what linux distro for a weak laptop?

[Przemek_Sperling]

I use an old laptop. The hardware specs are not impressive (HP nx6110 - Celeron M 1.4 GHz, 768 mb RAM memory, 40 gb HDD, etc.) I love it because it is a very well built. The upper part of the laptop is made of metal, the original battery from 2006 can run the laptop for almost 3 hours (OCCT CPU burning), the keyboard is very comfortable. The speakers are far better than most laptops use nowadays.
I decided to replace my Windows XP and Office 2003 with Linux and LibreOffice (I use it together with Office 2007 when I work with my workstation at home and I find it pretty OK).
I tried some live CDs/DVDs and some my thoughts:
- I do not like GNOME (Ubuntu disappointed me a bit)
- LXDE iz blazingly fast but the look resembles me Windows 2000
- I like KDE very much. Wow! looks and feels better that my Windows 7 at my workstation
- I have tested some distros (openSUSE 11.4, SimplyMEPIS released yesterday, Linux Mint 10 Julia KDE Edition) and Linux Mint is IMO the best among the three
- I will have to use some proprietary drivers (Broadcom B43 wireless network & Canon Pixma drivers), the rest of hardware works out of the box
- I will have to change some default software because Firefox does not impress me much and I prefer Chromium and Opera, GIMP drives me mad but I love digiKam
- I do not know what would the best for playing movies, I currently use jetAudio and Divx H.264 decoder so I can play movies up to 720p)
- I will have to think about the partitioning of the HDD and what file system (ext4?) to use

Is anything better for a rookie than Linux Mint? I thought about Pardus but I see that would have problems with this distro (no repos with software I wanna use).

[smok3]

the kde-mint is supposed to be great (i did not test), if you like kde that is. I have some doubts on how fast will kde run on a system like that thought.

i would probably try an older ubuntu, like 10.04 LTS and see if that is fast enough.

For video playback is mplayer (command line) or VLC when you are in a clicky clicky mode, or some scripts you can write for mplayer so it becames clicky clicky as well.

That said i do prefer gnome & nautilus, even if it is a bit simple for today's standards (especially since it is very easy to mount remote ssh locations).

chromium should work fine (it is in official repos in 11.04), i think i used 3rd party ppas (if you want to run 10.04) before.

Only my opinion.

[Sharktooth]

try pclinuxos (KDE spin)

[Przemek_Sperling]

Thank you. I think I will download and install PCLinuxOS. I tried to install Linux Mint 10 KDE Edition yesterday but I could not do it. The DVD worked very well in live mode, but when I tried to install the distro on the HDD the installer could not recognize the Synaptics touchpad. I connected my old wired mouse (I use a Genius 905BT wireless mouse with the laptop and Win XP), but I could not switch the language from English to Polish. I decided to continue anyway, but the partitioned hanged unexpecedly. I tried two DVDs and redewnloaded the ISO image from another server but the symptoms are identical, so I think that this distro is not for me and I will look for something different.

I have no idea why the installer behaves so weird. The hardware is rather standard (after lspci) the system shows such hardware:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev d3)
00:1e.2 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1e.3 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 03)
02:04.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
02:06.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515 Cardbus Controller
02:06.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
02:0e.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)

[talen9]

I'd suggest XUbuntu: nice hardware support, and XFCE desktop in place of Gnome from the original Ubuntu that you don't like :)

I have a Compaq NX 6XXX (don't remember the exact model as of now, but it's more or less of the same age as yours) and XFCE has always worked like a charm, it behaved decently even when it only had 256MBytes of RAM (with the upgrade to 512, it flies!) :)

[Przemek_Sperling]

Thanks for your precious advice! I have to mention about a distro that impressed me MUCH, however, it is a bit buggy (the bugs will be cleaned in 3-4 weeks). The name of the distro is Bodhi Linux and it is described here: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/opensource/bodhi-linux-e17-and-ubuntu-make-a-great-combination/2339 It is based on Ubuntu LTS bit and Enlightment. I have to say wow! because:
1. it is beautiful
2. it is damn fast. I installed it on my HDD without any tweaking, the partition were automatically made by the OS. I installed a lot of software, because I wanted to check how the OS performs under load. With a lot of trash installed it is MUCH faster than a fresh installation of Windows XP!
3. it is highly configurable
4. all my hardware works out of the box
5. the installation of new software is easy, just go to with any browser (but Midori is the best) http://www.bodhilinux.com/software/doku.php and install the software

The release is a bit buggy, e.g. so called Polish language pack is a mix of Polish (around 90% of strings are translated) and English. The above installation of software works if you download some updates via synaptic first. Most bugs (some pretty annoying) should be cleaned till the end of May. As I said I am really impressed!

[smok3]

As I said I am really impressed!
what about?

[Przemek_Sperling]

I am sorry I am so late with my reply. I am impressed because I tested some very snappy distros (like VectorLinux) but they looked spartan. I tested some aestetically pleasing ones and that worked out of the box but they were resource hungry and slow. Bodhi is quick, relatively small, recognizes all my hardware out of the box and looks great.

[jaydeee]

I would only suggestion on your media player, try Video on LAN or simply VLC player.

[Motenai Yoda]

I'm using mint 10 Lxde, and smplayer...

[Blue_MiSfit]

I'm a big fan of Xubuntu. Still, if you plan on doing things like watching flash video, Windows XP is probably the very best bet.

I was working on a very slow old desktop - preparing it for donation actually. It was a 1.4 GHz Pentium 4 with 128MB of SD SDRAM (this was the really cheap alternative to RDRAM when the P4 first came out, but it was slooooooow). I tried several flavors of linux, but none could watch youtube videos smoothly. I switched to XP and volia, no problem.

Derek

[smok3]

with youtube one can partially avoid flash, due to beta html5 thingy (but most/a lot other sites are still flash video only).

[Blue_MiSfit]

Yep, when I say YouTube I really mean web video in general, which, by and large, is still Flash based. :)

[kalehrl]

I've recently installed Lubuntu on my laptop (intel pentium 1500MHz, 256MB RAM, 40GB hdd) and I'm very pleased with it.