9w - an installer for old computers

[Nio Wiklund]

2014-03-08 14:18, JM skrev:
> On Sat, 08 Mar 2014 13:38:24 +0100
> Nio Wiklund <nio.wiklund at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>> See this link
>>
>> http://phillw.net/isos/linux-tools/9w/
>>
>>
>> 1. What computer will run at all, will be able to do some 'real work',
>> etc? It might be worth the effort just for the sake of knowledge.
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I can tell about a recent experience with a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo-EL N243S9 
> laptop, known as one of the AMILO EL 6800 at the http://support.ts.fujitsu.com/index.asp
> place.
> 
> I came with 256 MB ram and a Celeron 2Ghz. I have installed Bento, it was heating, and
> quite long. Once installed it was not comfortable for use. I removed all possible items
> to gain speed, such as update-notifier and other tools which we can manage without them,
> replaced lxpanel by tint2 (which is permanently installed and ready to go, just a switch
> of files in the autostart directory of the user is needed), and same for pcmanfm, I
> switched to feh displaying the background and finally I configured the eth0 internet
> connection in the interfaces file of /etc/network/ and removed
> nm-applet/network-gnome-manager.
> 
> The issue would more come from the cpu than from the ram, by the way. Anyhow I added 512
> MB which I found in my stock and that started to be better. Better means the cpu is
> reaching 100% use when using Synaptic, or while apt-get install is at the install stage
> of the process. Else than that, Firefox, Midori, Libreoffice, can be used.
> 
> I had done other things such as cleaning the 2 fans full of dust, removing some screws
> that were having a walk on the motherboard, and added heat paste as none was left.
> 
> I put lxpanel back as well as pcmanfm managing the desktop, and also nm-applet for some
> reasons... met issues with several features without these items.
> 
> I had also tried slim instead of lightdm, but then I could not access to internal
> partitions as simple user anymore : there is probably an issue around a file missing
> in /etc/pam.d : if someone finds out how that should be done, I would like to try to add
> such a slim file, because there is one in Archlinux where no such issue occurs (I use it
> everyday with Slim).
> 
> I would probably leave this system with nodm, but then also the internal partitions
> aren't seen, and the session is not seen as active by ConsoleKit. I don't know what other
> issues can occur from a non active session. I don't have enough knowledge around this
> topic. 
> 
> For older machines I suggest the following distributions, in that order:
> 
> antiX;
> Slitaz;
> Puppy Linux;
> Damn Small Linux.
> 
> 
> Take note of this when you install on another machine:
> 
> by installing on another machine and putting back the hard drive on an older machine, the
> result is often a black screen. What is needed then is boot to init3, and once you get a
> prompt, login into the terminal, fix the graphics, and then you can reboot and login
> to the X session (using a startx command from the init3 stage if needed, with a ~/.xinitrc
> file if needed, which belongs to a package that might not be installed... that might be
> the "xinit" package or something of the kind).
> 
> About antiX : I have installed it to a machine having 192 MB ram and it could not be
> upgraded in ram. The proc was a 800 Mhz Celeron. When I finished tweaking antiX for
> performance (zram configured and sorted out, prelink for Libreoffice), it could be used
> without pain. Therefore I would not suggest lower specs for old machines than 192 MB ram
> and 800 Mhz CPU.
> 
> Here is the zram-config files used in antiX, if some are interested to test it (it can't
> be used in Ubuntu, this is for Debian branded distros which still use rc-sysinit).
> http://meets.free.fr/Downloads/Debian/zramconfig/zram/
> here a tarball containing it all and ready to be unpacked (as root):
> http://meets.free.fr/Downloads/Debian/zramconfig/
> 
> Regards,
> Mélodie
> 

Thank you very much for all this good advice Mélodie :-)

Best regards/Nio