I have an old laptop, IBM Thinkpad 380 Z, that had Mandrake 9.1 installed and running reasonably. It's a low-power system, with only a 300MHz PII, 96M of ram, and a 3G hard drive, but it ran Mandrake reasonably well. Unfortunately, support for 9.1 is no longer available (with good reason, great advances have been made), and that means I can't set up either of my wireless cards, at least not easily. I decided to try Kubuntu on it, and used the Alternate CD that's supposed to allow for older. less powerful systems. The results are pretty poor. The install didn't check to see that I'd passed a custom option to the kernel so it could boot (ide=nodma). It didn't detect the sound system at all (ubuntu seems to be having some serious problems with sound these days). It failed to detect the CardBus ethernet card at boot, although I was able to configure it. It doesn't appear to have adjusted it's package selection by much; I had to remove OpenOffice to get enough space to run the initial package update. The install took around eight hours to complete, the package update just finished after over an hour. I really haven't had a chance to give the system a fair chance yet, but looking at how long the text-mode update took, I'm not optimistic. I have the CD for DamnSmallLinux, and I will probably try that next. I know some of you have built linux systems on older hardware, and I'd like to know what you'd recommend for a system of this vintage. Surely there's something as capable today as Mandrake was five (?) years ago?
On 4/4/07, Jonathan Hutchins <hutchins@tarcanfel.org> wrote:
I have an old laptop, IBM Thinkpad 380 Z, that had Mandrake 9.1 installed and running reasonably. It's a low-power system, with only a 300MHz PII, 96M of ram, and a 3G hard drive, but it ran Mandrake reasonably well.
Unfortunately, support for 9.1 is no longer available (with good reason, great advances have been made), and that means I can't set up either of my wireless cards, at least not easily.
I decided to try Kubuntu on it, and used the Alternate CD that's supposed to allow for older. less powerful systems. The results are pretty poor. The install didn't check to see that I'd passed a custom option to the kernel so it could boot (ide=nodma). It didn't detect the sound system at all (ubuntu seems to be having some serious problems with sound these days). It failed to detect the CardBus ethernet card at boot, although I was able to configure it. It doesn't appear to have adjusted it's package selection by much; I had to remove OpenOffice to get enough space to run the initial package update. The install took around eight hours to complete, the package update just finished after over an hour.
I really haven't had a chance to give the system a fair chance yet, but looking at how long the text-mode update took, I'm not optimistic.
I have the CD for DamnSmallLinux, and I will probably try that next. I know some of you have built linux systems on older hardware, and I'd like to know what you'd recommend for a system of this vintage. Surely there's something as capable today as Mandrake was five (?) years ago?
It isn't a distro, but (I would recommend OpenBSD) have OpenBSD installed on a 200Mhz, dual 300Mhz, 500Mhz, all humming along running 3.9/4.0 variants at the moment. If you need any help in configuring I would help in any way I know of. Jonathan
Puppy Linux! On 4/4/07, Jonathan Hutchins <hutchins@tarcanfel.org> wrote:
I have an old laptop, IBM Thinkpad 380 Z, that had Mandrake 9.1 installed and running reasonably. It's a low-power system, with only a 300MHz PII, 96M of ram, and a 3G hard drive, but it ran Mandrake reasonably well.
Unfortunately, support for 9.1 is no longer available (with good reason, great advances have been made), and that means I can't set up either of my wireless cards, at least not easily.
I decided to try Kubuntu on it, and used the Alternate CD that's supposed to allow for older. less powerful systems. The results are pretty poor. The install didn't check to see that I'd passed a custom option to the kernel so it could boot (ide=nodma). It didn't detect the sound system at all (ubuntu seems to be having some serious problems with sound these days). It failed to detect the CardBus ethernet card at boot, although I was able to configure it. It doesn't appear to have adjusted it's package selection by much; I had to remove OpenOffice to get enough space to run the initial package update. The install took around eight hours to complete, the package update just finished after over an hour.
I really haven't had a chance to give the system a fair chance yet, but looking at how long the text-mode update took, I'm not optimistic.
I have the CD for DamnSmallLinux, and I will probably try that next. I know some of you have built linux systems on older hardware, and I'd like to know what you'd recommend for a system of this vintage. Surely there's something as capable today as Mandrake was five (?) years ago? _______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
-- RtX... Ty Unes - Overland Park, Ks. riverty@gmail.com
I say it's your RAM slowing you down. You should be able to handle DSL ro PUppy well on that amount of RAM, but a regular Ubuntu install won't, which is what goes in even with the Alternate CD, unless you do a command-line install. The Alternate CD will do a full install with out needing the 192MB of RAM to boot the LiveCD to do the same thing. If you do a command-line install, and then add a custom set of packages, you can trim it down a lot. Of course for tips see: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/LowMemorySystems I'll third DSL and Puppy Linux. Also, I've run the BSDs before and they can be made quite small. It's been a while, but I used to run a Mac IIsi with NetBSD in 5MB RAM and an 80MB HDD. Of course it was basically only a dial-up PPP gateway, but it worked. Jon. On 4/4/07, Jonathan Hutchins <hutchins@tarcanfel.org> wrote:
I have an old laptop, IBM Thinkpad 380 Z, that had Mandrake 9.1 installed and running reasonably. It's a low-power system, with only a 300MHz PII, 96M of ram, and a 3G hard drive, but it ran Mandrake reasonably well.
I have not installed and I have very little knowledge as to the completeness of this particular distro, but I have read that Zenwalk is a very fast distro even on older Pentium II class systems. This distro is only about 2 years old though so I don't know how mature it is. http://www.zenwalk.org/ Best Wishes! Jeffrey A. McCright, A+ 816-210-3107 jmccright@hotmail.com
From: Jonathan Hutchins <hutchins@tarcanfel.org> To: kclug@kclug.org Subject: Distro for Older Hardware Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2007 12:08:04 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: from kclug.org ([139.146.133.42]) by bay0-mc6-f20.bay0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.2668); Wed, 4 Apr 2007 10:08:10 -0700 Received: from localhost (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])by kclug.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 74C6F704E23;Wed, 4 Apr 2007 12:08:09 -0500 (CDT) Received: from kclug.org ([127.0.0.1])by localhost (kclug.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024)with ESMTP id T+p2cgHGnw58; Wed, 4 Apr 2007 12:08:08 -0500 (CDT) Received: from kclug.org (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])by kclug.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9676D704E20;Wed, 4 Apr 2007 12:08:07 -0500 (CDT) Received: from localhost (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])by kclug.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A17CC704E1Afor <kclug@kclug.org>; Wed, 4 Apr 2007 12:08:06 -0500 (CDT) Received: from kclug.org ([127.0.0.1])by localhost (kclug.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024)with ESMTP id imuBTZrBDv6i for <kclug@kclug.org>;Wed, 4 Apr 2007 12:08:06 -0500 (CDT) Received: from ksle966mailxc1.everestkc.net (ksle966mailxc1.everestkc.net[64.126.4.155]) by kclug.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 78920704E11for <kclug@kclug.org>; Wed, 4 Apr 2007 12:08:06 -0500 (CDT) Received: from conversion-daemon.ksle966mailxc1.everestkc.net byksle966mailxc1.everestkc.net(Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.1 HotFix 0.02 (built Aug 25 2004))id <0JFZ00E01GIKEH00@ksle966mailxc1.everestkc.net>(original mail from hutchins@tarcanfel.org) for kclug@kclug.org; Wed,04 Apr 2007 12:08:06 -0500 (CDT) Received: from cavern.tarcanfel.net(64-151-34-11.dyn.everestkc.net [64.151.34.11])by ksle966mailxc1.everestkc.net(Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.1 HotFix 0.02 (built Aug 25 2004))with ESMTP id <0JFZ005CCGXGS770@ksle966mailxc1.everestkc.net> forkclug@kclug.org; Wed, 04 Apr 2007 12:08:05 -0500 (CDT) Received: from wolfsden.tarcanfel.net ([192.168.76.3])by cavern.tarcanfel.net with SMTP(Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2653.13)id H3K7P9DF; Wed, 04 Apr 2007 12:08:04 -0500 X-Message-Info: txF49lGdW425z51dpqblaK5FXGxfjS+JoDoJ1fqmN2/7xXx4kJR6VJsO91Icaj0t X-Original-To: kclug@kclug.org Delivered-To: kclug@kclug.org Organization: Tarcanfel User-Agent: KMail/1.9.6 X-BeenThere: kclug@kclug.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.9 Precedence: list List-Id: KCLUG mailing list <kclug.kclug.org> List-Unsubscribe: <http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug>,<mailto:kclug-request@kclug.org?subject=unsubscribe> List-Archive: <http://kclug.org/pipermail/kclug> List-Post: <mailto:kclug@kclug.org> List-Help: <mailto:kclug-request@kclug.org?subject=help> List-Subscribe: <http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug>,<mailto:kclug-request@kclug.org?subject=subscribe> Errors-To: kclug-bounces@kclug.org Return-Path: kclug-bounces@kclug.org X-OriginalArrivalTime: 04 Apr 2007 17:08:10.0729 (UTC) FILETIME=[D2A4F590:01C776DB]
I have an old laptop, IBM Thinkpad 380 Z, that had Mandrake 9.1 installed and running reasonably. It's a low-power system, with only a 300MHz PII, 96M of ram, and a 3G hard drive, but it ran Mandrake reasonably well.
Unfortunately, support for 9.1 is no longer available (with good reason, great advances have been made), and that means I can't set up either of my wireless cards, at least not easily.
I decided to try Kubuntu on it, and used the Alternate CD that's supposed to allow for older. less powerful systems. The results are pretty poor. The install didn't check to see that I'd passed a custom option to the kernel so it could boot (ide=nodma). It didn't detect the sound system at all (ubuntu seems to be having some serious problems with sound these days). It failed to detect the CardBus ethernet card at boot, although I was able to configure it. It doesn't appear to have adjusted it's package selection by much; I had to remove OpenOffice to get enough space to run the initial package update. The install took around eight hours to complete, the package update just finished after over an hour.
I really haven't had a chance to give the system a fair chance yet, but looking at how long the text-mode update took, I'm not optimistic.
I have the CD for DamnSmallLinux, and I will probably try that next. I know some of you have built linux systems on older hardware, and I'd like to know what you'd recommend for a system of this vintage. Surely there's something as capable today as Mandrake was five (?) years ago? _______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
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participants (6)
-
David Nicol -
djgoku -
Jeffrey McCright -
Jon Pruente -
Jonathan Hutchins -
RtX