[ltp] Linux for old Thinkpads: Slackware? Vector? Zenwalk? Something else?

[Nate Bargmann]

* Alex Wenzel <cacx1999@gmx.net> [2005 Dec 31 19:06 -0600]:
> Hi,
> 
> (I already posted this, but since it didn't show up for almost 24 hours, I
> presume the mail got lost. If it shows up twice for others, I apologize.
> Happy New Year, everybody!)
> 
> I'd like to install Linux on two old Thinkpads (760XL/P166MMX/104MB and
> 390E/probably PII-300/128 or 192 MB) and thought a Slackware-based distro
> would be the best (only?) place to start. But which one? Genuine Slackware,
> Vector, Zenwalk are only examples.

Slackware or Debian are good  choices.  I ran Debian Testing on my 390E
with 192 MiB of RAM up until February of this year (broken hinge so I
bought a T23) and it worked fine.  I used IceWM and things ran
reasonably well.  I also ran Debian up until a few years ago on a
760ED.

I don't know that Debian would be necessarily slower than Slackware,
but it may be useful to build a leaner kernel.  Debian can be made
quite lean with judicious package selection.  The packaging system
takes up quite a bit of disk space and Slackware's trade-off is that it
installs the header files with each package.

I recently put Sarge on a Compaq Armada 1750 and it runs fine with
IceWM and Ethereal as a network monitor.  I'm not afraid of the later
2. 6 kernels on older hardware as they seem to be quite efficient.

Have fun!

- Nate >>

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