[Techtalk] A distro for old machines...

[Bud]

Hi Barb,

 Wow thats gr8! I could too tied up with some other stuf I didnt get time to 
persue it. I was able to get Debian 3.0 up and running with just flux box but 
it wasnt too stable. I downloaded Vectra so I'm hoping to give it a try.

 The main issue is always RAM so are you running this system on 24MB ram? What 
window manager are you running?

 For playing audio I think xmms should work for you. Just give it a try.. its 
not very heavy on resources.. though I'm not sure how it will perform on a 
P90.

 Could you possible post your XFree86 config. Is that specific to your grahic 
card or generic (e.g. VESA)?

Bud


On Friday 30 January 2004 6:51 am, MMP - Barb Fox wrote:
> About a month ago there were some questions about what distro
> would work with old hardware.  This is just a follow-up to say
> thanks for everybody who contributed to that thread.
>
> With the info from these posts, I decided to load linux on an
> old laptop (Pentium 90Mhz).  I tried peanut linux and failed.
> Then I fought vector linux (couldn't get X working at all).
> Then I installed RedHat 9.  It worked fine but X Windows was so
> incredibly slow (with just icewm, not a desktop mgr) that it was
> unusable.
>
> So I went back to vector linux.  With some googling, I finally got
> an XF86Config that worked ok ( I just can't exit X without
> locking up the system.)  But here's the fun thing -- I also
> installed Crossover Office (from Codeweaver).  It allows you
> to run native Windows programs like Microsoft Office.  It installed!
> It worked!  And I now have native MS Office 97 running under
> linux on a machine with 24MB of memory.  The performance is
> not snappy, but it's acceptable.  Way to go vector linux!
>
> (Have to use PowerPoint 'cuz I teach presentations made by
> other people and Open Office doesn't render them properly.)
>
> So thanks everybody for the pointers in the right direction.
>
> Now...my husband wants to get the sound card working to play
> CD's.  Any ideas where to start? (vector linux's vasm does nothing)
>
> Barb Fox
> mmp_fox at bellsouth.net
>
> >Hi, Bud,
> >
> > > It should be able to run X windows with a decent desktop so that its
> > > intutive  for newbies/windows users (with minimal documentation). The
> > > applications I am  looking to run are mainly office based. Simple
> > > mutimedia is ofcourse a like  to have option (play mp3, mpg/vcd and an
> > > audio cd)
> >
> >Because of your very limited hardware I'd recommend Vector Linux at
> >http://www.vectorlinux.com  I've used it with great success on my Toshiba
> >Libretti.
>
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