Linux Distro For Laptops

twolfe18

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Mar 16, 2006
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what is the best linux distro for laptops, more specifically, really old and slow laptops. I have an old thinkpad with a PII `366mhz and 128mb ram, and xp is pretty slow on it. i need a speedy distro that works well on laptops!
 
Great suggestions as always, just adding xubuntu.
Debian + the nice (graphical) app tools (yeah, I know, apt, but for new converts it's nice to have graphics) + XFCE4 = good. :)

Only played with this in VMWare but I was very impressed. Nice quick slick distro. To get the best from it you do need to stick with package selection or you quickly end up adding bloat.

I'd also second DSL and add Slax to the list... both are good solid distros and ther are a few variations of Slax so you might find a good match.

If you want to have a real laugh boot DSL from CD on a reasonable machine with 512Mb of ram or more.. ues the toram option on boot and just have a play.... quick is not the word! (also works in VMWare that way :D )
 

twolfe18

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Mar 16, 2006
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yeah, i tryed dsl on my laptop using the live boot mode, and it was rediculously fast. no slowdowns at all if you were not really doing anything other than browsing around. dsl on my PII 366mhz w/ 128 mb sdram is faster than my desktop, 4200+ and 2gb ocz platinum ddr running xp pro.

i havent tried xubuntu yet, but i will see if i can find time. you guys sound like you like it. :p
 
Or if you have 4 gigs of memory then basically any disto can be cached...
Kororaa stowed to memory is great for turning heads!

Like your style.. I've only ever used it from a live CD to cache like that. Is it fairly easy to change an existing disk based install of something like Ubuntu to behave this way (stripping out excess on the way of course)? I've only got 1Gig to play with but it might be an interesting experiment...

*EDIT* Woot! Lost that bloody newbie tag!! :D
 

ara

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i just switched to ubuntu a few days ago and my battery life went up by half an hour (very big proportionally speaking) it was like 1.5 hours and went up to 2 hours (it is an old laptop... a P4 (heat))

i know this reply was late.. but i was seeking other help and i saw this.

Ara
 

bmouring

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May 6, 2006
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SuSE's a great distro, don't get me wrong, but with the default install it's a little heavy for an ageing laptop (yes, you can of course install something like one of the *box's, FVWM, or XFCE, but it's not the default). That is likely why it wasn't mentioned (that and any of the previously mentioned distros also have killer device detection as well, that problem is chiefly an older problem that's been solved)