Laptop with low RAM

[feinar]

HI
What linux fit's my old Omnibook 900..
Has 300Mhz PII, And max 160 Mb RAM.. HDD is 60Gb so thats no problem!

Runs Win98 at the time, but it beginnig to slow down.. (lik all Wnidows after some time).

So wondering if some of the New linux distros could make it with 160Mb RAM.. Guessing thats the most limiting factor..

Thanx in advance for all response!!

[IsaacKuo]

160megs of RAM is plenty, especially if you use a lightweight desktop environment (you can do this with any distribution). XFCE is very popular; I prefer the lightweight window manager IceWM.

Does this laptop have an internet connection? If it's a fast wired ethernet connection, then that will probably be the prefered method of installation. If it has no internet connection, then you'll need a distribution that installs entirely from CD. It does have a CD drive, right?

How much RAM is in the laptop right now?

Personally, I'd put the latest release of Debian, Debian 4.0, on it. The default GNOME desktop environment will be a bit sluggish, but IceWM would be slim and fast.

[feinar]

Hi, and thanks for your answer.
Have installed 160Mb of Ram.

How do you then "replace" lets say Gnome with XFCE or IceWM?

And yes, it has CD!

Hopeing to get WiFi to work (pcmcia D-link dwl-630).

[IsaacKuo]

The great thing is that you don't need to "replace" GNOME, in the sense that you can happily install as many different desktop environments and window managers as you want.

You can do a default install of Debian or Ubuntu (I prefer Debian, but Ubuntu is a popular choice which might be better out-of-box with your WiFi card). Then, open up a terminal window and use the following to install XFCE and IceWM:

su (use the command "sudo su" instead if you use Ubuntu)
apt-get install xfce4 icewm icewm-themes

After the software is installed, all you need to do to use a different DE/WM is log out to the graphical gdm login screen. You can click on the option menu to select a different session type (GNOME or XFCE or IceWM). After selecting the session type, you log in with your user name and password. It will ask if you want this session type to be default, or if you just want to try it out for this session.

[squirm]

check out fluxbox. I found xfce was a little two desktopy on some slower boxes. with fluxbox you do have to mod the menus yourself but its easy ones you edit it a little.

[kostasan]

Debian is a great distro, so it is a good choice to start with. If it seems to be slow on your laptop, you can try Puppy Linux:
Home Page | Puppy Linux

[esquiso]

Debian netinstall (there are some great guides in several different languages) + some cool Window Manager like Fluxbox (my choice), Openbox, IceWM, or even E17 (if you like the eye candy).
Then, you install some light programs that don't depend on GNOME nor KDE. Thunar, Mirage, epdfvier, Xchat, Pidgin, SLiM, leafpad, and so on, are great and light GUI choices for the most common tasks. Oh, and stay sticky to only one toolkit. Mixing GTK with QT is a bad idea.