[ltp] Re: ISO Suggestions for 750P

[Daniel Pittman]

"Chris Schumann" <cschumann@twp-llc.com> writes:

> I've got a ThinkPad 750P here that holds a special place in my geek
> heart.  It's my first PC ever, and I want to put Linux on it.
>
> It's got a 33MHz 486, 12GB disk (BIOS sees 8GB), 36MB RAM, a WD90C24
> video chip with 1MB VRAM, and a CS4248 audio chip, and an untethered
> pen.
>
> I've tried Gentoo (the pain!), Debian and Slackware. I have a floppy
> drive and network card, so a lot of distributions start installing
> just fine.
>
> I'd like to get ALL the devices working. I know it won't be fast, and
> I know the svga driver hasn't been ported to the current X
> distributions.
>
> I know some of you have been using Linux on ThinkPads for a LONG time,
> so, what are my best options? (besides recycling)

Honestly, it makes very little real difference which distribution you
use -- most of the resource use will be in the graphical software you
intend to run.

Oh, and the VESA driver should work fine for non-accelerated output to
that display, since it only maps the screen in and does everything by
hand.


Two suggestions: you might consider using this as an X terminal, which
is only responsible for local display.  The real software could run on a
more capable machine and provide a much nicer experience.


Second, consider ditching X.  It may only be three to five MB of
libraries and X server code, but on that hardware that represents ten or
fifteen percent of your available memory.

The console works, and you can probably have a nicer and more pleasant
experience working directly on that.  I believe you can even have a
graphical web browser these days, with GTK/DirectFB or by using w3m or
similar and their console graphics helpers.


Finally, you might find that a 2.4 kernel helps with reducing kernel
resource use, although I don't expect it.  A 2.2 kernel probably would,
but finding a distribution that supports it would be hard these days.

Regards,
        Daniel
-- 
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