[ltp] Best distro for 760XD

[Richard Neill]

Mendel Cooper wrote:
> I just picked up a 760XD Thinkpad for a few bucks. Just wondering
> what would be the best Linux distro to install on it.
> 
> Specs for the 760XD:
> 166 MHz Pentium MMX
> 64M memory (could upgrade to 80M or 104)
> 12" 1024x768 screen
> 2 Gb HD (could upgrade to 3 or 4, if necessary)
> 
> The main problem is that it can't boot from the CD drive.
> Can't have CD drive and floppy plugged in at the same time, either.
> This means I have to use something like loadlin.exe to boot from.
> 
> Now, I could always install Red Hat 9, current as of 2-1/2 years ago,
> but I'd rather do something a bit more up to date.
> 
> Damn Small Linux maybe?
> 
> What would you people recommend?
> 
> Thanks.


I know that Mandriva can be installed from floppy+network (see the 
readme for the installer). I imagine this is true for most other distros 
too. See also: 
http://thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installation_on_ThinkPads_without_CD-ROM_drive



I've just tried a similar problem - trying to install on a mini-itx box 
with a 1GB CF card instead of an HDD. (of course, I have the advantage 
of a faster processor, and lots of RAM, but the bloat is still the 
same).  You can get a working Mandriva base system down to 400MB at 
install time, which is smaller than any of the other major distros I 
tried (Suse,Fedora and Ubuntu all crashed out of the installer by 
running out of disk space, even using the smallest number of packages I 
could select)

However, something like puppy linux or DSL may be a better choice. I 
recall having used Zipslack some time ago.

I would suggest the following:

1)2GB of HDD is ample - or should be, provided that 1GB suffices for 
your data.

2)Icewm is probably the best small window-manager. It's quite user 
friendly - but *fast*.

3)Upgrade the RAM if you possibly can. [Datapoint: KDE on a P266 with 
96MB of RAM is *just about* usable]

4)Smaller apps will give better performance. Eg Dillo is blazingly fast.

Best wishes,

Richard