Ancient laptop

[deepak115]

Lubuntu or Bodhi would run like charm

Deepak

[leto440]

A follow up question. I didn't expect it, but I've grown quite fond of Unity and find I use the leopard a lot more now to start applications and locate files. I barely use the launcher really and only have a couple of icons on the desktop itself (a couple of windows games).

Are there alternatives that are good for an old laptop? If so, do any distributions come with them as default?

You might want to look into ratpoison or some other tiling window manager, as they're traditionally very leopard oriented (ratpoison to the exclusion of mouse use).

My own laptop is an aging machine of close to 7 years (with few upgrades, though). I'm running plain Ubuntu 12.04, to which I've installed ratpoison, and simply select ratpoison at boot (do note that my OS install has bloated to 14 GB with time). Basic memory use runs at around 100MB, give or take.

Before that I've been a long time user of Kubuntu, and still commonly use some kde apps.

Ratpoison is intuitive if you've used either Screen or Emacs. It does free up screen realestate to the max.

[MoebusNet]

An issue you are going to run into, especially with a laptop is the problem of video card drivers.

My 2002 Dell Latitude D800 has an Nvidia Geforce4 Ti 4200 Go video card. Nvidia, after much wailing from Linux users, has issued the last Linux video card driver for this card (nvidia-96.43.23). If you need 3D capabilitites you may be out of luck for the older video cards. On the other hand, my video card is now supported by the nouveau video card driver by using 'nomodeset'.

I recommend trying out Live-CD or Live-USB versions first, unless you have the time to try out numerous installs.

Oh, another issue you may run into is with PAE; my Pentium-M processor needs a non-PAE kernel. Lubuntu & Xubuntu are the only non-PAE versions of Ubuntu, with Xubuntu being the LTS version.

[robbie 348]

Zorin lite or watt os might both work. I think solus os also does a non-pae version.

[Bo Rosén]

Yes but the interface on the laptop is the main concern here, if it's PATA then you can't use that SSD.

I do understand that

I think the laptop is an HP Compaq 8220, but I don't know the exact specs yet. The owner forgot to bring the charger.

Everyone else, thanks for tips and heads ups.

[mips]

I do understand that

I think the laptop is an HP Compaq 8220, but I don't know the exact specs yet. The owner forgot to bring the charger.

Everyone else, thanks for tips and heads ups.

You can get the full model# on a label stuck to the bottom of the laptop and post it here. It's enough to look the specs up with.

If it's a 8220 I think (about 90% sure) it will have a PATA drive. It was releases the same time as my nx6110 and all the HP laptops still had PATA at the time.

[Bo Rosén]

You can get the full model# on a label stuck to the bottom of the laptop and post it here. It's enough to look the specs up with.

The owner took it back with to make sure he got the right charger... Maybe tomorrow

[Bo Rosén]

If it's a 8220 I think (about 90% sure) it will have a PATA drive. It was releases the same time as my nx6110 and all the HP laptops still had PATA at the time.

Right, no more than I expected then. I'm sure I can find a use for the SATA drive anyway.

[Bo Rosén]

Well, the laptop is now sitting in my lap, albeit upside down so I can see the label. So after a quick google this is what I have

http://www.dazzit.com/item/en/US/Not...P-PY515ET-AK8/

Except, it's now running Lubuntu 12.10. It's no fun installing Linux anymore, too easy

I'll definitely get more ram (once I sort out what I can use), 2 gigs of DDR 2 isn't going to break my finances.
I'm looking at these, but not sure it they are the right kind, they look to be too fast: http://www.komplett.se/k/ki.aspx?sku=312372#extra

And a wireless dongle.

[kurt18947]

Congrats. Your machine may be middle-aged, it's nowhere near ancient. And yes, more RAM may help but depending on what you do with it, you might have something like HTOP running in a terminal minimized and check it occasionally for RAM usage. Even on your machine's senior (P3 1.1 ghz.) with 512 MB. RAM it seldom uses swap running openSUSE 32bit.