[PLUG] linux on 166?

Tyler F. Creelan creelan at engr.orst.edu
Mon May 6 08:33:29 UTC 2002


On Sun, 5 May 2002, Craig wrote:
> Is KDE 3.0 going to be possible?  Anyone like any lighter desktop?

The ROX desktop might be appropriate for this. It has very little overhead
and the file manager is easy to use. It's very attractive and unique as
far as desktops go.

http://rox.sourceforge.net/

You could also try running a light window manager: ctwm, fvwm2, afterstep,
blackbox, maybe sawfish, on its own without a desktop (my preference) or
alongside ROX. ROX also supports most of the European languages (spanish
included) as well as english.

With respect to the distribution, something like gentoo might be most
efficient, although I imagine any distro would be efficient if you
compiled selectively. Debian or redhat would work.

I run debian potato on a pentium-90 with 40 Mbs and I don't notice any
performance difference between it and woody on my faster system
(Celeron800 w/128 mbs) for most tasks.

> Mainly I'm interested in browsers, email and basic document handling, but the

The browser is the area where you'll notice differences with respect to
performance. Its hard to find an efficient browser that supports the
latest stylesheets and such. Galeon is nice but its really only
lightweight if you're already running Gnome. You might want to try
SkipStone, a pure gtk+ browser:

http://www.muhri.net/skipstone/

I don't know what graphical email clients/word processors are appropriate
for this system, but I'm sure they're around. Its amazing how much mileage
you can get out of old hardware via linux. :) I could almost give up my
faster desktop system for the pentium-90 and be okay, except for watching
movies.


Tyler

On Sun, 5 May 2002, Craig wrote:

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> My 166MMX is happily running Mandrake Security.  It has been a long time since
> it has run anything else.  I would like to hear from anyone with personal
> experience running a new distro on an old Pentium.  Is KDE 3.0 going to be
> possible?  Anyone like any lighter desktop?  I would particularly like to
> hear from people who use both a modern machine and an older one.  I remember
> being fairly well satisfied with SuSE 6.4 on the box, but after using a 600
> for a while that 166 has become painful.
>
> Mainly I'm interested in browsers, email and basic document handling, but the
> key is mom and dad level ease of use and reliability, so pine and lynx won't
> cut it.  Before I blow my firewall's uptime by testing a bunch of configs and
> distros with it, I thought someone here might have some experience and point
> me in the right direction.  By the way, Spanish language support would be
> nice.
>
> Thank you,
> Craig
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