Finally installed Linux on a computer.

[dennilfloss]

The first distro I've installed to a hard disk is TinyMe (a minimal version of PCLinuxOS) on an IBM Thinkpad A21e (Celeron 600, 256MB RAM, 10GB HDD) that was given to me last Friday.

http://img149.imageshack.us/im...8/tinymedesktopaq9.jpg

http://www.tinymelinux.com/doku.php

That laptop was made for Windows 98 but TinyMe is quite zippy on it. So far I've just browsed the internet, used email and taken a desktop picture. I'm still groping around, learning how to do stuff but I find this distro, as I did PCLinuxOS, to be quite newbie-friendly. Only problem so far is I cannot seem to be able to read/save to my floppy drive, so I had to email myself the desktop capture to be able to use it on my main computer (Windows XP).

The Synaptic package seems friendly enough and TinyMe has access to the PCLinuxOS packages, if one wants to make it less tiny.

 

[xSauronx]

groovy. have any others you expect to try, like puppy or DSL or something?

 

[BlueAcolyte]

Tinyme seems to be the most functional of the small ones, I've tried all of them and DSL/Puppy are kind of limiting.

 

[dennilfloss]

Funny thing is, the boot will stall unless the ethernet cable is connected.

 

[dennilfloss]

Found out (after being told) that the laptop will indeed boot without the internet. It just hangs for a bit over five minutes if my ethernet cable isn't connected. I've been playing the included dropping-jewels game for a couple of hours. Damn addictive.

That thing gets heavy on one's lap after a couple of hours. Warm too but I use a nice thick plastic tray under it.

 

[dennilfloss]

Originally posted by: xSauronx
groovy. have any others you expect to try, like puppy or DSL or something?

I have them on CDs but they don't seem as nice as TinyMe.

 

[xSauronx]

Originally posted by: dennilfloss
Found out (after being told) that the laptop will indeed boot without the internet. It just hangs for a bit over five minutes if my ethernet cable isn't connected.

I had that problem before, maybe 2 years ago with either debian or ubuntu. i cant remember what the problem was. can you see what the system is looking for when it boots? might be a simple fix, depending on what the problem is.

 

[skyking]

Early in the bootup, the OS is running dhclient and hangs there until it either gets an IP or gives up. You should be able to edit a config to prevent that.
Later on you can run dhclient from the command line on those occaisions you do want to connect.

 

[cKGunslinger]

Hmm.. installed it in VirtualBox - seems pretty nice for a miniOS, but I couldn't get it to use the network that VB gives it (NAT.) Most guest OSs find it automatically and use it just fine.

 

[Cogman]

IDK, I would have went with something like xUbuntu and removed all packages I don't want or need. ubuntu has some pretty good laptop support and runs pretty well on older systems.

 

[xSauronx]

Originally posted by: Cogman
IDK, I would have went with something like xUbuntu and removed all packages I don't want or need. ubuntu has some pretty good laptop support and runs pretty well on older systems.

xubuntu is not as light as it once was. it supports most of ubuntus background services that make ubuntu so nifty...but this means that its not really much lighter. i installed 8.04 on a p3 ~900mhz machine and it ran ok, but not really what youd call "snappy" or anything.

 

[dennilfloss]

Originally posted by: skyking
Early in the bootup, the OS is running dhclient and hangs there until it either gets an IP or gives up. You should be able to edit a config to prevent that.
Later on you can run dhclient from the command line on those occaisions you do want to connect.

Or I can go do something else for a few minutes while it boots.

 

[GundamSonicZeroX]

Glad you're having a good experience with Linux. TinyMe seems pretty nice, I might switch from PuppyLinux to this.

 

[evident]

i've installed ubuntu on my desktop but never really used it , booting back to vista/xp anytime i needed to do any real task besides surfing the web. it's cute looking and all, but so is vista and i dont have time to fiddle around with stuff unfortunately and i really wish i did and maybe set my relatives up with ubuntu systems so they won't have to deal with viruses etc.. i use cmd line linux at work all the time though

 

[skyking]

Originally posted by: dennilfloss

Originally posted by: skyking
Early in the bootup, the OS is running dhclient and hangs there until it either gets an IP or gives up. You should be able to edit a config to prevent that.
Later on you can run dhclient from the command line on those occaisions you do want to connect.

Or I can go do something else for a few minutes while it boots.

Oh sure you could. Most are too impatient for that.