Thinkpads Forum

First, I am no Linux grand master. I've been a Linux user for six years now and I like to download and look over different Linux distros.
The Ubuntu project is focused on user friendliness. Many newbies start out with one of the Ubuntu family (Xubuntu is popular for example).

I play with Slax, [censored] Small Linux (DSL, which is dormant at this time), Suse, Fedora, the newer project xPud, and many others.

The distro I find is best all around for "try it out" newbies is a small distro called Puppy Linux. The Puppy project is strongly focused on compact size, speed of boot and speed of operation. It's very feasible for someone with DSL or Cable Internet to download and burn it to CD. It's very good for breathing new life into older computers, a second focus of the Puppy Project. Each time I am impressed all over again by a new version of Puppy, the next version impresses me all over again. A third focus is user friendly.

Puppy Linux 4.31, most recent version, remains small, auto loads itself into RAM memory, so long as you have 128MB or more RAM and runs from RAM. It is amazing how much of Puppy the project has managed to automate.

Users can now have Puppy install itself onto a USB Flash stick! I use 4.31 daily for surfing and general use. Yet, I have the entire distro, programs, & data installed onto a 2GB flash stick with plenty of room left to add programs, data, temp files.

I originally installed Puppy onto an 8GB stick but found that overkill, moved it to 2GB and installed the newest Knoppix to the 8GB stick.

If I were a newbie, I would skip [censored] Small Linux. Its been dormant about two years now. I think it will prove abandoned. I'd go right to Puppy,
a much smaller user friendly distro (but less user friendly than Puppy or Ubuntu) is xPud. It really is ready to use in under 10 seconds even on an old Pentium III Compaq. The downside of starting out with Ubuntu is it is big. It takes much longer than Puppy to boot up, needs more RAM and you get irritating delays as it uses the Live CD like a hard drive. In my opinion, Ubuntu is one of the bloated Linux Distros. Puppy is more user friendly minus the bloat many Linux distros have been gaining, trying to ape Microsoft Windows desktop.

NOTE: Puppy is designed to work fast from a CD. For older PCs that cannot boot from USB devices, Puppy on CD is fine so long as the PC has over 128MB usable RAM. For pre-Pentium IV PCs, users say older pre Puppy 4 versions are better.

--Bruised

It takes 256MB to boot current versions of Puppy totally in RAM. It's DSL that would boot to RAM with only 128MB, and some of the earlier versions of Puppy. That said, I run a frugal Puppy on a 600 Thankpad with 128MB all day every day, and performance is very acceptable.

I love Linux, I really really do.

So don't take this the wrong way but:

Upgrade the RAM to something atleast marginally useful like 512MB.

Heck my old PII laptop can handle 512 and I hade a Toshiba with a 266MHz Pentium MMX that could handle 256 and I was able to run SuSE and Mandrake on it back in the day.

There comes a time when the hardware is too old to be used in the modern web connected world. That being said I do use an ancient Powerbook 5300cs for writing stuff and it has 24MB of RAM. However it runs software designed for and *released* in it's era and it runs nice and speedy. There is a time when users *gasp* simply ask too much from the old hardware. If you don't plan on connecting to the net then I would go ahead and load up something like RH5 or Suse 6 or something equally ancient.

The point?

The machine is still very useful.

If the proper software is run on it.

^ totally agree with Temetka.

You might want to check out Tiny Core Linux.
It's kind of an inofficial successor to DSL.

What a neat looking little distro.

I will be checking it out.

Temetka wrote:

Heck my old PII laptop can handle 512 and I hade a Toshiba with a 266MHz Pentium MMX that could handle 256 and I was able to run SuSE and Mandrake on it back in the day.

The next stop is....Memory Lane...

Would you believe me if I told you that I still have Mandrake (7.1 if I recall, but may be waaaaaaaaaaay off here) on original FDDs, sitting in the original box with manuals...along with Corel Linux which has yet to be unsealed and used...

Yes I would believe you.

Somewhere around here I have boxed copy of SuSE 6 that came on both CD and Floppy. It also included a SuSE mousepad and pin. I've always loved SuSE.