Distro for older laptop? (256mb ram)

Ladies and Gentlemen of NBR,

I have a new girlfriend but her old laptop is a mess . She's eventually going to upgrade, but in the meantime I'd like to help her restore her laptop to basic functionality by introducing her to Linux.

The problem is that the computer (Toshiba Satellite l25-s1194) was a budget laptop back in [edit]2005[edit]. Here are the highlights:

Intel Celeron M 1.5 GHz Processor (1MB L2 Cache, 400MHz Front Side Bus)

256MB DDR2-533 PC4200 RAM (one DIMM, one slot free; max 2GB)

ATI Radeon Xpress 200M Graphics (32MB-128MB Dynamically Shared Memory)

Toshiba 40gb 5400rpm Hard Disk

Atheros 802.11b/g Wireless LAN

Normally, my go-to distro for this sort of thing would be xubuntu, but I'm worried that it is now too bloated to work very well with only 256mb of ram. Has anyone installed 9.04 on a computer like this?

Since it will be my responsibility to keep everything running for her, I'd like to stick with what I know best which is ubuntu / debian with some kind of lighter desktop. I was thinking about other options such as:

1. Installing a basic xfce desktop (or maybe lxde or fluxbox?) over xubuntu or crunchbang ( http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090504#feature)

2. Giving Sidux xfce a chance.

Any ideas?

 

I'd go for xubuntu. You can always remove the fancy effects, making it a lot faster. The benefit of going with xubuntu is that you get a lot more support and easier access to a wide range of applications. In addition, your girlfriend is going to be able to solve more problems herself thanks to the friendly UI. If this is her first time using Linux, you can't go wrong with *ubuntu.

Regards,

z.

 

To be able to install to jaunty on a amount of ram that small /you will need the alternate text based installer. I've tried running 7.10 on P3-700mhz and 256mb and well... It is usable but the swap partition is used a lot which slows down things quite a bit at times. With only Gnome loaded you are already using half of the ram available. The CPU is decent. Can't you loan her a 2gb stick? Or go ask for a 512mb stick on the marketplace? Even smartphones have more ram than that nowadays...

 

Yeah, I was thinking about that after I noticed that it was upgradeable to 2gb. I'll ask her if she would be amenable to upgrading her ram. Dropping a 1gb in that laptop would basically solve a lot of her problems I think.

 

my stock answer....debian based Antix...part of MEPIS community....it's as light as light gets methinks...other than those usb intended distros

 

I think I'm going to upgrade her ram to 1gb (found a deal for $20) and maybe even install ubuntu which runs well on my 512mb Gateway. She loves the cube!

 

You must mean 2005! I wasn't playing close attention to computer specs back then, but I think top-of-the-line notebooks ran at about 33Mhz in 1995. (Would any modern distros run on a computer that slow?)

On the other hand, Xubuntu would run just fine on your girlfriend's machine. My old Vaio with 245 MB RAM runs 9.04 well. The OS takes about 90 MB of ram to run, which leaves plenty of room for a browser, a text editor, and an email client to all be open at the same time.

The only drawback I've found is that if I have more than a few programs open, the system can get stuck swapping for half an hour. That happens when I'm using about 230 MB of RAM. Don't turn on any fancy effects and you should be fine.

If you want to try an even lighter weight distro, take a look at Puppy Linux. I haven't tried it, but the word is that it's about as light as they get.

 

Whoops! Yeah, I meant 2005!

I haven't checked out puppy in four years but maybe I'll have a look.

 

May not matter now if you'll be adding RAM and installing Ubuntu, but just to mention: Xubuntu 8.10 installed from the live cd on my system with 245 MB RAM without a hitch. For last version, at least, need for the alternative install.

 

1.5G cpu + 256 ram is quite a luxury for a lightweight desk/laptop working environment you've mentioned above.
maybe you might want to try out any distros with Gnome? Kde might be quite heavy to your system...

 

Arch linux or slackware is your best bet