Which? Distro!

[subversplat]

So, I'm abandoning Debian for something interesting to play with

What's good out there. I already know the basics and don't really want to spend fifteen thousand hours tweaking knobs and buttons (hence dropping Debian), and I want it to be pretty and reasonably simple to install.

My hardware is old and odd - a Sony PCG-N505X (128mb ram, celly 333 processor, 40gig hdd) which limits things a bit.

Just looking for recommendations really. I'm downloading kanotix now to try that. Ubuntu just borks on me when I try and boot the cd

Cheers!

 

[jayeola]

http://blagblagblag.org. go for the stable series called 30k. Alpha is under heavy development right now. regarding the cd did you check the iso image and the cd media? There are also a number of boot parameter that you can pass to the installer to detect/not detect you hardware if required.

 

[Jonti]

The main issue for less powerful hardware is the GUI, of course. If you run a light-weight GUI like XFCE you could use almost any distro, at the cost of losing some of the advantages of GUI integration.

Or you could use something like zenwalk which is built around XFCE in the first place. It's advertised as needing a Pentium III (your 333MHz should be fine) with 128 MB RAM and a 2GB HDD. I've installed it, just the once, and played around with it a tad. It looks

 

[jæd]

Ubuntu just borks on me when I try and boot the cd

You need to look into why it just "borks"... If it does this with Ubuntu, chances are you've either incorrectly d/l'd the cd or your cd drive is "borked"...

 

[lobster]

i would go for something like dsl , puppy linux , slackware, have a look on distrowatch.com if you can, and check out the light distros.
As a windows manager, i would use fluxbox, nice and easy to learn , every window can be tabbed nicely together , it runs well, if you rely on a gnome//kde app, you can run them from there, whithout having to load the whole kde/gnome enviroment, you will need gnome/kde libs to run the apps though.

i use fluxbox on a amd64 , as it just organises my windows and is not intrusive , which is what i like in a gui, there are some transparancy effect if i want to use them, but there more of a nuisance than anything else.

i cringe at some of the 3d shiny toys that are happening in xgl, like flipping a window and sticking a note on the back, i have no problem just using alt-tab and getting a text editor/word proccessor up, it suits me fine.

 

[subversplat]

You need to look into why it just "borks"... If it does this with Ubuntu, chances are you've either incorrectly d/l'd the cd or your cd drive is "borked"...

I'll tell you why, having done some research...

The vaio n505x has a pcmcia cdrom drive, which a) needs paramaters passing to the boot loader (ide2=0x180) and b) needs some form of "nopcmcia" parameter being passed too, else the hardware probe screws with the cd operation.

This seems impossible

kanopix dies even with all the above when it gets to loading a certain part too (similar problem I'm thinking).

Ubuntu server installs OK from the CD, but that's more setting up hassle. I'm trying these shiny new insta-linuxes on purpose! If I wanted to fiddle I'd put Debian back on.

Downloading the Gentoo livecd now to see if that works.

The only livecd that's alright so far is the INSERT rescue disk

I hate this laptop

 

[jæd]

I'll tell you why, having done some research...

The vaio n505x has a pcmcia cdrom drive, which a) needs paramaters passing to the boot loader (ide2=0x180) and b) needs some form of "nopcmcia" parameter being passed too, else the hardware probe screws with the cd operation.

Have you tried the alternate install disk...? How about using a usb hard disk...? You could probably even try getting a 1gb usb stick and installing from that.

 

[subversplat]

Sadly that's all money I've not got.

I've got a cheap, old laptop, a pcmcia cdrom drive and a big stack of blank cdrs Thankfully I've managed to hole myself up around someone's house with broadband so I can download all this stuff and use their computer to access the internet while I'm getting my lappy going.

I'll get the alternate install disk, and some other distros to try too (I'll have downloaded seven of the buggers by the time this one finishes (knoppix))

 

[lobster]

dyne:bolic seems a nice distro as which is live and installable, and has smallish requirements, its not as small as dsl or puppy linux, but its not bad , i have not tried the distro, but i have tried muse which is part of the distro and also separate for others to use, its works well, if your into streaming audio.

 

[spudulike]

How about an i686 optimised distro? I use Arch. It is just as fast as Yoper and Gentoo. Noticeably faster than all the i386 distros. You can install a base system then decide to install xorg and the window manager of your choice.

 

[lobster]

How about an i686 optimised distro? I use Arch. It is just as fast as Yoper and Gentoo. Noticeably faster than all the i386 distros. You can install a base system then decide to install xorg and the window manager of your choice.

good point

 

[subversplat]

How about an i686 optimised distro? I use Arch. It is just as fast as Yoper and Gentoo. Noticeably faster than all the i386 distros. You can install a base system then decide to install xorg and the window manager of your choice.

I'll look into this i686 stuff. I don't want to be put in charge of choosing window managers and the like though. I can fiddle with command lines and get a box to do what I want until the cows come home server-wise, but when it comes to customising a window environment my eyes just glaze over. I want the distro to choose something which someone else thinks looks really nice and easy to use that I can just get along with Hence going for these livecd options.

 

[jæd]

I'll look into this i686 stuff. I don't want to be put in charge of choosing window managers and the like though. I can fiddle with command lines and get a box to do what I want until the cows come home server-wise, but when it comes to customising a window environment my eyes just glaze over. I want the distro to choose something which someone else thinks looks really nice and easy to use that I can just get along with Hence going for these livecd options.

How did it go with the alternate cd...? And have you tried asking questions in the Ubunto forums...? Dapper is very, very good stuff...

Oh, and if you want to increase performance in Ubuntu, just use the 686 optimised kernals...

 

[subversplat]

How did it go with the alternate cd...? And have you tried asking questions in the Ubunto forums...? Dapper is very, very good stuff...

Oh, and if you want to increase performance in Ubuntu, just use the 686 optimised kernals...

The alternate CD is going now. "Selecting and installing software" which is promising.

Then I've got the fun of trying to get the PCMCIA slot to be both the cdrom, the ethernet and the wifi depending on where I am

 

[subversplat]

And it's installed! And it reboots! And it.... crashes

Time to mess with the grub config see what's going on in there then.

*sigh*

 

[lobster]

How did it go with the alternate cd...? And have you tried asking questions in the Ubunto forums...? Dapper is very, very good stuff...

Oh, and if you want to increase performance in Ubuntu, just use the 686 optimised kernals...

there is more to 686 than an optimised kernel like the apps

 

[subversplat]

If anybody's still interested in the soap opera of my laptop and linux, I've got a GUI!

Just only when the cdrom is unplugged

 

[subversplat]

Now I just need to get the ethernet working

It's recognised in the pcmcia slot, and appears in the device manager, but I've not got the foggiest how to get eth0 through it.

Have posted on the ubuntu forums but now they've crashed. Bollocks.

 

[rich!]

So, I'm abandoning Debian for something interesting to play with

Debian - for when you've got better things to do than fixing computers

 

[jayeola]

And now time for the obligatory fluxbox screenshots....
http://www.jayeola.org/Coppermine/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=11
http://www.jayeola.org/Coppermine/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=13
http://howtoforge.com/image/tid/44

 

[lobster]

my fluxbox background changes every 240 seconds or whatever i put in the python script

its this if anyones interested

#!/usr/bin/python
import os,random, time
paths=['/mnt/allix/photos']
images=[]
for path in paths:
  if os.path.isdir(path)==False: continue
  for root,dirs,files in os.walk(path):
    for name in files:
      images.append(os.path.join(root,name))

while True:
  os.system('fbsetbg -f "%s"'%images[random.randint(0,len(images))])
  time.sleep(240)

chmod 755 nameofscript.py

then set
session.screen0.rootCommand: nameofscript.py
in your ~/.fluxbox/init

 

[subversplat]

Is there no end to the problems!?

I've got the cdrom working now, I've even got the pcmcia slot to be able to hot swap to ethernet and have gotten the lappy on the internet, the only thing now is that everything is soundly ignoring resolv.conf

Browsing the forums again but it's odd. I can get to IPs, but can't resolve anything.

Still, things are looking up!

 

[subversplat]

Fixed it