Old laptop for the workshop

[robgraham]

My wife's old laptop has been returned by the family member borrower and has been threatened with the bucket.

It's a Toshiba Satellite 1730 and at least 10 years old. XP runs on it OK but by modern standards rather (!) slowly. Would Linux work any quicker for basic workshop use of internet and say something equivalent to Google Sketchup? Her-In-Doors is in favour of this as it would stop me coming in to look things up !!!

If Linux is a good option, which version, and where can I find suitable a browser and so on ?

Thanks Rob .

[Brian Gaff]

I think drivers could be the issue with this idea.

Brian

[NT]

One of the lighter linux distros would be good, such as Antix or Puppy.

NT

[Nick Odell]

I'm using Linux Mint on a low-spec laptop. The Netbook Remix version is lightweight but can cause some issues in certain circumstances and so instead I'm using the Small Footprint distro of v12. It will load up with various things including a Firefox browser ready-to-go.

Ubuntu/Mint versions of Linux come with a software repository: if there's a program you need, look it up in the index on your machine and automatically download it and install it without getting your hands dirty.

Nick

[mick]

Puppy Linux is great for low-powered machines. It comes with several applications but it's quite easy to install more. The default browser is very basic, but you can use the application installer to put Firefox on if you want.

The instructions for Puppy actually recommend that you _don't_ install it, you can run it from a CD or USB stick instead. You can ignore that advice and install if you want to though.

puppylinux.org/main/Overview and Getting Started.htm

[johno]

Im with Nick on this, Linux Mint should work well. My old laptop, of a similar spec to yours, runs it well. No issues with installing software either, as Nick states, it is a simple operation.

John

[The Natural Philosopher]

probably yes.

not sure anything like that is available on Linux.

says iot MIGHT be possible, but its a hack..

If you have enough RAM you could reinstall XP in a virtualBox.

Her-In-Doors is in favour of this as

Try burning a debian boot disk and installing a standard desktop. Browser is part of that.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No. if its an oldish laptop it will already have been reverse engineered and drivers made available.

Occasionally I have had to download special wifi drivers and often the mouse pad buttons don't exactly do the same thing..but otherwise 100% success on old 'chucked out' laptops.

[Chris Bartram]

Give Lubuntu a try.

[Bernard Peek]

The term Linux covers a multitude of slightly different systems and so it's not really possible to say that "Linux" is a good or bad option.

There are certainly Linux distros that would be a good match with an underpowered laptop. Puppy Linux has already been mentioned so that would be a good starting point. But once you have a working system you can easily install more software. You just need to remember that your machine is underpowered and that although you can install and run packages like Gnome or KDE actually using them will slow the machine to a crawl: you might as well have stayed with XP.

[Brian Reay.]

I'd suggest you try running from a "live CD" or USB stick before doing an install on the hard disk- especially if you plan on using WiFi. One weakness in the Linux driver pool I've found seems to be support for WiFi interfaces, even well known makes like 3Com and Netgear.

Also, you can try out the various "desk tops" for the "look and feel". For example, the latest Ubuntu (12.04) Unity desktop looks like it was designed by a six year old (although it works). True you can change it with a little work but the Linux Mint comes with a much better desktop "out of the box". You can install this on Ubuntu with a little work.

I've run Linux on and off over the years from the "Slackware" days and the current crop of Linux distributions are almost unrecognisable as having a similar parentage. Currently I've running Ubuntu 12.04 with the Cinnamon desktop (although I also like the Mate one) on a couple of machines. I'd install VNC server if I were you, it is useful so you can access the machine remotely from a PC with running Windows. You can get utilities like "Dropbox" for Linux and there is Samba to ease interaction with Windows networks.

[Nemo]

650MHz Celeron (i.e. Pentium III era), max 192MB SDRAM @ 100MHz, 10GB Disk, 2 x USB1 ports, 4MB video RAM, Windows ME

[The Natural Philosopher]

192MB is a bit light for a full desktop.

On THAT try a smnaller distro..sure you cant get more RAM in that..?

[Mark]

None of the *buntu/Debian distros will work well with that much ram. But i run Puppy Linux on a similar spec laptop works fine.

-

[Nick Odell]

similar spec to yours, runs it well. No issues with installing software either, as Nick states, it is a simple operation.

Mines a 1.6Ghz VIA C7 with 1 gig. Works fine as described in my earlier post.

Nick

[GlowingBlueMist]

With so many flavors and versions of Linux one needs to test a few to see what looks good and is understood by the person using the PC.

Some have mentioned Live Linux downloads but I don't seem to remember if anyone said where to get them or a repository of more than one.

Here is a link to a Live Linux CD list that you can view and download what you want to try. I like that you can sort on the various categories like "Last Release" date, "Purpose" and even "Platform" among others.

are so large it takes a DVD rather than a CD or just install it from another hard drive, partition, or flash.

The UNetbootin program found at

can make many of the distributions boot from a USB drive and has quite a few direct download to USB (using the program) flavors of Linux. You can use the program to transfer a copy of Linux you have to a USB using the program by selecting your own copy rather than a new download if wanted.

[Adrian C]

I'd try TinyCore Linux on that. Very very light.

[Theo Markettos]

I've run XUbuntu on a Compaq Evo N200 (700MHz P3, 192MB RAM). It was generally OK, but too many browser tabs caused it to thrash terribly (this will happen on any distro). That was an older version of XUbuntu though (9.something perhaps?). Maybe a modern Debian with XFCE would cope OK?

Theo

[Jules Richardson]

[e-mail]...

Slackware, or SLS? I still run Slackware on all of my systems; it gives (for me) a nice balance between offered packages and beard-and-sandals config file twiddling. IIRC Slackware grew out of SLS (probably around

1994; I know I was using SLS in '93 and I'm pretty sure it was Slackware by 1995)

I tried Ubuntu briefly a little while ago just to see what all the fuss was about - it seemed like the OS equivalent of playing with Duplo. Utterly, utterly horrible GUI.

cheers

Jules

[The Natural Philosopher]

that that gnome, or unity?

I find gnome functional and fairly dull. JUST what I like..