Re: [PLUG] Recommendation for old laptop

[LeRoy Cressy <leroy@lrcressy.com>]

I think that most Distributions have the kernel compiled for 586 
pentium.  With Debian I think you can start with a minimal install and 
use dselect to pick the packages that you want.

Your hardware is a little lite for running a xserver, but I ran X on a 
system with only 8 Megs RAM. and a 75Mhz Pentium.  Needless to say it 
worked fine with fvwm window manager and the least amount of daemons 
occupying system resources.

As far as distribution is concerned I would use either Debian or 
Slackware since both can be easilly scaled down to a bare bones system.

To set up X you will need to know about the video card and the display 
properties.  I have X running on an old laptop that is only capable of 
running 800x600 resolution.  For most apps this is sufficient, but there 
are some apps that require a minimum of 1024x768.

Do not even think of trying to run KDE or Gnome desktops on this system.

Also, I would not run xdm but would allow the user to login on the 
console and run startx.  I think running any variation of emacs would 
not be wise.

Hope this helps.

Arthur S. Alexion wrote:
> I have a really old laptop that I want to experiment with.  It is an 
> old gateway colorbook, 486-DX2-50, 730MB drive, 12 MB ram.  Is there 
> any distro that I can install that will give me even a simple X?  Wife 
> wants to use it in her classroom (5th grade).
>
> For installation, has 56k modem card, NIC card, Mini-SCSI/2 (Adaptec 
> parallel port) CD-ROM drive.



--
Rev. LeRoy D. Cressy   mailto:leroy@lrcressy.com   /\_/\
                       http://lrcressy.com        ( o.o )
                       Phone:  215-535-4037        > ^ <

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life:
no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:6)

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