Next Question: Is it my lousy gerbil-powered computer?

JohnOfArc yustabeme at bellsouth.net
Sun May 15 06:49:17 UTC 2005


On Sat, 14 May 2005 15:02:39 -0700, Robert A. Weppner wrote:

> 
> So, I guess my question is:  If I uninstall Win98 to free up some memory,
> and then *install* Ubuntu from the Install disk I burned, what do we think
> the chances are that it will load up and function properly?
> 
removing W98 will free up disk space, but won't free up memory (ram)

> If it matters, the aforesaid Gerbil XX1000 has 2.1 G hard drive, a
> blinding 48 MB of RAM, and a dazzling 166mHz chip.
> 
I have an amd K5 (pentium rating 133) with 96 mb ram. I tried several
distros, including Slackware, Mandrake, and Debian- all installed
successfully, but even with a bare-bones install using a lightweight
window manager I can't say actually using any of them was a pleasant
experience. Currently it's booting Debian with fluxbox, but I have to be
careful what apps I try to use- e.g. Firefox takes several minutes to
load, and most gtk/qt apps (think Gnome and KDE) aren't viable. I'm not
saying it's not usable, there are alternatives such as links-hacked or
Dillo for browsing, but OpenOffice is completely out of the equation on
that box.

I'd recommend more ram (128 mb if you can), perhaps a larger hard
drive, and a distro specifically designed for older hardware- by far the
most responsive install on my K5 was Vectorlinux, which is Slack based
(and is really amazing- unfortunately, I wasn't comfortable with Slack, I
really need/want an easier package management tool such as urpmi or apt).
Install this one just to give you a baseline to judge everything else by!

http://www.vectorlinux.com/index.php

here's a table comparing requirements for different versions

http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/vectorlinux/docs/miscellaneous/version_table.html

another one to consider is 

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ Debian/Knoppix, hd installable, live cd (50
meg bootable business card, also burns to regular cd); you'd mentioned you
were using Ubuntu as a live cd, so you might try it that way before doing
an actual install







More information about the ubuntu-users mailing list