Absolute Beginners Beginnnig Question

**Complete** · July 28th, 2010

I have an old Sony Vaio Desktop from 2001.
I have installed Ubuntu and I have several questions.

The computer has 124 megs of memory and has one hard drive of about 100 gigs. Is Ubuntu the best choice for a Linux distribution? It seems to run a little slowly.

How do I set up internet connection? I launched FireFox and I tried a few web sites. I have not tested the new connection to my router. I would like to try to see if the software is set up before I test my cable connection on my other computer. How do I do this?

I have an old Lexmark all-in-one printer that had worked with the old Windows XP OS. How do I get a printer driver for Ubuntu?

**cascade9** · July 28th, 2010

124MB is way to small for ubuntu. 10.04, the newest version, recommends 1GB. Even Lubuntu (which is the lightest version of ubuntu) wont like 124MB of RAM. It should run a lot better than ubuntu, but still, 124MB is pretty small.

**k3lt01** · July 28th, 2010

Ubuntu 10.04 wont install easily with 256mg RAM so it wont install on less.

100 gb is a good size hdd.

If you want to try an Ubuntu type OS try Lubuntu. If not you could try something like Damn Small Linux (DSL).

To help you with your other questions we really need to know your hardware. Read this sticky and that will give you an idea of the information we will need and how you can supply it for us.

**earthpigg** · July 28th, 2010

http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/a...linux-distros/

i googled "list of lightweight linux distributions 2010" and that was the most promising-looking result on the first page. "new" lists like that pop up every 6 months or so, about 7 or 8 distributions on the verious "OMGLIGHTWEIGHTLINUX!" lists are identical. i linked to this particular list because i don't want to make any decisions for you.

however: Puppy Linux is on just about every similar list compiled over the last 3 or 4 years, and that is the one I am inclined to suggest. From a LiveCD, it runs at about the speed of ram.

ram is faster than sound, but slower than light. (i jest, i jest.... but puppy is indeed very fast, even on old hardware.)

**earthpigg** · July 28th, 2010

ew, google results for puppy are broken.

here: http://www.puppylinux.com/

and if you don't want to do any research or clicking, and go right to the .iso download: http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/...x/puppy-5.0.1/

**Complete** · July 28th, 2010

I managed to get Lucid Puppy up and running. It is a nice little OS. I like it.

I removed the CD and rebooted and Ubuntu came back. So... WHA DAH HUH?

I guess I was just running off of an OS completely loaded into memory?!

How do I "INSTALL" Lucid Puppy? By this I mean, how do I "INSTALL" Lucid Puppy so it will run off the hard drive?

**earthpigg** · July 28th, 2010

Originally Posted by Complete

I guess I was just running off of an OS completely loaded into memory?!

ya, pretty cool huh? get my 'speed of ram' joke above, now?

How do I "INSTALL" Lucid Puppy? By this I mean, how do I "INSTALL" Lucid Puppy so it will run off the hard drive?

it's been a while, but that happened to me too. i think i finally got it on my third try -- the key for me was to very carefully read all of the information on the screen at every prompt.

the puppy developers don't seem to buy into the notion that users should be able to just click 'next next next next' and have it done.

**Complete** · July 30th, 2010

That is cute. Running off of memory. But it still reads information from the hard drive even if I boot from the CD.

I think, based on some digging, I need to redo my installation and run something called the Puppy Universal Installer (which I have done -- only wrongly) and quit when I get to the point where it is installing something called the GRUB.

I did not do that and now I see two options. I have to either wipe my hard drive completely from the command line or find a way to edit some files.

I know how to get to the Linux command line. What is the command to get to the root directory? What is the command to format the disk?

**2uk_** · July 30th, 2010

I think you should run DOS

**soldier1st** · August 3rd, 2010

Running DOS is a bad idea and Ubuntu won't run on 124MB ram, puppy linux can and a few others but if you could i would upgrade your memory on it and i have a laptop of similar age but it only has 30GB HDD but it has 512MB but Ubuntu feels slow on it.