Ok.... I'm ready!!!! ...... HELP ;)

[JPgirl]

So I am finally ready to rid myself of this bogged down thing that microsoft calls an OS, ok it is only on my second computer that I keep in the kitchen as a surf box but still..... it may eventually lead to my main computer too.

Here is the deal it is an OLD IBM thinkpad iSeries, it has 196 mb of ram and that is ALL it will take, there are no more slots and I am not buying anymore parts for it. I upgraded the drive to a 10gb a couple of years ago and it is a whopping fast celeron 550, yes, you read that right, a celeron 550.

I am currently running XP with sp2 and as you can imagine it is as slow as honey dripping off bigfoots hairy balls.

Ok, get to the point.
As I mentioned this is a surf box located in my kitchen, that is all I do on it, basically because trying to do anything else results in fits of rage from me wanting to throw the thing across the room. I only need access to the internet through a browser, preferrably a good one, easy to use but not dumb. I use wireless through a d-link usb wireless adapter, there is NO chance of using anything else. Other than that I have my main machine upstairs for doing the heavy lifting, if I can do other things on the laptop like basic photo editing and watching videos, etc that would be great but not super neccessary.

Where I would like to start is what Linux OS would run on my laptop and still have all the hardware work?
Remember, celeron 550, 196mb ram, 10gb HD IBM thinkpad iSeries.

I don't want to dual boot, I just want linux, the prettier and faster the better, and the distro must be free or 'available' somewhere for 'trial purposes' I can grab off bit torrent as well.

Thanks in advance!

Whew! That wasn't that hard...........................

[techieMoe]

Where I would like to start is what Linux OS would run on my laptop and still have all the hardware work?
Remember, celeron 550, 196mb ram, 10gb HD IBM thinkpad iSeries.

I don't want to dual boot, I just want linux, the prettier and faster the better, and the distro must be free or 'available' somewhere for 'trial purposes' I can grab off bit torrent as well.

If you don't want a dual-boot, that simplifies your install a bit. Regardless of the distribution you choose, you should be able to select "Use entire disk" and run into no problems during the install.

The bottleneck here will probably be your RAM. 196MB is a bit low for most full-blown distributions available today such as OpenSuSE 11 or Fedora 9. You'll probably want to look at a relatively popular but less resource-hungry distribution like Xubuntu:

Xubuntu.org | Xubuntu Linux

If you download any of the Ubuntu family (Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu) make sure you download the "Alternate" install disc which is non-graphical. Your system can't handle the regular LiveCD version.

There are much lighter distributions out there (Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux) but they require a bit more overall Linux knowledge to get working.

[Freston]

Everybody has a different taste in distro's. Fortunately we held a poll voting for the best Linux distro for older/weaker hardware

[JPgirl]

The RAM is always the problem isn't it!

I figure that XP is prolly more resource hungry than ANY linux distro right?

If that is the case openSUSE will likely be better for me than XP is in terms of resources. I took the 'which distro' test and it said that openSUSE was the perfect match and that unbuntu and kubuntu were possiblities but that my computer may be too slow. I beleive it said that xbuntu was not a good choice for laptops.

Under XP with one explorer window open and avg (antivirus) running I am always running with about 350-450mb of ram eaten up and 60-80% of my CPU in use, so I am pretty much resource deficient already, can't get much worse can it? I mean .... I could install Vista LOL

[i92guboj]

The RAM is always the problem isn't it!

Most likely.

I figure that XP is prolly more resource hungry than ANY linux distro right?

That entirely depends on which distro, and how you use it. The slickest distro with kde, compiz, amarok, firefox and stuff like that is going to be an elephant like any other.

If that is the case openSUSE will likely be better for me than XP is in terms of resources. I took the 'which distro' test and it said that openSUSE was the perfect match and that unbuntu and kubuntu were possiblities but that my computer may be too slow. I beleive it said that xbuntu was not a good choice for laptops.

SuSE is not a light distro. Ubuntu is not either (and xbuntu, regardless of the opinions) is not light either. It's just ubuntu with xfce instead of gnome or kde, and xfce is gtk2 based, just like gnome (and add to that the compositing manager).




I'd go with a lighter distro. DSL (Damn Small Linux), Puppy Linux and Vector Linux are probably good starting points. In second place, I would use a simple window manager, like {flux,open,black}box, fvwm, pekwm, enlightenment (e16, not e17) or a similar one.

Why? Well, non-minimalist web browsers are all a hog (that's true in windows as well). If you are going to have a web browser like firefox or opera open 24/7 you are going to need all the ram you can save. A light wm can take a few megabytes, while a desktop like kde, gnome or xfce will take around 100 mb (if you trim it down you can probably get around 60 or so, but not without lots of work). Opera will probably be a bit less resource consuming and faster than firefox on that machine, but it's all about tastes really.ç

Not that you can't use kde 3.x or gnome in your box, but don't expect miracles if you choose that path. On the contrary, your box should definitely perform superb for that purpose with a simple setup like the one I described above.

[JPgirl]

ok I can run DSL off of a USB key to see if I like it right?

I know it takes a bit more linux knowledge to get it running but I think I can figure it out. I actually was a net admin a few years ago (all windows though) but I have been at home with the kids for just over 3 yrs and my brain has gone to mush! LOL
It is still in there somewhere, just never touched linux.

But that is what you guys are here for right?

[i92guboj]

ok I can run DSL off of a USB key to see if I like it right?

Yep. You should be able to put it into a pen drive and boot it. They also sell preinstalled versions on pendrive. Livecds are an option as well if you have such a device.

I know it takes a bit more linux knowledge to get it running but I think I can figure it out. I actually was a net admin a few years ago (all windows though) but I have been at home with the kids for just over 3 yrs and my brain has gone to mush! LOL
It is still in there somewhere, just never touched linux.

But that is what you guys are here for right?

Yep. As long as you are willing to put some effort on your side, the people around will be willing to help within their knowledge and possibilities.

Welcome to the world of open source software, I hope you stay for long and enjoy it.

Cheers

[JPgirl]

Ok so I downloaded puppy and am running it off CD right now.
I have to say it is much easier to use than I thought i would be, I have managed to install firefox, although it won't open for some reason, it does show up in the menu though which is a good sign lol. I am just assuming that it has something to do with me running off CD.
Anywho..... I'll figure it all out eventually.

What I did not see on boot up was an option to actually install puppy to my hard drive (not quite ready to do that yet) I'm sure there are instructions on the puppy site for that but does anyone have a better way?

In the bottom right hand corner on my task bar there is a graphic of what looks like a monitor with a tail and it says 100% beside it, what is that for?

With a couple tabs open in sea monkey (which is actually a pretty decent browser I must say) I actually have 54MB of FREE memory! I don't think I have had free memory in years!

Thanks for the intitial help guys! I'm sure I'll be needing more as the days and weeks go by but I'll try and figure my way through it as much as I can on my own..... how else am I gonna learn anything!

[yancek]

To install Puppy, click the Menu button at lower left of screen in the taskbar. You will get a pop-up menu, near the top is "Setup, click on that and get new pop-up and look for Puppy Universal Installer. Select media to install to, choose drive to install to (if more than one drive available), select partition. At the end, install Grub.

You can configure things by clicking on the Setup icon on the desktop or by clicking the Menu button and going up to Setup.

You can get more detailed info on the Puppy site.

[elija]

The thing I didn't like about Puppy was you are always root (admin) but I would guess that coming from Windows you would be used to that!! Otherwise I loved it. Amazing for such a little distro aint it?

You will probably find that over time the free ram will go down. Don't worry; in Linux this is normal and is the OS using the spare as a cache to help speed things up a bit.

I have no idea what the icon is - can you post a screen grab of it?

Seamonkey is great and I would be using it if I didn't like my Firefox extensions so much

ps. slow as honey dripping off bigfoots hairy balls. Made me laugh out loud.