How well would linux work on a p120 laptop?

[BD2003]

All my hardware seems to be supported, and mandrake 7.2 looks pretty sweet. Windows is pretty sluggish with 32mb of ram, so I'm looking for a change. Would linux be significantly faster? I dont care about battery life because I wont be using it on the road. Would I have to hunt down an older version of linux because of bloat? How is linux about supporting pcmcia? And which version of linux should i use, if any?

 

[SlimHarpo]

I run slackware 4.0 on a pentium 75 laptop, and it works great. KDE would be sorta slow, if only because it likes more RAM than that (both Gnome and KDE are pretty piggish). With a nice lean windowmanager like Blackbox, though, you should get great performance. The most important thing is to check and make sure your hardware is supported, which you've already done. Linux pcmcia support is good; I've never had any problems.

 

[thornc]

Good enough, I have a friend of mine whos running Red Hat 6.2 in a P133 with 64MB memory, woks
like a charm.

In your case with 32MB you have to use a small size windowmanager ( like SlimHarpo suggests ),
somehting like WindowMaker or AfterStep....

As for the pcmcia, like other things if the device is not a windows device like winmodems and winpriters, you shoudn't have a problem, i've got a complete range of scsi, network, and daq cards working in laptops with linux here...

Any problems, just drop a line here, we'll try to help you out....

Have fun.....

 

[BD2003]

Well, I'm trying this mainly to alleviate the problems of slow and instable windows 95. Would linux be faster than win95 on my laptop? KDE looks pretty nice, what would I be losing by using blackbox or something comparable? Also, applications are a concern. I'm definitely gonna need a web browser (opera I suppose, I HATE netscape), mail program, office suite (koffice? Will that work on a non kde system?) graphic editor (not photoshop level, just something simple to edit digicam photos), C++ and java programming tools (computer science major here), a pdf reader, compression tools, and a way to connect my palm would be nice. What would I have to use for these on linux? Of course, the bottom line is, if linux cant do it better than windows with 32mb and a p120, I dont need it...so...suggestions?

 

[MGMorden]

Any normal distribution of Linux has an app for all the things you've mentioned. Personally I like Konqueror (the current standard browser for KDE) as a web browser. It and Koffice can both run without KDE being active (though you somewhat have to have it installed). C++ and Java are included in all the recent distros. Linux/Unix is by FAR a superior platform to do programming work on (CS major here too).

 

[BD2003]

BTW, I only have about 1gb to throw around for the os and applications on this system. Would that be enough?

 

[MGMorden]

That 1gb is cutting it close. You'll be able to get a system up and running w/ that, but you're definately going to have to put in a smaller distro, and setup the packages manually so as to not add multiple utilites of the same type (ie, go with only 1 web browser, 1 or 2 window managers, 1 email program, etc).

 

[thornc]

As MGMorgen states: with 1Gb will need to get thinks organized, but you can do it!! It's no
big problem, personnally I think KDE is a bit to heavy for 32MB memory but you can try it...
I suggest you install something like WindowMaker or other light manager, don't forget that you
may install Kde-core and gnome-core to use the applications from these desktop managers....

As for an office aplication, I normally use staroffice but it too is a bit heavy, so you might
need koffice ( which I haven't seen yet ) or some separate utilities, like wordperfect and gnumeric. For a graphical tool you have gimp and now I think that corel photo-paint is also available for linux... programming languages are no problem...acrobat reader is also available for linux, and there a small utility that connects linux to palms...so if get opera you get
the remaining browser and mail client.....

 

[BD2003]

But the most important question still stands unanswered. Would an equivalent install of linux be faster than a windows install? I'm not so much worried about stability.

 

[thornc]

It kind of depends on the applications you're running, but my friends laptop is running a dual boot setup ( he has a 2.1GB harddisk half for each side ), and from what i've noticed and heard
he barelly goes into windows because he can do all that he wants in linux and faster!!!

btw, he only goes into windows to use is ppp acount from a weird isp that doesn't allow him to
connect using linux, or at least he has found out how to do it....

 

[BD2003]

One more important question. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get a cdrom for this laptop, but I do have it networked to my desktop (1ghz). Would there be a way to install it over a network, or to install it from the hard drive?

The hard drive part seems as if it would present many difficulties, mainly because I only have a 1.3 gb HD. Theres also the problem of different filesystems. I want this thing down to the bare essentials, so would I be able to pick exactly which programs I want to install? Using lnx4win on my desktop to try it out only seems to allow me to install categories, and I dont need so many applications.

Also, is linux able to read from windows filesystems? From what I've been reading, linux seems to have a pretty cracked out filesystem, radically different from that of windows. I'd hate to have to throw all my data and such away because of this.

 

[Sensei]

KDE will be slow on this laptop mark my words. So will gnome/E.

However, I'm a huge fan of Windowmaker and you can use that which has a very very small memory footprint. That will work fine.

AND you can still use Konqueror (kde's web browser) which is damn good under another windowmanager ie Windowmaker or blackbox.


-Yes you can do network installs
-if you mean just access files then yes. I cd to my windows directory from inside Linux all the time. However, it doesnt work the other way around unless you use samba.

 

[xaigi]

If youre looking for something effecient, dont use Mandrake. Give slackware or something like it a try.

EDIT: Linux's effeciency is excellent, but all of that goes out the window when you decide to install everything on the CD. Get slackware, install the _BASIC_ (command line only) programs, upgrade to the latest kernel, pick a windowing system and add the applications that you plan to use.

I recommend abiword for word processing, gnumeric for spreadsheets, the standard GNU tools for programming, mozilla for browsing (though moz may be a little slow on your system), and pdfview for PDF viewing.

 

[thornc]

BigDee2003:
you should be able to install RH Linux from a network ( by NFS or FTP ) but you need to install
the necessary server software on the other machine...

xaigi's advice is a good one, if you know a little about linux try bulding up your system by parts: First the kernel, binutils and networking; Second the windowing system (xfree and windowmanager); Third the other necessary applications. It can take a while, but this way will now exactly what goes into the system, thus you'll have complete control over the space required.