More mileage from an ancient machine

[SteVe Cook]

David Vincent wrote:
> 
> I actually have that laptop.  I've maxed it out with 144mb of RAM and it 
> has a 6gb drive.  Xubuntu works great on it however be warned that you 
> will likely never get the soundcard to work on it under Ubuntu.  I've 
> run Dapper, Edgy and Feisty on it, all worked fine.  Maybe it is just me 
> but I feel Feisty runs fastest.
> 
> Sounds like your friend is not much of a power user - that's good.  
> OpenOffice takes a lot of RAM and that is really where this machine is 
> lacking.  :)  As long as they are happy using one app at a time they 
> should be fine.  I also run Xubuntu on an IBM Thinkpad E390 with 256mb 
> of RAM and it runs quite a bit better than the Dell.
> 
> If you want some more tips on setting up Xubuntu on that laptop msg me 
> offlist and I'll see what I can dig up from my notes.  BTW my Dell is a 
> P2-266.
> 
I have installed Xubuntu on a few older and ancient machines and I'm 
surprised how well things run, as long as you don't start opening 
windows everywhere or want a great multi media experience.
Make sure you use the alternative disc and be patient when installing. 
The process can appear to stall, just leave it even overnight if needed. 
  Where Xubuntu won't install I've found Zenwalk often does.

A couple of tricks I've found useful are:
If you can borrow some extra memory out of another machine for the 
installation process it can make life a lot easier.
Take the drive out of the older machine and put it in a new one to carry 
out the install.  Install Linux-image-386 and change the display driver 
to VGA, in xorg.conf, and then put it back in the old machine. Once back 
in the older machine you can edit xorg.conf for the the appropriate 
driver.  I've also found that 8 bit depth is good enough for  office 
type work and speeds things up a bit.

Good luck and do make sure you have enough patience ready for the task 
before you start :-)

steve