[COLUG] Seeking recommendations for Linux distro for ancient laptop

[Rob Funk]

Ethan Dicks wrote:
> Hi, all,
>
> I have this ancient Dell laptop that has suddenly become my primary
> Linux box.  It's had an install of RedHat 9 on it since 2003, but
> since it is maxed out at 256MB of RAM, is a bit sluggish when browsing
> with Firefox, opening OpenOffice files, etc.
>
> I would love to upgrade to a newer laptop, but that's not practical
> for 4-6 months.  I have to make do with what I have in front of me.
> Does anyone have any recommendations for lightweight distros that are
> sophisticated enough to run a graphical web browser and OOffice?  Disk
> space is not a limiting factor here, neither is raw CPU speed... it's
> only physical memory limitations that's really giving me fits here.

You could try Xubuntu, which is Ubuntu with an XFCE desktop.
http://www.xubuntu.org/

And maybe use a lighter browser than Firefox:
http://www.nuxified.org/article/kazehakase_review

But OpenOffice will still suck down a lot of memory.  I recommend checking 
out alternatives.


When I tried XFCE recently, I found that once I started up Firefox and 
Thunderbird, I was actually using about the same amount of memory as the 
equivalent (with Konqueror and Kmail) in Kubuntu, since FF and TB use 
their own big graphics library while Konq and Kmail share libraries with 
the rest of KDE.  And since you're talking about OpenOffice, you might be 
better off going all KDE, including Konqueror and KOffice (no Firefox or 
OpenOffice).

-- 
==============================|   "A microscope locked in on one point
 Rob Funk <rfunk at funknet.net> |Never sees what kind of room that it's in"
 http://www.funknet.net/rfunk |    -- Chris Mars, "Stuck in Rewind"