[rescue] O/S for 133/150mhz laptops???

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Mon, Jul 10, 2006 at 01:28:04PM -0700, stephen price wrote:
> Asking for opinions for an operating system for some
> older pentium 133 & 150 mhz laptops.  Ram size will
> range from 32mb to 80mb, all have a 6gb hard disk &
> nice TFT active matrix screens.  All have "real"
> stickers for m$98 & could reload that - but would like
> to see about nicer smaller kernel linux distros etc.

If they have USB ports, then the only Microsoft offerings that make sense
is Windows 98 second edition or Windows 2000. 2000 is better, but unless
you need the support it offers, 98SE is a better fit and is still being
supported. 

As for Linux, there are lots of options, but few choices. Fedora is big
and as bloated as Windows/XP. It also lacks stability, but that was the
point of it. Dead Rat split their offerings into old and solid (RHEL)
and up to the minute and flakey (Fedora).

SuSE is now a Novell product. Ease of use with lots of wonderful GUI tools
became another Windows clone with lots of things missing.

Debian is a good choice, especially for the lean and mean, but I would not
want to use it directly. Debian derivatives such as Knoppix and Ubuntu are
better, easier to install and are ok. If you are used to RPM/YUM then you
probably will find yourself lost in a debian world. (for a while)

Once you get a system working, you can clone them. There is a freeware
Ghost equivalent for UNIX, and the old tar method still works.

With a 6gig hard drive, I would go for UBUNTU and NOT install KDE. 

You can WiFi them with WaveLan/Orinoco cards. Make sure they are supported
by the operating system and are PCMCIA (5v/16bit) and not CardBus (3.3v/32bit).
The easy way to tell is a large copper strip on the computer end of the
card. If there is one, it's cardbus. 

The PCMCIA wavelan/orinoco etc cards are 11mbit (avoid the 2mb bronze ones)
and are supported by almost everything, Including Windows, Linux, some BSD,
and MacOS 7.6 to 9.22 (not really relevant).

Geoff.
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