Laptops :: What sort of install to use on low-mem old laptop?

I have an old Libretto 50CT - 75MHz processor, 32Mb memory, HDD upgraded to 6Gb of which I keep a Win98 installation on 2Gb. The rest of the drive is available for Linux.

At present I have a DSL installation dating back to March 06, when I did a HD install (using loadlin from DOS to get the installation started - the Libretto has no CD drive).

I've also installed the XAMPP apache/mysql/php system on the machine for use when developing websites. It takes ages to start XAMPP on this small a machine, but once it's going it's quite fast enough.

With 3.2 appearing over the horizon, it's time to upgrade: but I'm not certain what form of installation to use. There seems to be a lot of positive comment about Frugal compared with HD, but I'm far from clear whether this would work in a low-memory environment. MyDSL extensions are said to need more memory, but the later versions can apparently be put on HD to save RAM.

What I want is DSL, with (in some way) a webserver which can deal with PHP files and some form of database (doesn't have to be MySQL - SQLite can be persuaded to emulate it closely enough for my purposes if necessary).

Since I generally boot to Linux rather than Windows, I want it to start from LILO / Grub or whatever on startup, not go through a Windows boot first!

Do I need to do what I did before (install to HD, ignore MyDSL ideas, install XAMPP), or is there a better (or at least 'purer DSL') way to do it?

This thread may help you.

Quote (hs7sv @ Jan. 04 2007,22:47)

This thread may help you.

Helps a bit - clearly frugal can do what's needed! But the issue is really whether the memory limitation is going to be a problem for Frugal - 32Mb is as much as the Libretto will take, and if Frugal needs more memory to load extensions it could be better to use a HD install again.

Any thoughts?

I use old 133MHz Notebook, DSL works smooth. 75MHz might be a little bit to slow to manage all daemons etc., whats about slackware or derivates? Or is a graphical user interface a "must have"?

Quote (crawler @ Jan. 05 2007,15:19)

I use old 133MHz Notebook, DSL works smooth. 75MHz might be a little bit to slow to manage all daemons etc., whats about slackware or derivates? Or is a graphical user interface a "must have"?

I've tried Slackware, but there are just too many things it doesn't do - it failed to handle the Libretto's hibernation and the rather odd PCMCIA floppy, for instance. DSL is happy with both.

The question isn't really whether or how to load DSL, but what installation type to use.

I think I'm going to try a Frugal based on 3.1 - that should make it easy to upgrade to 3.2 when its out (from what I've read) and if frugal turns out not to be ideal I can simply revert to an HD install when 3.2 time comes around.

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