Damn Small Linux-n: July 2007 Archives

I pulled the 30 GB hard drive from the $15 Laptop today, swapped in the original 3 GB drive (which wasn't bootable with its original Windows 98 install) and decided to throw distros at it. For those not following along, it's a Compaq Armada 7770dmt, 233 MHz Pentium II, with the biggest chink in the armor being RAM -- only 64 MB of it.

Here's the scorecard:

FreeBSD: I got pretty far, but the installer refused to write partitioning info to the drive.

DesktopBSD: Graphics flaked out before I could get too far in the install process.

Xubuntu 6.10 alternate install: Got very far, but it wouldn't copy apps to the drive, so the install stopped there.

OpenSUSE net install: Wouldn't boot.

Scientific Linux (science-lab spin of Red Hat Enterprise Linux): Wouldn't boot.

DeLi Linux 0.7.1: Everytime I get to the point where I'm supposed to tell the installer where the CD is, I forget to type in hdb, if that's indeed where it is. If I'm booting off of CD, shouldn't the system itself know where the CD is?

Damn Small Linux 3.3: Runs flawlessly from CD, frugal install to hard drive went without a hitch, and it runs well with a 233 MHz CPU and 64 MB of RAM.

Puppy Linux 2.14: Due to the slowness of Gparted in Puppy 2.16 and my preference of the plain Puppy over the 2.15 Community Edition, I did a conventional install of Puppy 2.14 (conventional being recommended over frugal install due to my low RAM). All runs well, and while not as snappy as Damn Small Linux (mostly due to the choice of apps in both distro), I could be very happy running Puppy on this nearly-10-year-old laptop.

(Editor's note: This entry, originally slated to run June 25, somehow never got posted. The material below has been added in the last few hours.)

After running a frugal install of DSL for awhile, I decided to build my own Debian system on the laptop. I did a standard install, added X, then Fluxbox. The biggest surprise thus far has been that when I apt-get a new app, it automatically shows up in the Fluxbox menus. That doesn't happen on my other Debian box, which was a Desktop install with GNOME, adding Fluxbox as an alternate window manager. Whatever they're doing over at Debian, they are doing it right. I'm having a lot of fun building up the system just the way I want it.

While I intended to work a lot from the command line, I also needed GUI capability. Dillo runs great, but I needed more. I installed IceWeasel, Debian's renamed version of Firefox, and it's running great. Takes about a minute to load, but after that it responds well. Remember, this is 233 MHz and 64 MB. The only nagging problem is that the laptop's clock battery is dead, so when I start it up, Debian does a lot of filesystem checking. Gotta figure out how to pull that battery and get a new one in there.

So add to the list above:

Debian 4.0: Flawless install. Started with "standard" install, added X, Fluxbox and my favorite apps with apt-get. Running great with low specs.

COMING UP: A full review of Puppy 2.16.1