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Old 9th Nov 2007, 8:52 pm   #1
ALANS ANITAS
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Default Which Linux operating system?

I have recently obtained three Compaq Armarda 1700 laptops in very good condition, fitted with 5Gigabyte hard drives, Pentium 2-300 processors and only 32 Megabytes of memory. I have a 128 Mb upgrade. The original O/S was Windows 95, but has been erased.

I would like to install one of the flavours of Linux. Would the learned members of the forum please recomend any particular version.? Open Office would be required.

Regards

ALAN
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Old 10th Nov 2007, 9:09 am   #2
OErjan_S
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Default Re: Which Linux operating system?

openoffice on 32M?? are you JOKING? 128 MINIMUM for that monster to run anything close to smooth, likely CPU will be ok but...
If you must try, a trimmed down version of latest Debian with iceWM or blackbox as windowmanagers.
trimmed down Slackware12 with same WM's are another option.
both preferably with a custom kernel and any memory upgrade ou can muster.
perhaps puppy linux or DSL.

I personally use Slackware 12 and Debian on 233MHz and 350MHz systems (even a 100MHz laptop), but not for Open Office, it is too hungry for memory.
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Old 10th Nov 2007, 9:19 am   #3
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Default Re: Which Linux operating system?

Quote:
Originally Posted by OErjan_S View Post
openoffice on 32M?? are you JOKING? 128 MINIMUM for that monster to run anything close to smooth, likely CPU will be ok but...
If you must try, a trimmed down version of latest Debian with iceWM or blackbox as windowmanagers.
trimmed down Slackware12 with same WM's are another option.
both preferably with a custom kernel and any memory upgrade ou can muster.
perhaps puppy linux or DSL.

I personally use Slackware 12 and Debian on 233MHz and 350MHz systems (even a 100MHz laptop), but not for Open Office, it is too hungry for memory.
EDIT
I answered a similar Question few years ago on a Swedish Linux forum (linux on a low end laptop), I posted a list there of the Slackware and Debian packages I had installed.
I will post those lists here in a while.
they are not up to date but should give a hint.
/EDIT
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Old 10th Nov 2007, 9:43 am   #4
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Default Re: Which Linux operating system?

The Debian part is no more (sorry) but i put a tiny Slackware here.
add WM of choice and x.

Quote:
./a:
aaa_base-9.1.0-noarch-1.tgz
apmd-3.0.2-i386-1.tgz
bash-2.05b-i486-3.tgz
bin-8.5.0-i386-1.tgz
bzip2-1.0.2-i386-4.tgz
coreutils-5.0-i486-4.tgz
cpio-2.5-i386-1.tgz
cxxlibs-5.1.0-i486-1.tgz
dcron-2.3.3-i386-4.tgz
devfsd-1.3.25-i386-2.tgz
devs-2.3.1-noarch-18.tgz
e2fsprogs-1.34-i486-1.tgz
elflibs-9.1.0-i486-2.tgz
elvis-2.1_4-i386-1.tgz
etc-5.1-noarch-5.tgz
findutils-4.1.7-i386-1.tgz
floppy-5.4-i386-3.tgz
gawk-3.1.3-i486-1.tgz
gettext-0.11.5-i386-1.tgz
getty-ps-2.1.0-i386-1.tgz
glibc-solibs-2.3.2-i486-3.tgz
glibc-zoneinfo-2.3.2-noarch-3.tgz
gpm-1.19.6-i486-6.tgz
grep-2.5-i386-2.tgz
gzip-1.3.3-i386-2.tgz
hdparm-5.4-i486-1.tgz
infozip-5.50-i486-2.tgz
install-packages
install.end
isapnptools-1.26-i386-1.tgz
kbd-1.08-i386-2.tgz
kernel-ide-2.4.22-i486-2.tgz
kernel-modules-2.4.22-i486-2.tgz
less-381-i386-1.tgz
lilo-22.5.7.2-i386-1.tgz
logrotate-3.6.8-i486-1.tgz
minicom-2.00.0-i386-1.tgz
module-init-tools-0.9.14-i486-2.tgz
openssl-solibs-0.9.7c-i486-2.tgz
pciutils-2.1.11-i386-4.tgz
pcmcia-cs-3.2.5-i486-1.tgz
pkgtools-9.1.1-i486-2.tgz
procps-2.0.16-i486-2.tgz
sed-3.02-i486-1.tgz
shadow-4.0.3-i486-8.tgz
slocate-2.7-i486-2.tgz
smartmontools-5.1_18-i486-1.tgz
sysklogd-1.4.1-i486-8.tgz
syslinux-2.07-i486-1.tgz
sysvinit-2.84-i486-36.tgz
tagfile
tar-1.13.25-i386-1.tgz
util-linux-2.12-i486-1.tgz

./ap:
alsa-utils-0.9.6-i486-1.tgz
at-3.1.8-i486-2.tgz
diffutils-2.8.1-i386-1.tgz
groff-1.17.2-i386-3.tgz
lsof-4.68-i486-1.tgz
man-1.5l-i386-1.tgz
man-pages-1.60-noarch-1.tgz
mc-4.6.0-i386-1.tgz
oggutils-1.0-i386-3.tgz
rexima-1.2-i386-1.tgz
screen-3.9.15-i486-2.tgz
sox-12.17.4-i486-2.tgz
sudo-1.6.6-i386-1.tgz
tagfile
texinfo-4.5-i386-1.tgz
workbone-2.40-i386-3.tgz

./n:
dhcp-3.0pl2-i386-1.tgz
dhcpcd-1.3.22pl4-i386-1.tgz
elm-2.5.6-i386-1.tgz
epic4-1.0.1-i386-3.tgz
gnupg-1.2.3-i486-2.tgz
iptables-1.2.8-i486-1.tgz
iptraf-2.7.0-i386-1.tgz
lftp-2.6.9-i486-1.tgz
links-2.1pre13-i486-1.tgz
lynx-2.8.4-i386-5.tgz
mod_ssl-2.8.16_1.3.29-i486-2.tgz
netwatch-1.0a-i386-1.tgz
openssh-3.7.1p2-i486-1.tgz
openssl-0.9.7c-i486-2.tgz
portmap-5.0-i486-1.tgz
ppp-2.4.1-i486-3.tgz
rp-pppoe-3.5-i386-1.tgz
samba-3.0.0-i486-3.tgz
stunnel-4.04-i486-2.tgz
tagfile
tcpip-0.17-i486-25.tgz
traceroute-1.4a12-i386-2.tgz
trn-3.6-i386-1.tgz
wget-1.9.1-i486-1.tgz
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Old 10th Nov 2007, 10:57 am   #5
evingar
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Default Re: Which Linux operating system?

I largely agree with the above. Even 128MB +32MB is marginal for the latest Open Office. You could find it annoyingly slow.

I'm guessing that you you don't really want to engage in an inordinately large amount of "pling backslash" from the command line.

You could try Ubuntu Lite :-

http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Syste...te-16485.shtml



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Old 10th Nov 2007, 1:10 pm   #6
GJR 11L
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Default Re: Which Linux operating system?

Damn Small works fine on a much slower laptop here, that one has 16Mb of RAM and a sub-200MHz cpu.
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Old 10th Nov 2007, 8:46 pm   #7
OErjan_S
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Default Re: Which Linux operating system?

I just remembered, ABI word can do much of the things that OO can, not nearly everything but... and it is less hungry for memory.
EDIT
I know LINUX will run on that laptop.
I have a compaq 5150 with 64M ram that runs Slackware 12, the downfall was OpenOffice.
/EDIT

Last edited by OErjan_S; 10th Nov 2007 at 9:00 pm.
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Old 10th Nov 2007, 10:51 pm   #8
Paul Stenning
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Default Re: Which Linux operating system?

There is also the Gnumeric spreadsheet which like Abiword is lighter weight than OO.
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Old 10th Nov 2007, 11:18 pm   #9
paulsherwin
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Default Re: Which Linux operating system?

Quote:
Originally Posted by GJR 11L View Post
Damn Small works fine on a much slower laptop here, that one has 16Mb of RAM and a sub-200MHz cpu.
John is right. I have a P200 server which runs DSL very well. I did a HD install (easy), chose 'Upgrade to GNU utilities', 'Use APT'. Then at the root command line I did 'apt-get update; apt-get upgrade'. I then edited /etc/apt/spources.list (or whatever it's called) and chaged 'old-stable' to 'sarge', then 'apt-get update; apt-get upgrade' again.

At the end of that I had a fully standard Debain Sarge installation with a proper Fluxbox GUI that ran *very* well on a P200 with 96MB. In fact the OS itself will run fine in 32MB though big apps like the Firefox browser won't.

DSL comes with fully functional WP, spreadsheet and email apps which are very light on resources. You can install Abiword which has better MS Office compatibility and still runs reasonably well with limited hardware.

As others have said, OO uses a *lot* of computrons and will be slow on a 300MHz CPU even with plenty of memory.

If you decide to try DSL, I would advise using the last 3 version (3.6 I think) as 4.0 is a major redesign with some problems still to be ironed out.

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org

Good luck, Paul
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Old 23rd Dec 2007, 11:09 pm   #10
ljones0
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Default Re: Which Linux operating system?

Another one to try -- puppy linux .

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