Cheap hardware loves Linux
I haven't linked to Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Desktoplinux.com in awhile, and he had a great opinion piece today about the $150 PCLinuxOS box and other cheap computer solutions called "How low can you go and still run Linux?"
He does a good job of going through the distributions and recommending many low-spec software solutions for hardware of less than current vintage. He mentions many of my favorites, including Damn Small Linux, AntiX (which I haven't tried in awhile ...), Zenwalk, plus another I really should try: the PCLinuxOS "Mini-Me" spin.
He also talks up gOS, which is going from version 1 to 2. I booted into gOS today to see if Synaptic would magically do this upgrade for me. It did not. I got a couple dozen Ubuntu updates, but nothing indicating anything new or improved. And gOS is still as much of a dog as it ever was. On my hardware anyway, Ubuntu runs way better.
And I'm disappointed that Vaughn-Nichols didn't mention Slackware derivatives Vector or Wolvix (the latter being my current favorite distro), or even Slackware itself. He could've also put in a word for Debian and even Ubuntu.
One thing I've learned is that whatever anybody says about how fast or slow a particular Linux distribution is, a little experimentation on your own hardware is in order before settling down with any one setup. I recommend creating a partition for /home, which you can keep intact (and backed up) while rolling different distributions in and out of there. That's what I'm starting to do; my New Year's resolution is "less dual- and triple-booting, more separate /home partitions." See, I'm setting the New Year's resolution bar very low -- then I'll be sure to succeed (unless I'm caught triple-booting anytime soon).
Anyway, I'm still using Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 and Debian Lenny on the Gateway Solo 1450. I'm packing the Lenny install with a whole lot of software, including lots of educational stuff for our 4-year-old.
I have Wolvix using a separate /home partition but not Debian. I might change that in the weeks ahead and see if they can share /home. I still can use Puppy 3.00 as a live CD -- I have a pup_save on the Debian partition. For me, this is total, complete stability, the likes of which I haven't seen in the past year.
I still have Debian Etch with Xfce on the Compaq Armada 7770dmt, with Damn Small Linux 4.0 as a live CD. I'm thinking of trying Wolvix Cub on it, but with 64 MB of RAM, it could be a little dicey. What I need to do there is bump up the RAM to 144 MB (maximum of this circa 1999 laptop).
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Hi Steven
Still enjoying your postings, I think what you are doing/writing about strikes a chord with many of us.
Anyway, I think you should drop everything and try out MiniMe! Every KDE distro I tried in the past seemed slow as a dog, but MiniMe blew me away. It seems to be as fast as Vector, and that's saying something. Of course it comes as a bare bones system, so I don't know how fast it'll be when I have installed all the apps I need, but so far it's looking good.
BTW, I too have noticed that Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols never seems to recommend Slackware-based distros. Guess he doesn't like them much. I still enjoy his writing though.
Cheers
Andy
KDE can be fast. It really depends on your hardware. Some computers are so fast that they make up for whatever speed issues you find on older, slower machines.
When I run Slackware with KDE on my "faster" 1.3 GHz laptop, it's quite a pleasant experience. I don't quite know everything that is involved, but really looking at what services are running that you don't need and turning them off is a good step, especially for desktop users.
In Debian, for instance, I have Bluetooth, running, and I don't have any Bluetooth anything; I should probably turn that one off. I don't know if I need HPLIP for printing. I'm sure there are others. I probably should try SimplyMepis again -- that one was REALLY slow with KDE, but on the laptop it might be bearable.
What I like about Wolvix is that it has pretty much everything I need without me having to do a lot of work. I did a traditional install -- it didn't run that great as a live CD (I think I don't have enough memory) -- but it works great on the hard drive.
The thing about Slackware distros is the package management. I just started using Gslapt/Slapt-get, and I don't know how it handles dependencies. It's probably a good idea to KNOW the dependencies for anything you're installing, but in this era of apt and Yum, most of us just rely on the software to take care of everything. I'm as guilty of this as anybody.
I did tire of checking the Slackware security updates and installing them with upgradepkg. If it was my main box, and I didn't have about a dozen distros running on various drives plugged into various PCs, I'd feel better about it (and probably use Gslapt for updates -- works great in Wolvix).
Everybody talks up PCLinuxOS -- I really need to try it. Besides the "Mini-Me," they also have a new GNOME version, plus a business version. That's the kind of thing I like to see. But right now I'm enjoying using Wolvix so much, I can't see pulling it off the laptop. And after having so many Ubuntu problems, I just beefed up my Debian Lenny partition with all the stuff I used to do in Ubuntu (primarily kids' educational stuff).
The next thing I want to play with is connecting a terminal to a Linux box via the serial port. I'm going to start with standard PCs and my old Mac Powerbook 1400, but I'd love to snag an old adm3a, VT100 or Wyse terminal. Way back in college in the '80s, I used the adm3a's -- and they were old then. I wonder if I can find a working one ...
Yesterday a friend of mine was able to install gentoo linux on a virtual machine with 80MB ram, I'm not sure how much lower you can go with it, if anyone wants to try, feel free to give it a shot :).
To do this, you need to get puppy linux, and install gentoo linux from inside of puppy linux. DSL will not work due to the 2.4.x kernel it has (which does not seem to have chroot). All you need to do is use puppy, and follow the steps in the gentoo install manual.
He has managed to X installed, and twm running as well.
Some additional notes, his CPU is a pentinum 4, and he assigned gentoo 256 MB swap space. I'm not sure if this would work with a lower power CPU, or with a lower swap threshold.
> Some computers are so fast that they make up for whatever speed issues you find on older, slower machines.
Not mine! One of my machines is a 450 MHz P3 and MiniMe is the first KDE distro which I could bear working with. I'm not sure about the normal PCLinuxOS, I don't remember being especially impressed with it when I tried it a while back.
One of the things I like about MiniMe, apart from the speed, is that it comes with virtually nothing installed and you can add just the apps you need to keep it lean and mean. I think you would have to do a network install with most other distros to be able to get that.
Anyway, you are right, you really have to try distros on your own hardware to find the best one. It's really a combination of man + machine + distro! I guess that means that if the machine changes (and as the man ages) the distro might have to change too...
If the distro is constructed in such a way that when applications are added, they go in the proper place in the menus and generally work, I'm all for it. I've done a few "standard" installs of Debian in which I added X, then Fluxbox, then the apps I needed. Since then, I've done the Xfce install, and that actually performs much better -- must've been something I was doing.
When I did an Xfce-only install of Slackware 12, I was left with not nearly enough software without all the KDE bits and pieces. I didn't even have a word processor. And I didn't have enough space left to add much. I needed a bigger drive (I only had 3 GB, and the Slackware installer tells you that's not enough for the full Slack distro).
I've run Puppy, Damn Small Linux, Slackware (with Xfce), even Debian (with Xfce and Fluxbox) in 64 MB of RAM with a 200 MB swap file. Debian can be a wee bit slow at times, Puppy is pretty good, and DSL is quite good in that configuration.
I haven't gotten very far with DeLi, which is supposed to be great for really old hardware. I had to go to great lengths to have the DeLi installer find the very same CD drive on which it was running (sounds absurd; and is). Once I got it installed, I couldn't get networking going and gave up. It just makes you really see how huge an achievement both DSL and Puppy are in terms of sheer usability.
Hello
Give antiX-M7 Lysistrata series a try Steven, unless you have k5/k6 as antiX uses the Mepis i686 kernel.
All well as the 'full' version (c310MB), there is also a base iso available (c180MB) for those who want an easy to install distro withe xorg, but little else. Ideal for customising your own antiX/Mepis distro.
As far as the other distros you mention, give them a try too. Tinyme and pcfluxboxos are both very good distros based on pclinuxos. Wolvix is an excellent distro, I prefer the cub version myself.
regards,
anticapitalista