Finding the right OS for the $15 Laptop: November 2009 Archives
I broke out the Compaq Armada 7770dmt, a 1999-era laptop with a 233 MHz Pentium II MMX processor and 144 MB of RAM.
This unusual laptop (the power brick is inside the case, it has that little "eraser-like" pointer — which still works — on the keyboard, which is very nice as far as laptop keyboards go) has run more than a few OSes since I've owned it.
I had OpenBSD 4.2 on it for a long time and recently wiped the drive and installed Debian Lenny.
Lenny is running as well or better than Etch did on the Compaq. I have a very minimal Xfce setup — no office suite, the Geany editor in the GUI and two Web browsers: Iceweasel/Firefox for when I absolutely need it and Opera 10.01 for when I want to browse on this 10-year-old laptop with only a little frustration.
I can't recommend a 10-year-old computer for intensive work on today's Web, but you can still squeeze a bit out of it.
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