| Debian 4.0 will also run fine on that laptop, but you have to install a lightweight window manager like icewm. The main advantage to using Debian 4.0 rather than a stripped down Debian based distribution like DSL is that the entire Debian software repository is available. With DSL, installing software packages is hit-and-miss. With a non-Debian distribution like Puppy, you don't get the massive software library that Debian has.
However, Debian requires more work to get up and running into a usable state on an old laptop with 64megs of RAM. In particular, you need to manually install lightweight programs--and there's no obvious guide to figure out what these programs should be. But this line will install a lot of useful programs:
apt-get install icewm icewm-themes xfe aterm xmms gqview dillo
icewm is a lightweight window manager. Before you log in, choose "icewm" as the session type instead of "GNOME". GNOME is Debian's default, and it won't fit in 64megs of RAM.
xfe is a lightweight file manager, which is similar to Windows Explorer.
aterm is a lightweight terminal program, which will be much faster than the sluggish default GNOME terminal.
xmms is a music player similar to old versions of WinAmp.
gqview is a fast and very capable image browser.
dillo is a very fast and lightweight web browser--but it only works with very basic web sites. I find it pretty unusable, and use Nautilus instead. Nautilus is GNOME's default web browser, and it will be sluggish on your computer. But when it comes to web site compatability...better slow than not at all!
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Isaac Kuo, ICQ 29055726 or Yahoo mechdan
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