Ubuntu in the News: Test of distributions for an old laptop

Matt Zimmerman mdz at ubuntu.com
Sun May 21 18:39:01 BST 2006


On Sat, May 20, 2006 at 05:08:15PM -0400, Lee Revell wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-05-20 at 13:47 -0700, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > On Fri, May 19, 2006 at 08:55:41PM +0200, Christian Jensen wrote:
> > > Armed with a 800 megahertz Celeron, 10 gigabyte hard drive and 128 
> > > megabytes of RAM, Fedora Core, Gentoo, (K)Ubuntu and OpenSUSE and 
> > > VectorLinux are being tested.
> > > 
> > > http://www.linuxforums.org/desktop/a_linux_distribution_for_an_old_laptop.html
> > > 
> > > "Kubuntu / Ubuntu: 3/10 points
> > > http://www.ubuntu.com
> > > Advantages: One of the easiest install routines.
> > > Disadvantages: Fairly sizable footprint (2 gigabytes PLUS user space). 
> > > Very few options for installation to minimize footprint. I was not able 
> > > to get this installed successfully on my laptop."
> > 
> > He was unable to install it because he created a partition which was
> > (slightly) smaller than the minimum requirements, then gave up when it ran
> > out of space.
> 
> 1. He was not able to find any documentation of the minimum requirements

They're in the help screens when the CD is first booted and printed on the
CD covers.  If you have an idea where they could be made even more obvious,
contact the documentation team (CCed).

> 2. Isn't it a bug that the installer fails to check available space?

It does check, but it is more difficult than you might expect to calculate
the _exact_ requirements, so it is an estimate.  In this case, it looks like
the user had nearly enough space, but not quite.

-- 
 - mdz



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