[Sussex] Re: Not managing to comPlete an install by myself.

[Gavin Stevens]

Hi Andre

On Tue, 10 Apr 2007 23:16:28 +0100
"ANDRE ORCHISON" <orchison at btinternet.com> wrote:

> Hi All,
> 
> As promised, info and answers.
> Firstly, Laptop Specs;
> Hi-Grade Notino AS7400, Pentium 2, 367mHz, 128Mb ram (it doesn't
> realize it has another 64Mb onboard) 6Gb hard drive, ATi rage 3D video
> card. I have removed the network card from it's slot to reduce
> potential problems. The distro's I have tried to install are Mandriva
> One, GNewSense and Ubuntu. Personally, I feel more drawn to Ubuntu. I
> think I would enjoy Mandriva more but I think I do need a higher spec
> machine to successfully run that one. I also have OpenSuse 10.2, but
> it will not even consider loading as it clearly informs me that I do
> nat have enough memory. 

Welcome to the group.

It seems to me that your laptop is rather modestly specified for
Mandriva & Ubuntu - or more accurately, the desktop environments that
they use (KDE & Gnome). Both of these environments like to slurp up
memory & 128MB will be nothing more than a tasty snack for them.

My own recommendation (& I'm sure that others will have theirs too) is
to try either DamnSmallLinux or Dyne:bolic. DamnSmallLinux (or "DSL") is
a 50MB distro that is renowned for working well on older hardware. It is
a live CD distro by nature, but a HD installation is possible. Indeed, I
use DSL on an old Toshiba Satellite Pro 430 CDS laptop (P120, 48MB
EDORAM, 1.3GB HDD) that makes your laptop appear positively luxurious in
specification. I gave a talk on DSL last November at the moot in Horsham
using the Toshiba laptop for the presentation. DSL has given my 10
year-old laptop a new lease of useful life.

Dyne:bolic is a live CD distro biased towards multimedia work. It is
also geared towards older hardware & should work well on your laptop (I
run Dynebolic on a 300MHz machine with 128MB RAM & it works very well).
Dynebolic is also a bit more "funky" than DSL, although DSL is the
better distro for everyday stuff (Dynebolic lacks a decent word
processor, for example). On the other hand, Dynebolic comes with urban
street cred as standard & is also a completely "libre" distro using only
truly free software. A hard drive installation of Dynebolic is possible,
although I haven't tried it yet - I have a spare HDD & will try it just
as soon as I get time to fit it into one of my machines.

Does either of these distros appeal to you?

I hope this helps.

Gavin.