE as its possibly IMHO a bit easier to use for newcomers.

What distro ? I would choose Ubuntu - partly because

    * Its quite fast anyway,
    * It has excellent support - a very friendly and active community
    * It is one of the biggest
    * Nice and easy to use for beginners.
    * Adding Applications via Broadband is especially easy.
    * It uses GNOME by default, but KDE is also available.

Theoretically, VectorLinux or Slackware or Debian may be the fastest, 
but with all of these you lack a lot of the niceties in setting it up. 
Setting up the VectorLinux PC's for Community first took some doing, as 
the hardware was quite limiting, but the results weren't too bad really.
There's nothing wrong with mandriva, but I feel they've lost the edge 
that they use to have. Suse is always good, but tends to be a little 
slower than some of the others possibly. Mepis looks good too, but I 
haven't used it much, and guess what? Its based on Ubuntu !

I'm happy to help out again, but now I'm a Dad, I have less time to 
offer as I did before.

The next meeting will be on Thursday, so best come along then and we can 
look at the options. If you bring one of the laptops even better. One 
gotcha, you may need the BIOS password to get them to boot from the CD, 
last time we had to track this down from the supplier beforehand to even 
try a live CD!! ....

Cheers

Julian Robbins

>  
>
> Thanks, Matt
>  
>
> Matt Ramsay
>
> IT Officer
>
> Community First
>
> T. 01684 580705
>
> www.comfirst.org.uk
>
> Charity No: 703072
>