I have a Sammy VM8000 lappy with a Celery 900 processor and ~128 megs of RAM.

It has been running DSL, but this is frankly too basic for my needs. TBH Im not very good at Linux and while I am getting better I am not yet ready for a distro which is quite that cut back and manual.

I tried to put Ubuntu on it, but neither Edgy nor Feisty will boot the liveCD, presumably because the laptop is just too primative.

Can anyone suggest a distro which is soft and fluffy enough for an idiot like me to use (read, has GUI setup for important bits and a mostly automagic install system) yet basic enough to run on my old laptop.

Oh as an added complication the laptop only has direct access to tinterweb when I am at home at my rents house, so preferably something I can download, burn to CD and install offline.

thanks all

opensuse, Hardware support is top notch, much better than Ubuntu.  Full graphical setup, and gives you the option to install either Gnome or KDE when you set it up.  

For anything less than 1.2Ghz, youll probably be better off with a 2.4 series kernel distro and and a lightweight window manager - basically dont expect to run either KDE or Gnome. You might be be able to boot an even older Ubuntu, such as Warty or Hoary, and just swap out the kernel and WM post-install.

Quote from: skidzillaFor anything less than 1.2Ghz, youll probably be better off with a 2.4 series kernel distro and and a lightweight window manager - basically dont expect to run either KDE or Gnome. You might be be able to boot an even older Ubuntu, such as Warty or Hoary, and just swap out the kernel and WM post-install.

hmm, i dont know.  The P733 ive got ticking over as my Suse box works perfectly.  Not the fastest thing in the world, but it works well enough that I dont get window stutter, and general usage is fine.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39621
^PC-BSD then?

Black Box on Slackware! Compile a Kernel on another PC then just copy it over! Its how Ive done it on old laptops. We have a nice 600Mhz laptop very basic running it at the moment with no problems!

thanks for the ideas guys,

Poison, when I finally get around to spending some serious time working out how all this works that is probably the sort of thing Ill do, for now it is beyond my meagre abilitys.


I have had Ubuntu 5, whichever one that was, on this laptop before but it was pretty slow. I tried the OpenSuse Internet install this morning but it always crashes on about 85% of the initial installer download. Ill try downloading the full thing.

I think I still have disks for Suse 8.2 somewhere, perhaps Ill try that. Since the machine is almost never connected to the net, security is almost a non-issue. All I really want is some Lyx, Latex and some sort of MP3/OGG and DivX player software. Oh yes (and this is the point at which DSL falls down) the ability to get what I create off the laptop onto some other media would be useful. Could never get so much as a floppy disk to mount under DSL.

Wireless PCMCIA Card?

Btw Ive found a laptop that just hates all things nix. Tryed 4 diffrent releases all with diffrent Kernel builds and the moment I tryed to do anything after X booted the laptop turned of couldnt even pull up a Xterm So a Windows install on that one Meh

Quote from: Poison_UKWireless PCMCIA Card?

Btw Ive found a laptop that just hates all things nix. Tryed 4 diffrent releases all with diffrent Kernel builds and the moment I tryed to do anything after X booted the laptop turned of couldnt even pull up a Xterm So a Windows install on that one Meh

Interesting, I think I have your laptops evil (or good?) twin. My lappy doesnt like anything Windoze. She is stable as a rock under any form of Linux I can get to boot (basically limited to DSL atm) but flaky as a well known folded chocolate bar in the sun under Windows 98, XP or NT4.

Quote from: MongooseAll I really want is some Lyx, Latex and some sort of MP3/OGG and DivX player software.

If thats all you want, you dont even need to run an Xterm/GUI, both mplayer and Xine can play divx videos etc using just the console framebuffer (fbdev) and other output plugins.