I need a good Linux Distro for an old lappy.

[josh609]

Can anyone recomend me a Linux distro that will work well with a laptop with a P2 400MHz and 64MB of ram? I also have a D-link wireless card i would like to work with it too. Thanks!

 

[pkme2]

Ubuntu works great with PIIs. Got one installed on my P2, and it works with all old hardware.

 

[nweaver]

with that much memory, I would look into debian with xfce4 or another low resource wm. Your D-Link card tells us nothing, what chipset does it run? Model numbers are (almost) worthless, as they change chipsets with even bumping the rev number on the same h/w :roll:

 

[josh609]

Originally posted by: nweaver
with that much memory, I would look into debian with xfce4 or another low resource wm. Your D-Link card tells us nothing, what chipset does it run? Model numbers are (almost) worthless, as they change chipsets with even bumping the rev number on the same h/w :roll:

It's the D-Link Air Plus Extreme G DWL-G650.
Node ID:000D88C99F3B
S/N: DQ0X23C004209

Ubuntu or Debian?

 

[Nothinman]

No matter what you put on there, you'll want more memory.

 

[josh609]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
No matter what you put on there, you'll want more memory.

It had 128MB of ram, but one of the 64MB sticks must of died.

 

[KoolDrew]

Get more RAM, then install Debian.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

It seems that D-Link does have some linux drivers for your wireless device. But you have to find out whether its a rev. A, B, or C.

As for the distro, you might be able to squeeze in Ubuntu or Debian. Otherwise, nice and small distributions like DamnSmallLinux and Feather Linux are small enough to fit on usb drives. Then there's Vector Linux which claims to be a very fast and lightweight slackware-based distro (their Standard and SOHO Edition are free). But I would first try to see if Ubuntu runs well, its a greatly supported distribution.

 

[josh609]

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX
It seems that D-Link does have some linux drivers for your wireless device. But you have to find out whether its a rev. A, B, or C.

As for the distro, you might be able to squeeze in Ubuntu or Debian. Otherwise, nice and small distributions like DamnSmallLinux and Feather Linux are small enough to fit on usb drives. Then there's Vector Linux which claims to be a very fast and lightweight slackware-based distro (their Standard and SOHO Edition are free). But I would first try to see if Ubuntu runs well, its a greatly supported distribution.

My friend is giving me Suse Linux 7.1 professional. Its min reqs. are Pentium/AMD processor with 32MB of ram for the GUI. So HOPEFULLY that will have a driver for the d-link card.

I booted a Live CD of Knoppix 4.0 and it worked with my wireless card perfectly. So here's hoping I can get it working with Suse 7.1 Pro.

One other thing. I installed Ubuntu linux on the lappy. It detects my wireless card, but it's not working with it.

If Suse 7.1 won't work with my wireless card, i'll try Suse 9.1 or Debian.

 

[0roo0roo]

so how about debian with 256mb?

want to try on laptop but afraid of drivers..its a laptop after all
how much disc space does it need anyways? and can one install from the harddrive? or does one really need to burn cds.,,cuz this laptop is a superslim model with no internal cd

 

[Nothinman]

want to try on laptop but afraid of drivers..its a laptop after all

I run Debian on my laptop and everything but the SD reader works just fine.

 

[0roo0roo]

ah but does it install from the harddrive? its a z505 without cdrom external pcmia cdrom is alreayd troublesome. i reinstall xp by leaving xp install on second partition. could i do this with debian? and would it automatically resize my partitions for dual boot and different file system? though i use fat32 on there.. linux does fat16?

 

[Nothinman]

How do you get by on a machine with no cdrom? I can understand no floppy, but no cdrom?

You can do a netinstall pretty easily, but you still need something to boot from. I believe there were boot floppies for sarge, but I never tried them.

 

[0roo0roo]

oh, its not a primary machine. theres always daemon tools for cd images and ms installs just copy straight to harddrive secondary partition for install so its kewl. its a super slim laoptop from p3 650 days, there were some sacrifices lol

 

[Nothinman]

You'll probably have an easier time if you can find a USB CDROM to install from.

 

[josh1413]

OK, I now have Suse 9.1 installed. It detected my wireless card, and it works. I'm hoping i'll be able to get into the GUI of Suse, as of now it says it can't find the "graphics driver". So here's hoping i can get around it.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Does it give you command line access?

 

[josh609]

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX
Does it give you command line access?

Good news. The GUI is working, and it has the resolution at1024x768. I'm very happy. The laptop is still slow of course, but atleast this laptop is useful again. I had windows xp on this laptop at one time, but somhow the driver or somthing messed up with the d-link card and it no longer worked. And to top all of it off, the laptop ran horrendously slow under windows xp. Good news is, i now have a lappy again.

One other question. Do you guys think if i were to downgrade to Suse 7.0 profesional it would have a driver built in for my D-link much like suse 9.1 does? I would downgrade for it to run smoother.

 

[nweaver]

I would install and use a smaller WM then gnome/KDE. Try XFCE4, as it's fully functional with a smaller footprint. For really small, fluxbox or something similar.

 

[Nothinman]

One other question. Do you guys think if i were to downgrade to Suse 7.0 profesional it would have a driver built in for my D-link much like suse 9.1 does? I would downgrade for it to run smoother.

Without knowing what driver it's using it's hard to say. And a downgrade might not be faster, there have been performance improvements in both KDE and Gnome over the years so it's possible whatever was released with 7.0 might be slower.

 

[BlackOmen]

Originally posted by: josh609

Originally posted by: nweaver
with that much memory, I would look into debian with xfce4 or another low resource wm. Your D-Link card tells us nothing, what chipset does it run? Model numbers are (almost) worthless, as they change chipsets with even bumping the rev number on the same h/w :roll:

It's the D-Link Air Plus Extreme G DWL-G650.
Node ID:000D88C99F3B
S/N: DQ0X23C004209

Ubuntu or Debian?

Ubuntu is an easier install and more polished than Debian, but you can't go wrong with either.

Regarding the wifi card, if it is a card using the prism chipset, you're good to go as the driver is shipped with the linux kernel. If it is an atheros chipset, you've got a 50/50 chance. I've had mixed results with the madwifi project (atheros drivers).

 

[Hyperblaze]

slackware

 

[GML3G0]

Originally posted by: Hyperblaze
slackware

:thumbsup:

With XFCE.

 

[imported_lparkin]

Do you have the external CD rom? If you do, the only distro I found that would boot using it was Kbuntu...

I have one that I am installing on right now to repurpose as a router/firewall/qos machine for my net.

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: BlackOmen

Originally posted by: josh609

Originally posted by: nweaver
with that much memory, I would look into debian with xfce4 or another low resource wm. Your D-Link card tells us nothing, what chipset does it run? Model numbers are (almost) worthless, as they change chipsets with even bumping the rev number on the same h/w :roll:

It's the D-Link Air Plus Extreme G DWL-G650.
Node ID:000D88C99F3B
S/N: DQ0X23C004209

Ubuntu or Debian?

Ubuntu is an easier install and more polished than Debian, but you can't go wrong with either.

Regarding the wifi card, if it is a card using the prism chipset, you're good to go as the driver is shipped with the linux kernel. If it is an atheros chipset, you've got a 50/50 chance. I've had mixed results with the madwifi project (atheros drivers).

I would disagree, Ubuntu is more "complete desktop" out of box maybe, but I prefer Debian for almost everything over Ubuntu, expecially if I am doing some special package selections, like swapping xfce4 for gnome. Ubuntu is also a bit bloated out of box for anything less then 256MB ram imho.


Not to say I don't like Ubuntu, it's a great desktop distro, and I'm posting from my lappy that's running Ubuntu right now, I just don't think it's "better" or "more polished" then Debian.