very impressive on an old laptopForum: User Feedback Topic: very impressive on an old laptop started by: windancer Posted by windancer on Feb. 06 2006,01:15
Well for the last 2 or 3 weeks ive been lookin for another light distro for my old Panasonic CF-25 96 megs ram 4.8 gig HD the results are in:Damn Small linux- everything works and good speed. beatrix linux- everything works very ipressive but really slow Feather linux-LOL hardly anything works and cannot be configured yoper-wont boot insert linux- wont boot vector linux- slow and not everyting works Archie linux-Hangs on boot mandriva-PLease! slow as a snail ubuntu-very impressive but again slow(beatrix is actually a mini version) blue flops-floppy install very impressive just no support for wpc11 QNX- another impressive floppy install no NIC support then there is knoppix everything works its super impressive but my old laptop is brought to its knees with the system. I guess my point in all of this. DSL is a very nice diistro that pretty much configures everything but there is also help there when you need to do something. awesome community for a very nice distro! anyone have any other distros they can think of that might best DSL? I dont think so but im willing to benchmark one on this dinosaur.........bringem on! Now obviously the big boys freebsd, slackware, suse, ubuntu they probably gonna be slow on this beast. Im lookin for mini versions to test out. I even tried blue flops on floppy. actually pretty impressive. very fast but would not configure my wireless wpc11. has tons of drivers for nics just not mine. Posted by Mark on Feb. 06 2006,18:28
yep Puppy linux works well on older hardware
Posted by windancer on Feb. 07 2006,03:43
TRied puppy last night. for some reason it wont boot. it starts then restarts and keeps looping the reboot. Yoper does the same thing on here. Posted by AwPhuch on Feb. 07 2006,06:06
Welcome to the Revolution!!!I sure wish I had a CF-25 or CF-27..those things are freeking bulletproof! Brian AwPhuch Posted by mshilly on Feb. 07 2006,06:52
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.
Posted by AwPhuch on Feb. 07 2006,08:33
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 Posted by windancer on Feb. 07 2006,09:50
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!
Posted by AwPhuch on Feb. 09 2006,00:27
http://www.zenwalk.org/I can guarantee zenwalk will run like crap on older hardware...
Pentium III started at 500Mhz didnt they... The minimum specs are 4x as heavy as DSL
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 Posted by windancer on Feb. 09 2006,07:52
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. Posted by windancer on Feb. 09 2006,08:27
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.
Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 09 2006,18:04
The XFCE desktop environment is a nice compromise between performance (resource usage) and functionality.It is not as lightweight as Fluxbox or JWM, but it is much better than hogs like KDE or GNOME. I can understand why people would like XFCE because it provides a nice user experience on most PCs that have been built in the last 8 years or so. Anything older than that and you are better off with Fluxbox or JWM or even TWM. Posted by windancer on Feb. 10 2006,00:45
Now ive tried to install icewm a couple times using mydsl. it installs but after I switch window managers it goes into icewm fine. but when I go back to fluxbox its totally jacked up. eitherthe desktop icons go bye bye or they get all off kilter. anyone have this happen? Also in icewm it seems apt get is the only way to update. I dont mind doing this but still havent been able to get apt get to work. Posted by AwPhuch on Feb. 11 2006,04:25
Well then if you are looking for a full light distro like that running something that looks like xfce then run < STX Linux >< http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=stx > Brian AwPhuch Posted by windancer on Feb. 11 2006,07:57
Hey Thanks Brian will try it. I dont think anything is going to beat DSL on this beast. I do like Zenwalk but the sound bugs in and out on Zenwalk which annoys me to no end. I configure my sound on DSL with modprobe and bam no problems! I configure my video and bam no problems. so Far DSL is leading the pack on this old timer. I will give that STX a shot see what Happens. I will let you know.I am about ready to leave DSL on here I have tried about 20 different distros in the last 3 weeks or so. Its been fun but time to stick to 1.
Posted by AwPhuch on Feb. 11 2006,23:08
STX is a full bore HD install...not a "LiveCD" you must remember that!It ran gawd awful stupid fast on my brother in laws 233Mhz with 64Megs RAM. I did have to trick the dang system into allowing me to install it to a single / partition with swap...was a bugger, but it was faaaaaaaast (30 second boot up, but the system didnt have uber hardware or decent hardware detection (took me 3 nics to get it to work) Brian AwPhuch |