Full Ubuntu, not for the antiques
Posted on May 14, 2006
One Comment
Today we determine that regular ol’ Ubuntu just isn’t quite suited for a P2 366 laptop. To be honest, it really isn’t all that painful. But it could sure be better. Just too much waiting…
My goal for this machine is to be a relatively simple workstation for OpenOffice and web browsing. Having recently installed Win 2k Workstation on a similarily configured laptop (which ran quite nicely), I know I can come up with something better from the linux scene. There are tons of options, that’s for sure.
Think I’ll try a few more variants of ubuntu though before moving on to other distros. For instance, Xubuntu seems like it might be on the right track. If I’m still underwhelmed, I’ll try the Ubuntu/Fluxbox combo and see how that goes.
Amusingly, it wasn’t all that many years ago that major linux distributions were touted for (among other things) being lean and enabling older machines to do more. Usability has come a long ways since then — but at a cost to resource usage, eh?
I should disclose that part of the twist here is I’m trying to approach this from an end-user’s perspective: Ease of installation is primary, followed by user experience(ease of use) once it is all put together. Thus, I’m hoping to avoid, as much as possible, the “custom install, just choose what to install from these 4000 packages” approach.
Tags:
Possibly Related Posts
Comments
One Response to “Full Ubuntu, not for the antiques”
Leave a Reply
The thing that you need to keep in mind is that just as one has to sacrifice usability for security (ie. the more security there is in a system, the more difficulties there is in using it), there is also a sacrifice in usability vs. hardware age. The older the hardware, the harder to use it it’ll be.
The thing with linux and old HW is that you *have* the choice…try installing a windows server on a 486 like the one I use for file serving here at home. And I *am* running a current linux (mandriva 2006) in that 486, and it does a great job as file server…without a GUI, of course
If I needed more features, I’d have to do it on a bigger box, and that’s that.