Old laptop for the workshop

I think drivers could be the issue with this idea.

Brian

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

NT

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

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

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

probably yes.

not sure anything like that is available on Linux.

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.

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.

Give Lubuntu a try.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

The UNetbootin program found at

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

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

snipped-for-privacy@j10g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...

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

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

that that gnome, or unity?

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