I have these distro options for Linux on my Thinkpad:

[TitanDiddly]

# IBM Thinkpad 600E [Debian]
# IBM Thinkpad 600E [Fedora Core 4]
# IBM Thinkpad 600E [Gentoo]
# IBM Thinkpad 600E [RedHat6.0,RedHat6.1]
# IBM Thinkpad 600E [RedHat7.3]
# IBM Thinkpad 600E - [RedHat7.3]
# IBM Thinkpad 600E [SuSE 9.0]
# IBM Thinkpad 600E [FC4, FC3, RH7.3, RH7.1, RH6.2]
# IBM Thinkpad 600E [Mandrake9.2]

(from linux-on-laptops.com)

I'm _almost_ a complete novice to linux, although I've been around windows for a long time. What I want to use the laptop for is to play MP3s in my car, but my laptop is old enough that it will chug sometimes under windows while playing high-bitrate MP3s. I was hoping that the coldblooded, ruthless efficiency of linux to smooth this out a bit. Which of these would be best suited to taking up minimum resources. Again, all I need to do it play MP3s, and maybe some light general-use applications, like whatever games it may have built in, like solitaire, or reading .txts, etc.

Thanks!

 

[Koharski]

What!? No ubuntu!?

Go with debian. but opt for fluxbox instead of gnome

 

[phisrow]

First off, Debian would be my recommendation. If you want a very light setup, only for MP3s, you can get away with a minimal Debian install, along with something like mp3blaster, as discussed http://applications.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/03/23/191237&tid=39 . If that is too barebones for you, you can install a lightweight window manager like icewm, Fluxbox, or similar, and use XMMS.

Be sure, also, to read the wiki page below. In particular, there is a note about a sound problem you may experience under linux, along with a solution thereto.

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:600E

 

[magomago]

if the laptop actually chugs playing mp3s there is no way you want to use those...if you want a GUI get Damn Small Linux. Extremely minimal in resource usage, and it uses fluxbox so the GUI isn't taxing. That and it comes with XMMS and mp3 support out of the box so you just need to load your songs. I beleive it has a few games, definitely has some text editing, webbrowser (though they shouldn't have bothered to include FF and just stuck with what they had...seems FF takes up more space than necessary), calculator, generic stuff you would fine on any bare windows installation + 1.

If you want it purely for mp3 though...you should be able to do it without a gui. install mpg321 and just type "mpg321 -Z *.*" and it will continously play songs randomly until you cut it out....or conversely if you want playlists then random (-Z) a playlist. that way once you log in you can immediately play your songs

either way for what you want i don't see why you need something as bloated as Mandrake...or even "featured" as Fedora Core in the sense of how many packages you get...stuff like Cups (printing), Open Office, etc. seem generally useless for you. In fact if you decide to skip the GUI you can drop a LOT of packages that you won't need to save space and cpu cycles.

 

[TitanDiddly]

Originally posted by: magomago
if the laptop actually chugs playing mp3s there is no way you want to use those...if you want a GUI get Damn Small Linux. Extremely minimal in resource usage, and it uses fluxbox so the GUI isn't taxing. That and it comes with XMMS and mp3 support out of the box so you just need to load your songs. I beleive it has a few games, definitely has some text editing, webbrowser (though they shouldn't have bothered to include FF and just stuck with what they had...seems FF takes up more space than necessary), calculator, generic stuff you would fine on any bare windows installation + 1.

If you want it purely for mp3 though...you should be able to do it without a gui. install mpg321 and just type "mpg321 -Z *.*" and it will continously play songs randomly until you cut it out....or conversely if you want playlists then random (-Z) a playlist. that way once you log in you can immediately play your songs

either way for what you want i don't see why you need something as bloated as Mandrake...or even "featured" as Fedora Core in the sense of how many packages you get...stuff like Cups (printing), Open Office, etc. seem generally useless for you. In fact if you decide to skip the GUI you can drop a LOT of packages that you won't need to save space and cpu cycles.

I've screwed around a bit with booting from DSL. I wonder if I could quick-boot from a CF card?

 

[magomago]

You should be able to..I wouldn't see why not. But I wonder how many times a CF card can read and write. I actually know very little about that so I won't comment further And then you have to deal with booting from a CF card. You might not be able to...maybe you can quick boot from a USB drive?

But even if you use the live distro when you load up DSL in the boot phase you can type stuff....enter "dsl toram" (i beleive that is the command...there should be a button you can press to look at the boot options) and that will load all of DSL into the ram. That way if you ahve a CD of mp3s you can still load it in the CDrom since everything is in the ram. Though I would just suggest installing everything on the hard drive.

Actually looking at the link for your drive...I don't think you can load it all to the ram since you need 128 megs or so. Either way installing it seems the easier method.

 

[TitanDiddly]

Originally posted by: magomago
You should be able to..I wouldn't see why not. But I wonder how many times a CF card can read and write. I actually know very little about that so I won't comment further And then you have to deal with booting from a CF card. You might not be able to...maybe you can quick boot from a USB drive?

But even if you use the live distro when you load up DSL in the boot phase you can type stuff....enter "dsl toram" (i beleive that is the command...there should be a button you can press to look at the boot options) and that will load all of DSL into the ram. That way if you ahve a CD of mp3s you can still load it in the CDrom since everything is in the ram. Though I would just suggest installing everything on the hard drive.

Actually looking at the link for your drive...I don't think you can load it all to the ram since you need 128 megs or so. Either way installing it seems the easier method.

I just posted on the DSL forums, here: http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi?act=SF;f=8

 

[SleepWalkerX]

What about Suse 10 with Gnome? Then again, 64 megs of ram might not cut it. Actually, you might be able to run it.

Ubuntu, imho, goes well with laptops. Especially with the latest Gnome with NetworkManager. You should get the second beta of the Desktop LiveCD of 6.06 Dapper Drake. It'll allow you to install from the desktop environment. Or get Xubuntu which runs XFCE4, a very lightweight, but slick desktop environment.

Edit: I think you can get away with Gnome on 64 megs of ram. No need to go as low as DSL.

 

[Koharski]

Gnome is painful on my computer, I wouldn't recomend it.