Best OS for an old Dell CPx

Alright, I've just about had it with Windows 200's slowness, and I'm ready to try something different. Here are the specs of my laptop

P3 500MHz
128MB Ram
2mb Rage Mobility
11GB 4200rpm hdd
linksys wpc54gs wireless network pcmcia

I've been a long time user of windows, so I kinda want the same sort of functionality. But this thing takes almost 4 minutes to boot, and nother 4 to load Windows, (than another minute and a half to open any application )

thanks!

 

Hi acelius, You have the right OS, win 2000 is pretty good I don't think you would want to downgrade to 98. You could do XP, but it won't go any faster. What you need is more memory, 128MB is not really enough for win 2k or XP, I would go with 256MB minimum. You should also look at what programs are running in memory, you may be surprised as almost every program out there think they need to be resident in memory for some reason. I would stop all those things from running in memory all the time. Another thing to look at is to see if "fastfind" is running, if so delete it. It slows everything to a crawl and is useless. Same goes for the office task bar or whatever that is...get rid of it. I see you only have an 11GB disk, delete anything you don't need to make space, then defrag the drive. You should have at least 1GB of free space on you drive or that will also add big time to the slow down.

Basically the OS is not your problem, it's the lack of memory. If it used to run well on win 2000, then your drive is too full and needs to be cleaned up and space cleared as well as getting rid of stuff running in memory.

good luck
Jack

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" (Ben Franklin)
http://pbase.com/joneill

 

agree, your bottle neck is memory, your harddrive is also slow, but since you don't very have enough memory to start w/, when windows start to do memory swap w/ HD, things goes even slower.

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Fujitsu S6210, 1GB DDR333, 80GB 5400RPM, DVD+/-RW
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BTW: have you thought about installing Gentoo? w/ your spec, I'm very sure, it would have no problem. very fast, and use less resource.

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Fujitsu S6210, 1GB DDR333, 80GB 5400RPM, DVD+/-RW
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-=- http://www.jotographer.com -=-=-=-=-=-
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you know, i havent tried gentoo yet, but ill check it out, from what i hear though, its takes a lot to install, im willing to try anything though, i basically just need a system that surfs the web, checks email, and does word processing

as for the ram, it takes pc100 sodimms, which can be hard to find nowadays, and when you do find them, they can be rather pricey

anyway, im gonna go download the gentoo cds, ill check back with my progress

thanks!

 

Gentoo is a lot more like debian and traditional linux installation. it took time, patience and knowledge. But there are forum and installation guide to aid you. I strongly suggested if you are somewhat familar about linux already. And by the time you finish install gentoo, you will learn a lot more about linux and how it works. If you want a quickie,then get other distro. But it won't give you what Gentoo offer. Gentoo will compile everything from scratch, and therefore offer you the optimal performance for every single application you install. Downside is you better have a broadband connection or T1+ or downloading package will take forever. Also, it take forever doing big application like OpenOffice take me about a day to compile on my old P2040(Crusoe 800MHZ). But large application like that or mozilla, Gentoo also offer binary version to save you some time, but are not as highly optimize as compile it yourself.

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Acelius

 

Alright, well, I have the fast connection (3mbs cable), but the notebook has no network (no ethernet on it, only via a dock, which i dont have)

so i need to download the big iso and go from there

ive had some experience with linux (i have slackware installed on my other desktop, but that is (or was) a 2.66ghz dell, so ive only ever used linux on faster machines), this looks like an experience though, i dont need it for anything critical quite yet, so i can take my time here

thanks!

 

or spend $20 and get an ethernet adaptor.
<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Acelius