thinking about linux on an old laptop

skar · Post by **skar** » Sat Aug 27, 2005 8:48 am

a friend of mine has an old laptop for sale.

specs:

cpu 500 mhz
128 mb ram
10 gb hdd

price would be 150 ?

i'm thinking about buying it and then using linux on it. It isn't fast enough for win2000 (takes something like 5-10 minutes to boot) but i guess some linux distros should be a lot faster. On the other hand, i've only used knoppix so far.

questions:

is this a good idea?
what distro would be suitable for me? i need something simple to get into that'll run fast on this system.
do i have to care for drivers and stuff?

Sir Savant · Post by **Sir Savant** » Sat Aug 27, 2005 1:54 pm

DSL is always a good choice for older pc's. Also try gentoo and build the system from scratch, custom for your pc.

If you want all the drivers(or most) automatically loaded, mepis is good for that. You would need a little work for knoppix. Ubuntu might load on it, but not the live cd.

BlackAura, comments?

bizzle · Post by **bizzle** » Sat Aug 27, 2005 1:58 pm

It should take like a minute to boot Windows 2000. I used to use Windows 2000 on a Pentium Pro 180@200mhz with 64MB RAM.

skar · Post by **skar** » Sun Aug 28, 2005 12:31 pm

it takes 7 minutes to be exact.

nymus · Post by **nymus** » Sun Aug 28, 2005 1:05 pm

7 minutes?!!! I've never used a PC that took 7 minutes to boot. Those specs should be okay to boot Windows 2000 in less than a minute. I think you might have "winrot" iin which case a fresh install might help or... try disabling dhcp which might be causing Windows to look for networks that don't exist.