[PLUG] linux on 166?

[Michael Smith]

I've got an older fujitsu laptop with Pentium MMX 200 chip and 96 MB RAM (all it
will take).  I have no problem running the helix stuff and mozilla.

I think the trick is to cram as much RAM as you can into the box.  Linux will
work on slower processors, but there's no substitute for RAM.

Another trick is to apply the preemtive kernel patch.  I'm running it now on the
laptop, and I'm very pleased with it.

I think the best resource you can have is the linux laptop howto.  It's got a ton
of tips on running linux on small, resource-limited machines.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Laptop-HOWTO.html

--Mike


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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"Ask a Soviet engineer to design a pair of shoes and he'll come up with something
that looks like the boxes that the shoes came in; ask him to make something that
will massacre Germans, and he turns into Thomas *Fscking* Edison."  --Neal
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