Comments on: Five distros for “slow” machines http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/ K.Mandla's blog of Linux experiences Mon, 11 Feb 2013 18:19:59 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Digit http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-48865 Wed, 13 Apr 2011 04:37:06 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-48865 usb a luxury… so true.

taken for granted until you are given a pentium 133 laptop with 16mb of ram.

]]> By: djerome http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-47389 Tue, 28 Dec 2010 04:09:22 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-47389 If you have time, give this a try; I’d like to know how it works for you: http://www.minimalinux.org/ttylinux/Download/ttylinux-i686-12.3.iso.gz

]]> By: K.Mandla http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-47036 Wed, 08 Dec 2010 13:30:52 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-47036 Thanks, djerome. PCMCIA support for i586s would be a huge bonus. Some of the modules for more commonplace networking cards would be a giant help too (like pcnet-cs or the ne2000-series cards, which are more common than dirt).

You should be the judge though, since it’s up to you to do the dirty work. If it seems worthwhile, I for one would be grateful. :)

]]> By: djerome http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-47014 Wed, 08 Dec 2010 04:46:48 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-47014 If its PCMCIA network device support that you need, then let me know and I’ll add that to ttylinux. Let me know anything else that isn’t working for you; I’ll add it if it makes sense.

]]> By: K.Mandla http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-45200 Tue, 31 Aug 2010 07:39:26 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-45200 Yes, and as a spammer, you should be aware of that.

]]> By: JACK http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-45197 Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:08:23 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-45197 are ubuntu bether than on windows and replaced it ?

]]> By: Die Sache mit den alten Computern « gambaru.de http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-44812 Fri, 13 Aug 2010 18:15:49 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-44812 [...] zu bieten und auch deutlich weniger in der täglichen Praxis getestet wird. K.Mandla hat weitere Distributionen für “langsame” Rechner unter die Lupe genommen mit nicht ganz überraschendem [...]

]]> By: K.Mandla http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-44644 Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:55:36 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-44644 Hey, that’s good to know. I shall try have to try that on my 150Mhz machine, although I fear that with only 32Mb in it, it might not boot. … :(

]]> By: Ross http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-44636 Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:05:31 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-44636 It took me a while to work it all out but the standard X vesa driver wasn’t going to cut the mustard. Happily tho I’ve now confirmed a working setup that uses the tridentfb kernel driver and fbdev for X. Ok it’s not accelerated on the little Toshiba but I’m happy that I can now get all the modern debian/buntu’s to work :D . Install from a Lucid minimal CD and with LXDE or Awesome I can get to a very functional X WM in about 60Mb. Tis my “Netbook” with a 13″ screen, a great little machine to have sitting on the coffee table to pop open for quick access to the net.

Happy as can be ;)

]]> By: LM http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-44594 Mon, 02 Aug 2010 16:39:29 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/five-distros-for-slow-machines/#comment-44594 Thanks for the info on installation. Guess if I wanted to try this on my system, I’d have to check if there was support for ppp on the Debian net install CD and see how long it would take to get some basic applications installed that way.

If you’re looking for a live distribution of a BSD to try out, you could check if http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=frenzy will work for you. There are also: http://www.jibbed.org/ http://www.rofreesbie.org/ http://code.google.com/p/evoke/

I tried Frenzy on one of my machines and it only got so far (brought up a desktop) and then couldn’t get any further. Then again, I seem to find a lot of Linux distributions that are doing that as well. I guess I have non-standard hardware like a touchpad instead of a mouse and a lot of hot-swappable hard drives in my desktop. I have been able to install FreeBSD 7.2 to my laptop (64 MB RAM) with no issues. It just took me a while to figure out a working xorg.conf. I tried PC-BSD on my desktop and it was one of the few Open Source options I’ve tried that seems to have installed okay (out of several that didn’t). PC-BSD needs a lot more resources than FreeBSD, although I noticed an alternative to just install FreeBSD on the disk.

I like the speed of the FreeBSD system, but I’m having issues with hardware compatibility for things like printers, hardware for audio work (midi, USB/Firewire audio, etc.) and my TV tuners. Guess one can’t have everything. I’m still trying to find just the right distribution for my desktop machine that will combine needed hardware support with speed.

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