Hey Shawn! I always had the best luck with SuSE for just plain getting stuff to work. However, it will usually cost you a performance hit, even if you trim it down to the bare minimum.
VidaLinux is set up for higher end systems (i686+) if memory serves. That might explain your problems. I have found the Knoppix is usually quite responsive when loaded on the hd (via the knx-hdinstall command) and it plays nice with wireless etc. Neils' suggestion about Mepis is likely a good one. I haven't tried it but have heard good things. I'd certainly give it a shot. Recently I've tried Libranet: http://www.libranet.com/ And have quite enjoyed it. It is a little soft WRT wireless support, but is otherwise a strong Debian based performer and perky on lighter equipment. My favorite for quick and easy(er) light-weight installs is VectorLinux: http://www.vectorlinux.com/ ...but it is based on Slack, which will make maintenance a bit onerous. Plenty perky though as it is put together with an eye to breathing life into old hardware. They have two versions. Light and SOHO. SOHO 5 is in the later stages of testing (RC-2). Could be nice. Thier RC-2 didn't include PCMCIA so I was a little disappointed, but I suspect they're still working on it. The older versions are pretty dated so I'm looking forward to this one. ...For the truely adventurous there's this one: http://www.vum.at/vum-box/ It seems like it hasn't been maintained for a bit. It was originally set up as a light-weight OS for all those 486s/P1s headed to the 2nd/3rd world. Now this is bordering on heresy for a Linux list, but there's a live BSD disk with installer called FreeSBIE http://www.freesbie.org/ I haven't tried it yet on a laptop, but it is certainly a nice effort on the part of the BSD camp. And yes there's always Gentoo ...if you have the time. Marcel On Sat, 2005-01-29 at 19:04 -0700, Shawn wrote: > I'm looking for a decent distro to put onto an older laptop (Acer TravelMate > 512DX), with only a 4GB drive. The target system will be used for software > development, so will need a development environment. It should also have a > graphical interface, but doesn't strictly need KDE or Gnome (though the base > files might be needed for some of the development tools - KDevelop for > instance). The disto should be pretty lean, but still robust enough to > handle the above tasks. > > Thus far, we've tried Suse 9.2, VidaLinux (install failed), and Ubuntu (Live > CD - networking problems with it). We'll keep trying things over the > weekend, but maybe someone will have suggestions for another disto well > suited for this laptop? (NOTE: This is NOT a call for a distro war.. > <grins>) > > Thanks for any ideas. > > Shawn > > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) > **Please remove these lines when replying _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
