PCs & Mobiles Forum - RE: Freespire( Linux or any other versions being used out there) - Page 2

Yeah, sorry Ad, never clocked your specs in your original post. I'd say that Xubuntu would be great for that. Actually I was telling your story to a Linux mate at work tonight, and he reckoned that other than Xubuntu, you might like to try Zenwalk Linux. He says that too is built for use on older systems, and is very fast. I've never used it myself though.

Nice thing about Linux though, is that there's a distro for every need. Old PC's need never be left behind as OS demands rise. There's always a Linux for those less equipped!

Let us know how you get on.

EDIT: My mate also recommended that DamnSmallLinux too, and after just looking at the site you posted up Admars, I think that looks bang-on for what you need.

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"We gotta go to the crappy planet where I'M the hero"!

This item was edited on Wednesday, 30th May 2007, 21:44

Oooh, here's another good Linux for less powerful PC's....Puppy Linux! I actually have a disc of this somewhere. Here's their Wiki page.
Looks great again for what you need.
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"We gotta go to the crappy planet where I'M the hero"!

This item was edited on Thursday, 31st May 2007, 08:37

haven't had chance to play much yet, but installed XUbuntu Alternative CD on the secondary hard drive, so it is dual booted with Windows 2000.

nice that Firefox is up to date, well until today when 2.0.0.4 came out Also internet browsing worked straight away

tried a DVD and a wmv, no joy there. I'm not giving up hope yet, I need to work out if it's xine is the problem, lack of codecs, video card drivers (3d prophet 4500) os other.

it's weird it tries to start the file, then the screen get's a bit corrupted, then logs me out. so I'll give the other media players i can install easily a go, and look through forums. I've had BSOD on windows PC from playing a divx file so that's not - for XUbuntu

it doesn't seem any faster, but I haven't tweaked it. XP, and 2000 i turned off all the effects, Xubuntu is still drawing solid windows when I move them etc, so I'm sure there is lots of tuning to do

I like the way it installed Firefox, 1 or 2 text editors, and then in the add or remove programs equivalent, in categories them into multimedia, internet etc. and gives a description. if all the programs were just listed alphabetically that could be a complete nightmare, trying to guess what it may do from the icon!

So I'll give it a bit longer, then may give DSL or that Puppy one a go if I can't fix the problems/notice any improvment over Win2k.

Actually the biggest difference was that I get the login prompt within 2 mins of switching on the PC, with XUbuntu, and that's including the time it takes to sit at the menu waiting for a choice! Not sure 2k was that fast when it was installed freshly.

Al

I installed Linux (Ubuntu) for the first time tonight, but I can't say I'll be using it for any real length of time. The amount of p***ing around you have to do just to get things like wireless adaptors working (bloody D600's 1350 wireless mini-lan) etc, it's just not worth the time and effort in my case. Perhaps when I have less on I'll play with it properly, but I spend so much of my time supporting Windows at work that I'm not sure I can be arsed running anything else at home. Probably be worth it eventually as more people move towards Linux, but can you imagine the average home user trying to set up Windows, let alone Ubuntu with it's 'issues'? I can't...

I hear your woes with wireless Chris. It's a common complaint, but unfortunately it's nothing to do with Linux really. Simply put, the manufacturers of these devices have not released their drivers to the open source community yet, so there's nothing anyone can do. Like you say, as time goes on and more make the switch, they'll not be able to ignore it and will have to become involved or get left behind. Even NVidia and ATI now have drivers available in Linux, and that wasn't the case for quite a while.

Ad, I reckon you need to get yer codecs. I'm not sure how it works with Xubuntu, but I'm sure you can just download Automatix as I suggested previously, and get your codecs that way. No OS comes with these things as default unforch, even the mighty Windows. For Xubuntu specific info though, I would certainly recommend the Ubuntu forums for help and assistance.

Keep me posted anyway.
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"We gotta go to the crappy planet where I'M the hero"!

Chris, that's interesting, 'cos my Dell Latitude D610 had no problem using wireless using Ubuntu or Knoppix from boot CDs.

Mark, yeh, this weekend I should have some time to dl codecs etc, and then as you say trawl through ubuntu forums

One thing I forgot to mention, is that I used to use Sun Sparcs, when i was at Uni, and when I go back to using XWindows, I love the multiple desktop feature, either stretched 1 desktop over 4 screens, or 4 desktops you can flick between. I still find it strange Windows hasn't borrowed that yet!

Cheers

Al

I had an Edimax wireless PCMCIA card for the old laptop which uses a Ralink chipset. It seems Ralink were one of the first vendors to work with the open source community and I was able to install drivers without major issues. A Google search found instructions on how to install the drivers.

I've got ubuntu on my laptop dualbooting with xp. Once I got the wireless sorted (thanks to the ubuntuforums.org ) it proved to be an excellent OS. Put it this way, I haven't booted into XP in about 4 months now...

Quote:
Chris, that's interesting, 'cos my Dell Latitude D610 had no problem using wireless using Ubuntu or Knoppix from boot CDs.

If memory serves there are two adaptors, the 2100 and the 1350. The latter of these doesn't work out of the box and requires ndiswrapper and a lot of patience. To be fair I wasn't in the best frame of mind to do it last night after working all day, so I'll probably have another go over the weekend. Rest of it seemed to work okay though, and I quite liked the layout. Just too much messing about with command line for my liking.