Lookin for a linux distro for internet use (using an old computer)

[kelinu]

Hi,
I was wondering if anyone could help me on this...
I have a very old laptop with a Pentium 3 500mhz processor and 192 MB of RAM. I am looking for a linux distro that you can boot live from a CD, as the laptop does not have a working hard drive. I am going to use this linux distribution for the internet (chatting and browsing) mainly, so nothing fancy really. Something that will work well without long waits and problems.

BTW: Not necessary but it would be nice if the linux distro has an on screen keyboard as my keyboard doesn't work well. :)

Any help is much appreciated!

[snowpine]

DSL (Da*n Small Linux) is specifically designed to run as a Live CD on old computers. Puppy is another possibility, and you might even be able to run Xubuntu as a Live CD (your specs are just at the cut-off).

[novellahub]

- Wolvix
- Antix
- Puppy
- DSL

All would work well on that laptop. I am not sure about the on-screen keyboard requirement though.

[kelinu]

oh ok, i will definitely check puppy linux out...i didn't know you could boot from xubuntu, cool

[Vivaldi Gloria]

I like slitaz but it doesn't have printing support.

"The goal of SliTaz is to have a GNU/Linux distro working in memory (RAM)."

http://www.slitaz.org/en/

[Dr Small]

+1 for SliTaz

[VitaLiNux]

Hi,
I was wondering if anyone could help me on this...
I have a very old laptop with a Pentium 3 500mhz processor and 192 MB of RAM. I am looking for a linux distro that you can boot live from a CD, as the laptop does not have a working hard drive. I am going to use this linux distribution for the internet (chatting and browsing) mainly, so nothing fancy really. Something that will work well without long waits and problems.

BTW: Not necessary but it would be nice if the linux distro has an on screen keyboard as my keyboard doesn't work well. :)

Any help is much appreciated!
* Knoppix
* DSL
* PCLinuxOS TinyMe(Very attractive, user-friendly interface! Comes with the Opera browser... You can even make a custom LiveCD to test it!)
You'll do very well with any of the above mentioned.

[kelinu]

thanks for all the help guys, just one thing, does slitaz work with cabled internet?

[wolfen69]

thanks for all the help guys, just one thing, does slitaz work with cabled internet?

yes it will, but i would go with puppy. it seems to be easier to configure.

[kelinu]

ok then, i will check both of them out

Thankyou you all for all this help!

[timzak]

Another vote for Puppy 4.0. It has Flash and Java working "out of the box" as a live CD, and you have the ability to save any configuration changes onto any hard drive partition (or thumb drive) without installing the OS to hard drive or wiping out existing OSes.

It runs well on a P3 650 laptop, running entirely from RAM of course. I can watch Youtube videos smoothly, and it seems to put little stress on the system, so the cooling fans don't come on as quickly as they do on the laptop's native OS (Windows 2000). I believe it has a chat client, but I don't chat, so I never tried it.

[kelinu]

If I could just stretch this thread a littler further, which ones of all these distros has an onscreen keyboard feature, as some of the keys of my keyboard aint workin :(

[kelinu]

Actually whatever forget it that is a bit too much to ask for :D

Thankyou for all the really useful help! Much, much, much appreciated!

[zmjjmz]

The onscreen keyboard in Ubuntu is called OnBoard, you may want to look into compiling it and running it from the flash drive or (if it fits) a floppy.

[kelinu]

Will puppy linux work fast and well on my laptop then? (its 500 mhz Pentium 3 with 192 MB of RAM....Booting live cd)

[darrelljon]

Get a cheap P/S2 keyboard.

[molom]

Puppy, DSL and Slitaz will all work very fast on 192mb of ram. But when moving to distros using XFCE and Gnome, you definately will notice sluggishness.

[kelinu]

So if i had to boot up with puppy Linux on 192 MB of ram, would puppy load all in ram. Like, if I had to take out the CD would puppy still be loaded and everything?

[zmjjmz]

So if i had to boot up with puppy Linux on 192 MB of ram, would puppy load all in ram. Like, if I had to take out the CD would puppy still be loaded and everything?

Did that for me in 128MB, so it should work in 192MB.

[tel93]

Hi,
I was wondering if anyone could help me on this...
I have a very old laptop with a Pentium 3 500mhz processor and 192 MB of RAM. I am looking for a linux distro that you can boot live from a CD, as the laptop does not have a working hard drive. I am going to use this linux distribution for the internet (chatting and browsing) mainly, so nothing fancy really. Something that will work well without long waits and problems.

BTW: Not necessary but it would be nice if the linux distro has an on screen keyboard as my keyboard doesn't work well. :)

Any help is much appreciated!

This is not Puppy or Xubuntu or Wolvix material. Try DSL (with WindowMaker) or Debian (with Icewm or Openbox or WMaker)

[maybeway36]

You can start Puppy from CD without loading to RAM. There is a kernel argument for this.

[kelinu]

hi,
Thanks for all the helpful answers...i have succesfully ran puppy linux 4 and it performs very well! Again, thanks a bundle.