[Sussex] Laptop challenge

[Ronan Chilvers]

Hi Gavin

On Mon, 30 Jan 2006 01:10:47 +0000
Gavin Stevens <starshine at gavmusic.uklinux.net> wrote:

> I was given a free laptop yesterday (Sat.), which was nice.

Always handy!

> He disappeared & then returned with a Toshiba Satellite Pro 430CDS,

I had a little tosh portege 320CT which I used for ages for developing
PHP code.  4GB HDD, 92MB RAM, P100, etc.  Did a network install of
debian woody, used fluxbox as my window manager and replaced kdm with a
more lightweight display manager (can't remember its name now - wasn't
xdm).  It worked great.  Woody happily set up everything from sound and
video to network interfaces.

The great thing is with older hardware is that it tends to be very well
supported by linux distributions, unless its so old that support has
been taken out for some esoteric bit.  Toshiba kit is generally really
good with big name parts (3com NICs, etc).

I reckon your one will run great with debian on it, although I would
try to squeeze in a little more RAM. Trim it down so that you use one
of the lightweight window managers, maybe use xdm instead of gdm/kdm,
trim out all unnecessary daemons.  I suppose you could dispense with X
altogether and just go for a command line interface.  Perfect as a
jotter and you get rid of the X server overhead completely.

The little 'un now resides in happy retirement with my brother who uses
it to store his guitar tabs!

Laturrs

-- 
Ronan
e: ronan at thelittledot.com
t: 01903 739 997
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