In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part VII — Debian with Xfce and Fluxbox calls

I know I said in a previous entry that Debian's Xfce installation didn't exactly provide what I wanted, but looking at what I need, Debian rises to the top of the pack.

Top of my list: Installing Debian with encrypted LVM. Especially in a laptop, encryption is a must to secure your data from prying eyes, should the laptop be lost or stolen.

And any little utility that Wolvix has can probably be added in Debian. And Aptitude is very good. It's not graphical, but it represents the best of Debian.

And I still trust the security team for Debian more than I do most others — this despite the OpenSSL problem that has recently plagued every Debian-based distro in recent weeks. (At least somebody figured it out, and the whole incident should tighten up things considerably in the Debian Project).

And in Debian, I can easily install all of our little girl's educational programs, although she is fairly vocal about preferring to use the newer, faster $0 Laptop, a 1.3GHz Celeron-based Gateway laptop with 1GB of RAM.

The only "stopper" is Google's lack of willingness to easily let users install Google Gears in Mozilla-derived browsers not named Firefox. That means it's a pain in the ass to install Gears with Iceweasel, the Debian-derived, noncopyrighted equivalent to Firefox.

And I haven't tried Debian on the Compaq Armada 7770dmt since I boosted the RAM from 64MB to 144MB. Responsiveness in X could be a lot better with such a relative overabundance of RAM.

So as far as the Compaq goes, I'm down to running Debian or Wolvix on the hard drive and Puppy as a live CD. Like I said previously, I don't want to kill out OpenBSD just yet, so I'll need either a second hard drive or a 4GB Compact Flash card with CF-to-IDE laptop adapter (the latter available for a quite-reasonable $10 at LogicSupply.com). I might even spring for a second hard-drive caddy for the Compaq, should I be able to find one, to make swapping the drives that much easier.

Or I could bite the bullet, get rid of OpenBSD for the time being, try out Debian and Wolvix on the hard drive, and narrow things down. I'll continue to run Puppy, with a separate partition for its encrypted pup_save file.

I've taken to using the Leafpad text editor in Puppy (I'm using it now), and the Leafpad-derived Mousepad editor in Xfce is just as fast, if spartan. Xfce's Terminal app has similar attributes. And I have no problem running xterm or rxvt.

It's really about the text editors and browsers I use, the software my daughter likes to run, stability, security, encryption and ease of maintenance.

Moreover, it's about speed on old hardware. These things look very different on newer computers. My 2002-era Gateway laptop runs Ubuntu very well. I doubt I could even boot Ubuntu on this Compaq. Even the Xubuntu live CD won't boot. With Debian, I have no problem.

On the Gateway, Ubuntu's polish as compared to Debian makes Ubuntu a better choice. But on this older Compaq, Debian's flexibility and added speed (don't ask me why it's faster, it just is) are much needed.

Next moves: I need to get a PCMCIA Ethernet card since I don't have regular access to WiFi. While I'm at it, a PCMCIA card for USB is something I should also look into. Sure, I could transfer files over the network, but USB is ... easier. (Note: Since this post was originally written, I have gotten an Ethernet card for the Compaq).

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

Coming up:
In search of the best OS for a 9-year-old laptop: Part VIII — Final thoughts (aka "Why?")