Linux on old notebook

I have an old off-brand laptop (Chembook) that's recently been retired after 9 years of use. Despite its age and heavy use, its not dead yet. I was thinking of trying the new Linux release at the end of this month on it. Am I going to have a horrible time finding drivers for this system, or should it install easily?

It has a 1.6 GHz centrino processor in it and a mobility 9000, so it should perform roughly the same as a modern netbook. Is that about right?

 

AFAIK, Intel introduced the Centrino name 7 years ago, so idk why you would have a nine-year old Centrino CPU. But yeah, I think your guess as to the notebook's performance is in the right ballpark.

Chances are installation will go fine and most hardware will be supported. Just try it out (start with Live CD if you're skeptical)

Maybe one of the following two options makes sense: (i) go for a lightweight desktop environment such as XFCE (I hate to admit it, but I think a default KDE 4.x desktop may give unsatisfactory performance); or (ii) go for a distro geared towards netbooks such as Ubuntu netbook remix.

 

Yep, you're right, must be 7 years old. Seems ancient to me. I'll try out the CD, the netbook remix sounds like a good idea too. Thanks.

 

Linux doesn't tend to drop support for older hardware as it moves forward, so you should find most of your hardware supported. For older machines, I would also definitely recommend the lighter weight Linux configurations. Here are some articles specifically on the subject;

20 Most Nimble and Simple X Window Managers for Linux - Techsource
5 Fast and Lightweight Linux Distros that Chrome OS Should Beat - Techsource
Best Lightweight Linux OS for Old or Slow Computers - Brighthub
Lightweight Linux Blog

The only Linux driver challenge will likely be for the ATI Radeon Mobility 9000, largely due to ATI's past inconsistent Linux support. (It's much better now..) ATI Linux support is available through two driver programs. There is the traditional, closed source, proprietary driver from ATI, and an ATI supported open source driver. Since the development of the open source driver has really picked up steam only within the last several years, many ATI/Linux users have tended to opt for the proprietary driver.

However, according to this ThinkWiki page, the last version of proprietary ATI Linux driver to support the 9000 chipset is 8.28.8 (released 2006-08-18). Support for the 9000 chipset was subsequently dropped from later versions of the driver, and while the 8.28.8 version is still available for download, it does not support Linux kernels newer then 2.6.17. A better route may be to try and use the open source ATI Linux driver as it has been consistently improving. (The 9000 would be supported under the R200 driver)

If you go to the unofficial ATI Linux driver Wiki here, you will see there are dedicated pages for installing either version of the Linux driver for different distros. (The wiki appears to be down at the moment). There also may be instructions available for installing the ATI Linux driver at your Linux distro's website. From another ThinkWiki page there are some additional useful links to information on the ATI Linux driver support, here.

Good Luck..

 

Very nice links. I installed Puppy Linux this morning, installed without problem. Feels like new again. I think Puppy actually installed faster than my new laptop takes to boot. Its turned a sluggish, XP computer that took 15 seconds to load a browser into something usable again.

 

Debian runs great on my thinkpad x31. Using xp it moved like a snail.

 

Puppy is awesome.

 

Check out this recent article:

http://www.tuxradar.com/content/whats-best-lightweight-linux-distro

The notable omission is AntiX, which just produced a new release.

There are a lot of good choices in this category nowadays.

 

I ran Hoary on a P3m 700mhz, 386 of ram and 20gb hard drive and it ran fine. You have a P-M so you should definitely be fine. Gnome seemed fairly happy.

 

I tried out Ubuntu netbook remix. Its not as fast as puppy linux, though it is much more up to date. Puppy felt much snappier. Unfortunately, the hard drive on my old laptop is starting to go, so I'm not sure how many more linux distros I'll be able to try.

 

Hard drives are rather cheap, you know. Cheap as, say, this.

 

Wow, that is cheap.

I tried Slitaz, since it was mentioned in that review of light weight distributions. Couldn't get the graphical interface to start though. Tried startx, it asked for the keyboard layout or language, then went to a window to pick the graphical interface, but it was blank, the only option is to quit.

 

If you are upgrading the Hard Drive in your notebook, ensure that you are purchasing the proper interface drive. Many old notebooks came with PATA style drives that will not be compatible with the SATA drives that are the standard now.