[SWLUG] Re: K6 + Carmarthen

[Gareth Bowker]

On Tue, 2004-02-10 at 14:47, Rhys Sage wrote:
> At the moment I've got the old PC working with the
> original P166. It seems to work well enough under
> Windows 98. I did hear tell there was a lightweight
> GUI interface I could use instead of KDE which would
> speed Mandrake up a lot. Alternatively, I could run a
> different Linux distribution. Are there any with a GUI
> interface that would run well on a P166. I gather
> Mandrake 9 used to but 9.1 onwards does not.

There are literally hundreds tailored to all sorts of tastes (people who
prefer to use the keyboard, for example). A quick search shows 170 on
Freshmeat[0]. Have a browse and download and try any that take your
fancy.

To be honest though, you don't really say what it is you want to *do*
with the computer. I used to have enlightenment[1] running quite happily
on a P133 a few years ago, although it tended to slow everything else
down. Looked pretty though. Depending what you're planning on doing, we
may be able to point you in a better direction.

A very lightweight window manager I like (heavily biased towards the
keyboard) is evilwm[2]. If you prefer to use your mouse to move windows
you may want to avoid it though :)

Choosing a different window manager can be quite a personal thing, so
the only real recommendation I have is to try them and see what you
think.

Before you start faffing with changing window managers, make sure you
understand *how* to change your window manager. Assuming you have to log
in to your computer, that will be a program called kdm (or maybe gdm - I
don't know which Mandrake uses). Read the docs for that so you're
confident you know how to change your window manager once it's
installed. If all else fails, google will probably have the answer,
given the right question.

Good luck,

Gareth

[0] http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=window+manager&section=projects
[1] http://www.enlightenment.org/
[2] http://evilwm.sf.net/