I’m thinking of installing Linux on our old computer. It’s a Toshiba Satellite laptop with an AMD K-6 processor with about 64 MB of RAM. We don’t really use this computer for anything. It has been sitting in the closet for about a month in fact.
What I’m thinking of doing is installing Mandrake LInux v. 9.1. I’ve heard this is the easiest version to use for a newbie. That’s another thing, I’m not an expert on computers by any means. I can install my own RAM and a network card. I can reinstall Windows on a computer, but I’m not an expert by any means.
My questions.
Should I do this?
How tricky will it be to install Linux on this computer?
If you’re not using the computer for anything else, then you’ve got nothing to lose. Eventually, you’re probably going to do a reformat and reinstall on it anyway; why not try out a whole new operating system?
I’m a total Linux newbie, but I was really impressed and surprised at how easy Linux installation was, and then really had a blast playing with all the cool stuff that installed with it. Mandrake is really good for having cool programs included with their distribution, as well as having a reputation for making setup easy.
And in the end, if you decide you don’t like it, you can always go back and reinstall Windows. Like I said, nothing to lose.
Hmm, you guys have almost convinced me to go for it. Which distributions do you all recommend? Can I play MP3s on a linux system?
Any cool programs for a newbie to try?
I too am a Linux newbie, with my PIII 500, 64MB Gateway Solo 2150 running Mandrake 9.0. It works great! A word of caution, though: do research on your modem if you’re going to need it; many built-in modems on laptops are controlerless (“Winmodems”) and don’t play well with Linux. However, if you have a NIC + Broadband, you’re set…
As for programs, try GIMP for photomanipulations, OpenOffice.org for, uh, office stuff, and Opera, my favorite browser.
Yes, you should definitely go for it! What is there to lose? You don’t like it, you can always go back.
I can’t say how easy it is to install, because I didn’t do it, but for ease of use, well, my four year old and my five year old use Mandrake every day.
And when you get it working, try the Phoenix browser if you haven’t already. It kicks ass.
Installing Linux on a laptop can be tricky, since they often have custom-built, non-standard components. As others have said, though, you have nothing to lose.
You can get an idea of how well Linux will run on your PC by downloading or otherwise obtaining a recent version of Knoppix Linux. It runs straight from the CD, no need to install it on the hard disk. Knoppix is reputedly very good at detecting hardware, so it might flag up any hardware incompatibilities before you go ahead with a full Linux install.
As it happens, I tried it on a Toshiba Satellite (Pentium 200, 192Mb RAM) and… well, it was pretty sluggish, markedly slower than Windows 98.
I recently successfully installed Redhad Linux 8.0 on a Pentium II 400 mhz with 128 mb RAM. I’m going to nuke it and start over with Debian GNU Linux 3.0 r1 and see how that goes.
If I can install it, I’m sure you can, especially if you have any type of computer experience.
Usram: In case you might not realize, using Knoppix means reading everything from the CD, which is always going to be sluggish - reads from a CD-ROM are much slower than reads from a hard disk. It’s not really a good indication of how fast things would be with a real installation.
Having said that, I actually do recommend Knoppix as one way to try out Linux if you don’t know whether you’d like it. Just remember that the CD is a speed bottleneck, and the lack of swap space can be as well.
The trickiest thing about installing linux is getting it to co-exist with Windows, but since you’re only going to be using linux on this computer, it should be pretty simple. There is an collection of HOWTO’s online if you need help with anything. They’re very helpful and can teach you how to do anything from the extremely simple to insanely difficult. If you get your soundcard working, you will be able to play mp3’s. And once again, remember, HOWTO’s are your friend.
Hubby installed Redhat 8.0 about 2 months ago. I really like the OpenOffice word processor a lot better than Word for Windows. But there is a solitaire game. . .Gypsy. It’s evil, I tell you! Pure evil! It is devilishly easy to learn, and freakin’ hard to win, and completely and totally addictive! I hate it, but I can’t stop playing it! I say there’s a reason the hat is red, the color we associate with prostitutes and satan. Yup, there’s definitely something sinister going on here!
I just removed Mandrake from the laptop. I tried reinstalling it and I had the same problem, it was just too slow. I suspect that I was installing too much OS for my poor old laptop.
It’s a pity because Mandrake seems like it would be a pretty neat OS to mess around with but I think that it would require more memory at the very least.
I might to try to install Red Hat 8.0 on the laptop.
Should I try to use an older version of these linux OS’s?