In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part III — Browsers and wireless

I'm going to haul the circa-1999 Compaq Armada 7770dmt laptop to the public library where I can run it with free WiFi and see if Seamonkey (in Puppy) and Firefox (in Damn Small Linux and OpenBSD) perform acceptably with my upgraded RAM.

Since there's no WiFi at the Daily News, I probably should just bite the bullet and get a PCMCIA Ethernet card. And if it turns out that I can use a Mozilla browser and not have it run like so much sludge, that's my next move. (Note: Since this post was originally written, I have gotten an Ethernet card for the Compaq).

Aside on memory: While 128MB is probably the absolute minimum to run X, I don't feel comfortable until I have 256MB. Of course 512MB or more is better, but with 256MB, most systems that will run at all will perform well enough for the user not to tear his/her hair out.

Running Puppy with WiFi

I get to the library, boot the Compaq with Puppy 2.13, and the first thing I notice is that Seamonkey starts in just about 30 seconds.

Thirty seconds. That is excellent performance. Remember, this is a 233 MHz processor. That alone is enough to pull Puppy Linux to the front of the pack.

And I'm able to use Movable Type. That's the key. Such a relatively "heavy" browser-based application does require a good WiFi connection. With a flaky connection, it just doesn't work, but with this good 802.11b hookup (I'm using an Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA card), I'm able to run MT just fine in Puppy.

Again, that 30-second load time for Seamonkey is absolutely huge. Graphical performance is also quite good.

Next: Trying OpenBSD

I addressed the performance of OpenBSD in a recent entry. One thing to remember about OpenBSD is that the system known for its security and cryptography isn't a "fast" system, especially running X on older hardware. On newer PCs, assuming that you can get all the hardware properly configured, the speed difference between OpenBSD and a given Linux distribution either won't be noticeable or will be more than acceptable for those who want the other things that OpenBSD brings to the table.

But on a system as challenged as this one, the performance tradeoffs just might be too great to justify running OpenBSD.

I say might because I've very much enjoyed running OpenBSD on this laptop, and the ease with which I was able to add quite a bit of software that I needed, believe it or not, rivaled even Debian and Ubuntu.

Once i had my PKG_PATH set up, I was able to use OpenBSD's superb package management system to bring plenty of desktop-friendly applications to my system, and in almost all cases those applications were put together quite well — often better than their equivalents in Debian, Ubuntu, Puppy and Damn Small Linux. Not faster, but better in other ways in terms of functionality.

So while day-to-day computing on this system might be better with Puppy Linux, if my daughter wants to use GCompris, Tuxpaint or Childsplay, keeping OpenBSD as an operating system is something I might very well do.

Previously:

• In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part I — Puppy or Damn Small Linux
  
• In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part II — OpenBSD or Debian?

Coming up:

• In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part IV — Wolvix Cub is surprisingly strong
  
• In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part V — Where I'm headed
  
• In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part VI — Younger Puppies
  
• In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part VII — Debian with Xfce and Fluxbox calls
  
• In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part VIII — Final thoughts (aka "Why?")