Lightweight and newbie-friendly?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Sander_Marechal Jul 23, 2007 3:22 PM EDT |
I am bringing back an old dead computer back to life for a freind of mine. It used to run Win95 but died about a year ago and said friend has been without a PC ever since (at least at home. She has an XP box at work). But I don't really know what to put on it. I've looked at DSL but it's not very newbie-friendly IMHO. Besides, the LiveCD will only boot in 640x480 mode after applying various magic boot commands at the DSL boot promts (I've since replaced the video card). I've also looked at Puppy. It seems nice but it doesn't look that good. I also have no idea how newbie-friendly it is. I don't know Puppy that well and I would prefer putting something on there that I know so I can easily trouble-shoot. Currently I've put Debian/etch + XFCE on the box. It looks okay, reasonably friendly but it's *very* spartan. There's tons of work to be done to get it anywhere near a fully functioning desktop (and if I do that, I'll be dragging in the better part of GNOME as a dependency). Here's the specs: Pentium 2 400 Mhz MMX 256 Mb RAM (upgraded from 64) 4.3 Gb HDD (can't upgrade unless someone donates me a 20Gb drive. It won't eat the 120 Gb ones which are about the smallest you can buy in stores these days). Nvidia GeForce 2 32 Mb video (upgraded from a Trident 3D Image that only did 640x480). Anyone have a good suggestion what to put on for a Linux newbie? Is this perhaps powerful enough to run plain Debian/etch+gnome-desktop (which I know very well)? Thanks in advance for any advice. |
| tqk Jul 23, 2007 3:57 PM EDT |
Zenwalk's latest ISO: http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/zenwalk/i4... Zenwalk's a Slackware downstream, comes with Xfce as well, is very newbie friendly, and has a very active community behind it (including forums and wiki). I'm supporting a guy who's got a triple boot system (which I built for him) including Zenwalk, Suse, and Xubuntu. He likes Zenwalk the most of the three. |
| jdixon Jul 23, 2007 5:13 PM EDT |
And if Zenwalk doesn't work out, try VectorLinux. It's another Slackware derivative that's supposed to be fairly user friendly and usable on older machines. Of course, you could always try Slackware itself, but you'll probably want to try the other two first. |
| azerthoth Jul 23, 2007 5:59 PM EDT |
Sander if your looking to put a full on GUI in place for your friend you would be better off putting KDE in over Gnome. KDE has a slightly smaller resource requirement. You can put in just the desktop without associated bloating garbage with apt-get install kde-core and then add in essential software afterwards. Just my opinion, for all thats worth. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 23, 2007 10:18 PM EDT |
Thanks. Zenwalk looks really suitable. I'll wipe the box (again) and put that on next. I'm not too sure about VectrorLinux though. Last time I tried it I didn't really like it. But granted, that was 5.1 SOHO so it's a bit dated. azerthoth: You seem to know KDE well. How does KOffice do on old hardware? |
| azerthoth Jul 24, 2007 2:33 AM EDT |
Fairly well, decidedly better than OO. Its been a long time since I have played with old iron, but it seemed to me that you were looking to help ease your friend into Linux which means a semi familiar look and feel. That means to me KDE. I discovered Fluxbox within a month of becoming a linux user and it took me less than an hour to fall in love with it. That though depends on your friend. As for Distro, personally I dont think I would hand someone a source based distro as a beginners first view, especially on old iron where compiling aterm would take an hour or so. Debian can be slimmed down to around 300 meg and still give you a functioning desktop environment. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 24, 2007 4:39 AM EDT |
Quoting:it seemed to me that you were looking to help ease your friend into Linux which means a semi familiar look and feel. I don't have to give her KDE just on look 'n feel. Because she hasn't had a functioning computer at her home for quite a while, she has often used mine (Debian/etch + GNOME). She liked that because it wasn't too complicated (which is why she is letting me put Linux on her old box). I've looked at PCLinuxOS which is a very newbie friendly KDE distro, but the machine isn't powerful enough. I'm mainly interested in KOffice for speed and ODF compliance. I tried using OOo on a PIII 600 Mhz with 384 Mb RAM and it was quite bad. I don't want to know how it would do on this PII 400 Mhz and only 256 Mb or RAM. Quoting:Debian can be slimmed down to around 300 meg and still give you a functioning desktop environment.That's what is on the box right now (+XFCE), but it is going to take me far too much time to make it newbie friendly in a Desktop environment I am not familiar with. I'd like to have it finished this weekend because I am going on vacation after that (no worries about help/support. A friend of mine will show her the ropes and help her out in my absence). In other news, my boss just donated me a 20 Gb HDD and a BIOS battery to fix the machine :-) |
| jdixon Jul 24, 2007 5:40 AM EDT |
If Zenwalk is suitable, I'd go with it. From everything I've heard it's a good distribution. It uses the XFCE windowing system, but from the sources page it seems to include abiword, gnumeric, and something called goffice. Slackware would include the full version of KDE, Koffice, and XFCE; but would not include abiword or any of the gnome stuff. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 25, 2007 12:11 AM EDT |
A litte update: Yesterday I finished a very long and rough installation of Zenwalk on the old PC. Apparently there was a problem in the kernels used for both the live CD and installation CD that caused a kernel panic halfway through the boot process. Trying to diagnose everything from top to bottom (even letting memtest86 make two full passes) didn't solve a thing. But I must compliment the Zenwalk community at this point. A couple of Zenwalk guys hung around on IRC and they were one of the most helpful bunch I ever met. In the end we got it to install (using a SCSI kernel instead of a libata kernel) and all is well now. Zenwalk is looking good :-) |
| number6x Jul 25, 2007 4:58 AM EDT |
The zenwalk community is pretty friendly. It is not large like Ubuntu's, but it is great. Zenwalk works great on my thinkpad t40. Nice slimmed down distro, not as ultra light as puppy or DSL, but a very nice fit. Its not for people who want a lot of bloat. |
| devnet Jul 25, 2007 8:15 AM EDT |
XFCE is a pita for new users to get used to though...more so than Gnome or KDE |
| lcafiero Jul 25, 2007 1:41 PM EDT |
Sander -- Okay, one for the opposition: My first exposure to GNU/Linux was Xubuntu, and I actually like Xfce, though admittedly the learning curve (as in, "Where the heck did the icons go?") was a little steeper than Gnome or KDE. But the desktop is easily learned -- I got the hang of it pretty quickly, and (say it with me) if I can get it . . . -- so if your friend has more than two brain cells to rub together and a couple of hours tops (which I'm assuming she does in both cases), I think the Xfce desktop is okay for newbies. I installed Mepis AntiX on an old Dell Optiplex GXa tower and that's maybe a bit more "spartan" than Gnome, KDE or Xfce, and I wouldn't advise it for a newbie. Conversely, on the same machine I had previously installed Linux Mint 3.0 (with Xfce) and it ran great. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 25, 2007 1:43 PM EDT |
Maybe. I'm not going to give her vanilla Zenwalk/XFCE. I'm going to tune it a bit first. Large icons on the desktop. Remove some stuff from the menu that she won't need and I can find without the menu anyway, etcetera. |
| Bob_Robertson Jul 25, 2007 2:48 PM EDT |
I have a 350MHz K6 with 128MB and a 4G disk, I run up to date Debian Sid on it. Konqueror, Iceweasel, Kmail, all on OLWM rather than KWM or Gnome or whatever. Sure, it doesn't have the icons and status bars and such, but it works and it's very light weight. That said, I only use it when I have to, because I like having more than a 1024x768x16 screen. I notice you have a good graphics card, that will help a lot. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 25, 2007 5:15 PM EDT |
Yeah, it's running pretty well so far. Just for geek points I tried compiling n Nvidia driver and see if I could get composite running (Imagine telling my Vista'd co-workers that my PII runs the same effects as his dual-core with DX10 card). But alas, the nvidia driver won't work. The only thing I'm really missing is an application that can handle powerpoint files. Anything out there besides OOo? |
| Steven_Rosenber Jul 25, 2007 8:45 PM EDT |
With a machine of that vintage, I'm surprised you can get KDE working at an acceptable rate of speed. I'm testing two KDE-based distros now on the same hardware -- Slackware 12.0 and SimplyMepis 6.5. Obviously the Slack setup runs way faster -- especially running a Fluxbox session instead of KDE. But all the slowness I found running KDE in Mepis (hardware is VIA C3 1 GHz with 256 MB RAM) did NOT go away in Slack. It still takes too long for many of the KDE apps to start up -- and that does include Konqueror, Kwrite and more. I'm glad the Slack install includes Mousepad, because it's nice to have a GUI editor that opens in 4 seconds, not 10 to 15. I think KDE is great, but only on newer hardware. I love all those little apps, all the ways you can customize the desktop, even the big apps -- I am a huge fan of KWord (which doesn't have broken "typographical quotes" in Slack, by the way), but I find myself gravitating to the Xfce and GTK+ apps just to preserve my sanity. That said, I like Xfce -- and with a distro set up to run it like Xubuntu, I think it's plenty tricked out for a Windows user crossing over. My contention is that Xfce doesn't give you than much of a performance boost over GNOME to justify using it for any other reason than that you like Xfce. Load up Debian Etch with GNOME, and you'll see what I mean. At this point in my testing, I like some of the polish of SimplyMepis, I like the already-configured multimedia (though I don't think Flash was included), but I'll really need to try AntiX to benefit from it. As for Slack, it absolutely flies under Fluxbox, and I bet it runs KDE great with enough power. I like the way Slack sets up KDE -- the panel, the menus, the choice of apps. It all makes sense. And as much as I love KOffice, I'll probably redo the install with Xfce just to see how that runs. And for me, I'm using Abiword 90 percent of the time, KWord the other 10 percent. For now, anyway, Open Office is just too slow to load, and I'm not in the program enough anyway. But for 400 MHz and 256 MB RAM, I just couldn't see running KDE. |
| vainrveenr Jul 25, 2007 10:38 PM EDT |
Just reviewed this thread, and have actually finished installing VectorLinux 5.8 live CD GOLD with XFCE on an old eMachine with these specs
- Intele Celeron 466MHz CPU
- 256 MB PC133 RAM
- 6.4GB IDE hdd
This eMachine is quite close on lower-end specs to the Pentium 2 400 Mhz MMX Sander_Marechal describes on top. VL is also based upon Slackware, similar to Zenwalk, and VL with XFCE runs relatively fast and smoothly on this eMachine compared to Xubuntu. VL info at 'Version 5.8 Standard Gold' section of http://www.vectorlinux.com/mod.php?mod=userpage&menu=9&page_... |
| jdixon Jul 26, 2007 3:44 AM EDT |
> But alas, the nvidia driver won't work. There are known problems with the NVidia drivers and more recent kernels, though I believe those are supposed to have been fixed in the 2.22.x series. Depending on the age of the card, you may also have to use NVidia's "legacy GPU" drivers instead of their latest drivers. |
| jdixon Jul 26, 2007 3:53 AM EDT |
> ...I'll probably redo the install with Xfce just to see how that runs. If you did a full Slackware install, then just run xwmconfig and select XFCE as your windows manger rather than KDE. No reinstall should be necessary. I believe KDM also allows you to select XFCE as an option when you login. |
| jdixon Jul 26, 2007 3:58 AM EDT |
> The only thing I'm really missing is an application that can handle powerpoint files. Anything out there besides OOo? Not that I know of. A quick Google search for "linux powerpoint viewer" doesn't return much, at least on the first page. There's a java program called Root Beer, but java programs kind of defeat the lightweight portion of your requirements. :( You could also install wine and the powerpoint viewer, if all they need is to be able to view the files. That might be fast enough to be usable. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 26, 2007 7:08 AM EDT |
Quoting:With a machine of that vintage, I'm surprised you can get KDE working at an acceptable rate of speed. Zenwalk is also XFCE-based, not KDE. Quoting:Depending on the age of the card, you may also have to use NVidia's "legacy GPU" drivers instead of their latest drivers. The lists given at the Nvidia website tell me that I need the 1.0-9xxx legacy driver. My card (GeForce 2 MX 400) is about the oldest card supported by that driver. The even older 1.0-7xxx legacy driver doesn't support my card. According to the docs. Oh well, getting composite to run on that machine was a long shot anway. But it would have been fun to rub my collegua's nose in :-) |
| Steven_Rosenber Jul 26, 2007 9:23 AM EDT |
jdixon, thanks for the xwmconfig hint. As you probably know, by default, Slackware boots to a shell, and I'd been running startx to get into KDE. I hadn't gotten around to configuring KDM as the default boot manager, so I'd been starting KDM as root to run a Fluxbox session. Seeing how it works, I'd rather use xwmconfig instead of ANY boot manager. It just strikes me that such a utility is too user-friendly -- Slack will lose its reputation. The netconfig utility is another. It's too easy to be Slackware. Same with the install -- easier than I thought it was going to be. Of course I wanted to keep GRUB as my bootloader and dual-boot Ubuntu and Slackware, so that upped the complexity a bit -- took me an extra 10 minutes to figure out the entries for Slack. |
| number6x Jul 26, 2007 10:07 AM EDT |
For GRUB on slackware, this should be helpfull:
http://linfo.wordpress.com/2006/01/26/easy-slackware-grub-in... |
| Steven_Rosenber Jul 26, 2007 10:43 AM EDT |
Thanks! I hacked it well enough, but this is very helpful. I've really got to start reading the docs. |
| Steven_Rosenber Jul 26, 2007 1:20 PM EDT |
Re: Xfce vs. GNOME and KDE. I did a few tests in Ubuntu, and while the desktop itself in GNOME doesn't feel all that much slower than Xfce, apps definitely run FASTER under Xfce than they do under GNOME. On my system, they load 30 percent to 50 percent faster, so I'll take it. I just wish I could figure out how to add items to the Xfce menu -- still can't solve that problem. |
| Steven_Rosenber Jul 26, 2007 1:22 PM EDT |
This "solution" to modifying Xfce menus borders on the barbaric: http://tehpost.blogspot.com/2006/09/xubuntu-xfce-menu-items.... |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 26, 2007 1:45 PM EDT |
IIRC Zenwalk has a simple menu editor. Also, I don;t know how you tested XFCE in Ubuntu, but if you've used Xubuntu, it's often remarked as the slowest XFCE around. It started out as a fast, light Ubuntu but it's been packing on weight really fast. |
| Steven_Rosenber Jul 26, 2007 10:38 PM EDT |
It was pretty much apples vs. apples (not Apples) since it was Ubuntu vs. Xubuntu and Slack/KDE vs. Slack/Xfce and Slack/Fluxbox. I wish I knew what made Ubuntu so much slower than Debian, since the former is built on the latter. I've used ZenWalk as a live CD but never installed it. Might be time to try it. One thing's for sure, it's hard to give up apt in Debian and Ubuntu. |
| number6x Jul 27, 2007 4:55 AM EDT |
dream linux from brazil is a debian based distro that uses XFCE for its desktop.
http://www.dreamlinux.com.br/ The distro is pretty heavy on Multimedia apps, so it might not be as light weight as you want. It comes with a gui front end for MKdistro, so you could install it, remove some of the extra weight and re-master a new live cd pretty easily. |
| tqk Jul 27, 2007 10:38 AM EDT |
Quoting:I've used ZenWalk as a live CD but never installed it. Might be time to try it.Zenwalk is one of the nicest installs I've ever done. The installer is just drop dead simple to use, doesn't throw monkey wrenches in assuming it's smarter than me, and it's quick. I was trying to upgrade a guy's Suse 10.1 box to OpenSuse 10.2 yesterday. No matter what I tried, expert partitioner mode and all, I could not get it to leave the other partitions it found on the disk alone! It refused to offer to let me use the existing swap ptn that the installer was using! It wanted to create a new one instead! I told it to use /dev/hdN for root, yet it kept coming up asking if I wanted to use other ptns it found for /usr, /home, ... To hell with Suse. It plays nicely with others like Windows does. Zenwalk's installer did nothing like that. It saw the swap ptn and used it, then asked where it should install, then it went off and did it. The only "gotcha" I've seen so far is it's calling traditional /dev/hdN "/dev/sdN". WTF?!? Oh well, it works. Quoting:One thing's for sure, it's hard to give up apt on Debian and Ubuntu.I don't know about that. I'm a longtime Debian user (and Slackware before that), but Zenwalk's got me wrapped around its little finger since I started playing with it: "aptitude install wine" or "netpkg wine"? "aptitude upgrade" or "netpkg upgrade"? I'm very thankful for all I've got out of Debian over the years, but Zenwalk is pretty damned alluring. |
| Steven_Rosenber Jul 27, 2007 1:21 PM EDT |
Call me impulsive, but I already had Vector downloaded. I'm installing right now. |
| devnet Jul 27, 2007 3:49 PM EDT |
Give SAM Linux a try as well...it's a liveCd based on PCLinuxOS with the XFCE desktop :/ Can't hurt right? |
| Bob_Robertson Jul 27, 2007 5:26 PM EDT |
"I've seen so far is it's calling traditional /dev/hdN "/dev/sdN". WTF?!?" That's part of the abstraction of block devices, so that the kernel doesn't know or care what something is at the reference level. Data sent to that device is sent in a standard form, once the device driver receives it the driver adapts it to the particular block device's requirements. So hdx is evolving out, everything will be sdx. Or something to that effect, anyway. This is along the same evolution path as "asynchronous I/O", where the core kernel doesn't spend any time worrying about device time, it's handled as needed by the block device driver. This asynchronous effort is also why some hardware seems to have random changes as to which ethernet port (if # of ports > 1) gets defined as eth0 or eth1. Evolution is not pretty. |
| jdixon Jul 27, 2007 6:30 PM EDT |
> As you probably know, by default, Slackware boots to a shell, and I'd been running startx to get into KDE. Yes. Slackware defaults to runlevel 3, which is console mode. To default to a graphical login screen, you would set the runlevel to 4 in /etc/inittab. By default, that only gives you one console screen on tty6. If you want all six of them back, you add the other consoles in the console settings in /etc/inittab. > I hadn't gotten around to configuring KDM as the default boot manager, so I'd been starting KDM as root to run a Fluxbox session. A graphical login manager is only used in runelvel 4. The login manager is selected in /etc/rc.d/rc.4. Assuming mine is current, it first looks for gdm (even though gnome hasn't been an option for some time. Patrick probably needs to update that), then kdm, then xdm, and errors out if it can't find any of them. > Seeing how it works, I'd rather use xwmconfig instead of ANY boot manager. I agree that manually starting your preferred windowing system is the way to go if you're on an older system. > It just strikes me that such a utility is too user-friendly -- Slack will lose its reputation. It's a command line utility, so I think the reputation is safe. :) |
| jezuch Jul 28, 2007 3:53 AM EDT |
Quoting:Evolution is not pretty. http://www.kroah.com/log/images/ols_2006_keynote_08.jpg :) |
| Abe Jul 28, 2007 7:26 AM EDT |
Quoting:Linux Is Evolution, not Intelligent DesignOf course it's NOT, Intelligent Design created Evolution. :) |
| krisum Jul 28, 2007 2:01 PM EDT |
From my experience (running on a K6-2 300Mhz 192M machine), the best is elive (http://www.elivecd.org) with low requirements running enlightenment (which I like much better than xfce) and a quite decent elive control panel to configure most of the things. The look is very good and best part is that it is Debian. Only issue could be that the release version is not free -- requires a donation. So you could try the last development version live CD and if you like it then get the release version. |
| tqk Jul 29, 2007 8:18 AM EDT |
Quoting:Intelligent Design created Evolution.Devolution created Intelligent Design. :-P |
| Abe Jul 29, 2007 9:59 AM EDT |
Quoting:Devolution created Intelligent Design. :-PHow could a process create it self if it didn't exist to start with?!!! :-( Your logic is totally flawed. (N) |
| tuxchick Jul 29, 2007 10:02 AM EDT |
LOL tqk :) |
| Bob_Robertson Jul 29, 2007 10:45 AM EDT |
Oh please, people, I live in NC. I get enough of this every time I open my front door. Does vi have a logo? I want to hang a flag out to put off the emacs evangelists. |
| Abe Jul 29, 2007 6:47 PM EDT |
Quoting:Oh please, people ... Lighten up Bob, I guess both of us were jerking chains. Something other than IT to argue about. :-( |
| Bob_Robertson Jul 29, 2007 7:12 PM EDT |
Abe, lighten up yourself good sir. I, too, was yanking chains as it were. Everyone knows that putting a vi flag out would merely _attract_ the emacsen. |
| Abe Jul 29, 2007 7:45 PM EDT |
Quoting:Everyone knows that putting a vi flag out would merely _attract_ the emacsen. You are right Bob, I should have known that. Now I am sure you were. |
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