User Feedback :: very impressive on an old laptop



Quote (mshilly @ Feb. 07 2006,01:52)
I have a the remains of a CF-25 that I am turning into a Digital Picture Frame.  It originally came with 32MB but I needed more to run DSL and XV and had to buy a 64MB EDO SODIMM.  It works well with a frugal install and some swap space on the hard disk.

Yah I suppose if you have a busted machine then that would be cool...however I would like to see em running instead of a picture..heh

Brian
AwPhuch

RUH ROH! YAGGY! I just installed zenwalk and oh my god! configured sound, wlan, videocard and it just looks sweet and runs fast too! it looks like a mac os system Very elegant! take a look at this one, but it does take about 1 hour to install on this beast but the results are outstanding. It runs slightly faster then DSL. im gonna try it a few days to see if I can break it up. BUT wow my jaw has hit the floor. Very impressive!
http://www.zenwalk.org/

I can guarantee zenwalk will run like crap on older hardware...

Quote
These are the minimal hardware requirements to run Zenwalk in Xwindow mode, with correct performance (some lower configs work, but might be slow) :

Pentium III class processor
128 Mb RAM
2Gb HDD

Pentium III started at 500Mhz didnt they...

The minimum specs are 4x as heavy as DSL
Quote
There are 2 versions of Zenwalk :
Zenwalk (full version ~ 400MB iso download) is a complete system : out of the box, you will be able to browse, mail, chat, listen to music, program in C, Perl, Python, Ruby,.. watch videos in various formats, write documents, print, scan, burn CD and DVD, connect your camera and edit your photographs, without adding anything. Coders will like the full set of development libraries and interpreters.
Zenwalk Core (~ 230MB iso download) is a Zenwalk system without X applications. Zenwalk-core is intended to be used as a starting point to build a custom desktop system or a server system, and for users with limited space on their disk, or great perfectionists wanting to build their personal desktop system themselves.


Is all fine and dandy..but older hardware would choke...plus the 2.6 kernel I think MUST boot from CD....kernel img wont fit on a floppy

Brian
AwPhuch

Quote (AwPhuch @ Feb. 08 2006,19:27)
http://www.zenwalk.org/

I can guarantee zenwalk will run like crap on older hardware...

Quote
These are the minimal hardware requirements to run Zenwalk in Xwindow mode, with correct performance (some lower configs work, but might be slow) :

Pentium III class processor
128 Mb RAM
2Gb HDD

Pentium III started at 500Mhz didnt they...

The minimum specs are 4x as heavy as DSL
Quote
There are 2 versions of Zenwalk :
Zenwalk (full version ~ 400MB iso download) is a complete system : out of the box, you will be able to browse, mail, chat, listen to music, program in C, Perl, Python, Ruby,.. watch videos in various formats, write documents, print, scan, burn CD and DVD, connect your camera and edit your photographs, without adding anything. Coders will like the full set of development libraries and interpreters.
Zenwalk Core (~ 230MB iso download) is a Zenwalk system without X applications. Zenwalk-core is intended to be used as a starting point to build a custom desktop system or a server system, and for users with limited space on their disk, or great perfectionists wanting to build their personal desktop system themselves.


Is all fine and dandy..but older hardware would choke...plus the 2.6 kernel I think MUST boot from CD....kernel img wont fit on a floppy

Brian
AwPhuch

Well it dont choke. It runs a lightweight desktop. Very smooth and very fast. I dont know how low end it will go but im running a p166 with 96 ram it runs great. That is until I try launching GIMP that makes my system puke! as far as web browsing, mail and messenger apps it runs pretty well. However I did catch a snag this morning. I booted my laptop up when I got up this morning. Got the kids ready for school and took them. whn I returned there was a screensaver running on the desktop with vector graphics. when I got out of the screensaver it made my system puke again. so I reboote and everything was good again. I turned off the screensaver. did a little test and left the laptop on all day. as the day went on the system got slower and slower. I launched thunderbird mail and it took at least 10 minutes to load. no clue why it bogs down like that. looks like memory leak or something. I launched thunderbird with no other programs running in the background. But I assure you at boot and for quite a while after it runs very fast and smooth.
well I just did a full install of DSL. Cant take the slow down as the day goes on thing. Zenwalk is worth look probably for peeps with p166 and 128 ram or more. its very elegant and fast. I would not say stable however.
Next Page...
original here.