Favorite light Linux?

Post by **CronoTriggerfan** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 9:31 pm

Hey all! I just got a laptop from my friend who didn't want it anymore because it was "bad". And by today's standards, she was kinda right; 6.4GB harddrive, Pentium II processor, it's an IBM ThinkPad, I think. Well, it's pretty cluttered, and it's running the big, clunky Windows 98 off of a small harddrive, so I'd like to get it running better with a small Linux OS. The three I was looking at were DamnSmallLinux, Feather, and Puppy. DSL has been brought up here numerous times, and I've always wanted to try it, but my friend mentioned Feather today to me in programming class, and after that, Puppy came up. I've looked up the numbers and stuff, but as users, do you guys have any personal favorites from experience? Any comments would help. Thanks!

CTFan

atari2600a · Post by **atari2600a** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 9:48 pm

I enjoy DSL. It has everything you can need in under 50MB, & plus you can put it on just about any thumbdrive, & also those small credit card-sized CDs. If only I had some of those CDs, I'd put one in my wallet...

Post by **Skyone** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 11:57 pm

I just tried out DSL on my VPC and it ran smoothly, and fit as a tiny ISO! It's not exactly... eh, pretty, but it gets the job done.

I've tried Feather, too. It took a while to get used to, but has some cool compilers built in.

Puppy is a blatant ripoff of the Window's theme, so I never bothered with it.

I'll just stick with WindowsLIVE XP.

Post by **gannon** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 12:20 am

Really depends on *how* light I need, for some things I've used Core Linux.

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 1:59 am

If you wanted to keep 98 on it, or dual boot it with 98 and Linux (I just can't bare the thought of wasting a perfectly good Windows 98 license!), you could always install 98lite.

Post by **bicostp** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 8:15 am

How much memory does that laptop have? I wouldn't recommend trying to run a GUI Linux distro on it if it has a small amount. (32 megs for Fluxbox and JWM, 64 for others, 128 for KDE and GNOME. These aren't official requirements, but what I had the best luck with. Of course with RAM more is always better.)

98lite is the best choice for that compy if you want to keep Windows. Through a combination of 98lite, manual file deletion, and .exe and .dll compression you can get 98 under 10 megs. (My record is 25 megs.)

DSL Works great, but remember it is really cut down, so be prepared to do some tinkering if you want to use a program that hasn't been released in a MyDSL module.

I tried Vector Linux; it's pretty good. Haven't used it too much, though. Get the Standard version, because the SOHO version has KDE.
http://www.vectorlinux.com/

Post by **Sparkfist** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 9:19 am

It varies with computer. For my Toshiba satellite pro 430cdt, I have to use DeLi Linux, a very low-end distro, though I only used this to have vi so I could take notes in class.

DSL I like to use when I get a chance, it might work on my toshiba now that's RAM is 48MB. I just haven't gotten around to fooling with DSL for about a year.

xubuntu, great for a modern but lower-end system. It's ubuntu, but they give you vfwm for the window manager, and it lacks a lot of the bloat they pack into the standard or LAMP version. Also it's just a CD. This isn't to say you can't open synaptic and have Gnome or KDE installed post-installation.

If you guys really want barebones Linux/Unix, check out just about any of the BSDs or Slackware. Both only install bases systems, most stuff disabled by default and a fair warning, all packages are compiled from source and so you have no shared libraries or dependency hell (thank god), though the con is more hard drive space used up for programs.

Really what is best is to try out the first three and see which works for you best. The fourth one I mentioned is for people that either know their way around a linux/Unix system or can get access to a forum for hell, BSD's directory structure is not like that of the System V (ie Linux's style) structure.

Sir Games-A-Lot · Post by **Sir Games-A-Lot** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 11:13 am

I like Blueflops, no GUI, but if even a Linux noober like myself can manage with it anyone can.

I use it primarily for accessing the internet off of semi dead/not mine computers, since it comes with a graphical web browser and a butload of Ethernet drivers.

Insert_Name_Here · Post by **Insert_Name_Here** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:34 pm

I tried to install Puppy on my junker computer, (ex- win98, Celeron 477, 90mb RAM, 10 gb HD) and I farked it up somehow so I never got to really try it.

I am now running DSL and it's been pretty good. The computer runs way smoother, and it has all I need for an old computer anyways. (For me Firefox and ZSNES are the only things I use on such bad computers.

)

I'm a complete noob when it comes to Linux, so I haven't tried much else.

jleemero · Post by **jleemero** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 11:46 am

DSL is great, it's what I got on my USB flash drive.

I wouldn't recommend Puppy though... I've used it and... It's really only good for beginners when it comes to Linux. Quite frankly I hated it after a month of use.

DSL all the way...