[ltp] Re: advice on Linux distribution for A20M (2628)

[Paul RIVIER]

>
> Like XFCE or Icewm w/o Gnome.  There are one or two others which are 
> light on ressources but they are not yet so wide spread in use.  
> "light window manager"@google should give you results.  Also you 
> should deactivate unnecessary eye candy in the window manager.
>
> IMO it is not so much CPU power but RAM that counts. 128MB RAM can be 
> tight.  Anything above that and you will generally be fine.
>
> @OP: This is not a question about distro but what you install and not 
> install out of that distro.  That being said, I generally think debian 
> is an awesome distribution but others say there are easier ones for 
> the novice.
>
right, i own a similar laptop (500mhz / 128 mB ram) and as far as I 
don't use source-based distro on this computer, I don't suffer from the 
slow cpu. *But* 128 mb is the minimum requirement to use firefox in 
gnome, for exemple (and it will swap even so). Unless you are really new 
to linux, I would suggest you to use fluxbox as your window manager, and 
look for light-weight applications, I mean light in memory (openoffice 
is not one of them).
Distro does not really impact on memory usage, I think that even 
mandrake can run on a 32 mB-ram laptop - without X + KDE :D
So feel free to choose your distro for what you like, avoiding 
source-based ones, then be carefull to use a lightweight WM, lightweight 
browser etc ... and everything should be allright.


paul RIVIER