[Techtalk] Do I even think about upgrading it?

[Dave North]

Caity:
> I would describe 6.0 (with IceWM 1.03 as the WM) as slow but very
> usable.  From what you are telling me I probably want to stick with what
> I have.

Very probably. I am a Debian fan, especially on old hardware, partly
because it's somewhat easier to run newer packages with an older kernel,
and there are also a lot of deb folks doing it.
	Of course, it's the only distro whose first name is a woman's.
	In particular, there are a lot of ways to tweak a setup using the
2.2 kernel, partly because Alan Cox is a total small/old hardware dweeb
(I say that like it's a good thing), and partly because most of the amateurs
doodling with small/old machines find it easier to mess with it using Debian.
The Psion/Linux project, for example, and several others.
	End Debian rant. But in this particular case, it's for a reason.
	Still, there's enough older stuff floating around for RH that it
should be possible to crank up some new features without hobbling the old
beast too much.

> Understood.  I'm thinking seriously about Vector Linux 2.5, a Slackware
> derivative designed for small footprint and lightweight hardware.  Have
> you tried Vector at all?

No, I haven't. The Zenith was the primary reason I got into slackware
also, as they still supported low RAM machines quite a while after The Big
Three stopped. Then they went to 16mb min (at the time I was running
eight, but wanted to manage with 4mb or less, because I was resuscitating
a friend's laptop that only had 2mb. In the end, I used minix...) Then,
some folks regretting the move, out came Vector.
	Slackware was okay, but it came down to Deb or Slack, and there
were things about the former I liked better.

> Thanks for narrowing my choices.

Just for ducks, I'll bet it would be both possible and highly entertaining
to put together a very slick system using Gentoo.
	Hmm.

d