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  • Linux and old laptop

    I may be able to recover an old laptop from my sister and install Linux on it. My question is if the newer GUIs will perform okay on something like a Pentium 200Mhz? In general will I notice the age of the processor while running Linux for programming, web surfing, occasional graphics, etc?

    Thanks,
    Thien
    Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra 9, Opteron 170 Denmark 2x2Ghz, 2 GB Corsair XMS, Gigabyte 6600, Gentoo Linux
    Motion Computing M1400 -- Tablet PC, Ubuntu Linux

    "if I said you had a beautiful body would you take your pants off and dance around a bit?" --Zapp Brannigan

  • #2
    D'oh forgot Alternative Lifestyles is still around, thought it got combined with this forum.
    Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra 9, Opteron 170 Denmark 2x2Ghz, 2 GB Corsair XMS, Gigabyte 6600, Gentoo Linux
    Motion Computing M1400 -- Tablet PC, Ubuntu Linux

    "if I said you had a beautiful body would you take your pants off and dance around a bit?" --Zapp Brannigan

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    • #3
      Think this one would be better suited/answered in Alt Lifestyles. So off ya go
      "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind." -- Dr. Seuss

      "Always do good. It will gratify some and astonish the rest." ~Mark Twain

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      • #4
        Use a lighter WM like XFCE. It will run OK on the IBM P133 laptop I've got, so a 200MHz should run better. If you run something like KDE or GNOME, you will notice the difference.

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        • #5
          Re: Linux and old laptop

          Originally posted by TnT
          I may be able to recover an old laptop from my sister and install Linux on it. My question is if the newer GUIs will perform okay on something like a Pentium 200Mhz? In general will I notice the age of the processor while running Linux for programming, web surfing, occasional graphics, etc?

          I think memory issues are more important than how fast the CPU runs. Does this machine have L2 cache? Does it have at least 64MB of sytem RAM?

          A Pentium/200 makes a great platform for text-mode Linux, but GUIs, even the stripped down ones, consume a lot of memory. Sure, you could run it with only 32MB of RAM, but you'd hate it.

          Other considerations: Does this machine have hardware-accelerated graphics? Is the hard disk capable of DMA transfers? GUIs move a lot of data.

          Oh, hell. Just try it. Both the hardware and software are free, so the only cost is a few hours of your time. Let us know how it works out.

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          • #6
            I haven't tried it yet but I have heard fluxbox is an excellent light weight window manager (based on black box)

            Download Fluxbox for free. Fluxbox is a X11 windowmanager build for speed and flexibility.


            apparently it works quite well even on a 486

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            • #7
              Windowmaker is not bad for a slow computer.

              jImbEam

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              • #8
                Steve, well I was just leading to that it is a pretty old computer and these newer GUIs look like they'll kill it

                Thanks for the suggestions so far, I'll have to check them out.
                Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra 9, Opteron 170 Denmark 2x2Ghz, 2 GB Corsair XMS, Gigabyte 6600, Gentoo Linux
                Motion Computing M1400 -- Tablet PC, Ubuntu Linux

                "if I said you had a beautiful body would you take your pants off and dance around a bit?" --Zapp Brannigan

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                • #9
                  I'd stick w/ fvwm or wmaker.

                  Runs just fine on ye' old 486.

                  Another one is icewm. On a P200 you could probably run icewm just fine.

                  Make sure you don't run any services: apache, etc...

                  Slackware I've found best in situations like this.

                  And it should run just fine.

                  I have some K6-2's here running KDE and they handle it pretty good. (A 350Mhz and a 450Mhz) Both are usable without too much frustration.
                  Athlon rig w/ Dual Head G400

                  http://andrew.nrrds.com

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                  • #10
                    Re: Re: Linux and old laptop

                    Originally posted by Steve Snyder


                    I think memory issues are more important than how fast the CPU runs. Does this machine have L2 cache? Does it have at least 64MB of sytem RAM?

                    A Pentium/200 makes a great platform for text-mode Linux, but GUIs, even the stripped down ones, consume a lot of memory. Sure, you could run it with only 32MB of RAM, but you'd hate it.

                    Other considerations: Does this machine have hardware-accelerated graphics? Is the hard disk capable of DMA transfers? GUIs move a lot of data.

                    Oh, hell. Just try it. Both the hardware and software are free, so the only cost is a few hours of your time. Let us know how it works out.
                    I tend to disagree in your initial statement but like your conclusion ;-) Graphical Linux is working nice (not only "yipiee, it works... well, sort of" but "nice") with 16MB RAM on CPUs as slow as a 486DX with 33MHZ. Just be prepared to forfeit a lot of the fancy stuff. No animated menus and icons, no system sounds, no window content displayed while resizing and "multi-media" will not happen. Basically, a PC that can do MS Windows 3.1 can do Linux with X like a charm. There were good suggestions for a GUI, among them my favorites: Windowmaker if you don't need an integrated Desktop Environment and XFce if you need one but find KDE and GNOME to sluggish and overloaded. BTW, XFce is fully able to use Xinerama (this means we can use our DualHead to display one really big desktop... something KDE and GNOME can't!)

                    If you have even less RAM, try Black Box or Ion.

                    But back to the topic. An old Laptop should be fine with Linux, and vice versa. Old hardware is generally good supported in Linux, but it depends on your distro. Mandrake is i686 (Pentium 2 and up) optimized, Red Hat is i586 (Pentium and up) as is SuSE. Debian, Caldera, etc are i386 and run beautifully on all x86 platforms beyond the AT. Debian currently runs on 6 platforms, including PPC, ALPHA and ARM.

                    Regards

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