Geoffrey Clements wrote:
> I know there's no right answer to a "which distribution should I get"
> question but I'm looking for a few pointers. Let me explain ...
>
> I'm not a new Linux user, I've been using it for five years now, I
> occasinaly post to this newsgroup but I'm more of a lurker than a
> poster. When I started with Linux I used Mandrake and never really got
> on with it because it didn't give me the freedom to play very much
> (actually I kept fiddling and breaking it!). Soon after I discovered
> LinuxFromScratch and that was it for me, I used LFS until about a year
> ago. At that point I switch to Gentoo because I got tired of doing all
> my own dependency tracking. I'm happy with Gentoo and will keep it on
> my desktop PC, my laptop is another matter though.
>
> It takes ages to compile big packages (such as xorg) on my laptop and I
> run out of disk space unless I move stuff across partitions, basically I
> need an easier way so I'm looking for another distribution for my
> laptop. Because of the way I've come I know very little about the
> "normal" distributions, I've had a look at
> http://www.linux.org/dist/index.html but there are so many! I need a
> distro. for my laptop:
>
> Acer Travelmate 730TE
> Pentium III 500MHz
> 64 Meg RAM
> 4G disk
> Netgear WG511 WiFi card (can only get this to work under ndiswrapper)
>
> The applications I need are:
> XFCE
> Firefox
> Thunderbird
> Gaim
> OOo
>
> I know there are lighter applications but this laptop is used by SO and
> children hence they are non-negotiable!
>
> I've already tried the DamnSmallLinux live cd but couldn't get
> networking to work. I suppose I'm looking for a minimal effort
> distribution that will run on a PC with few resources. Any pointers
> will be appreciated,
Go for Ubuntu. It's lightweight; Like Gentoo, it's GNOME-based; Network
configuration is painless (in my case, not even existent -- all automatic);
It has OOo, Firefox and Gaim and it is very reliable.
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com
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