Lightweight stable Linux distro on aged Dell Latitude

February 2, 2007 2:24 PM

Linux on Dell Latitude 400mhz 128m ram - I cannot install (or even load) Ubuntu or SuSe. Tried slower burn, different cd manufacture - no dice. The only thing I've been able to get to run is DSL (Damn Small Linux). Please help me - I wanna be like the cool Linux people, so sexy, achingly hip, and suave, and

Dell Latitude 400mhz 128m ram 6gig drive, old (and likely very slow) cdrom attached by some sort of cable, NOT USB. Though this puter is old, it's small and pretty and light and it works fine. I want to use it as my first Linux machine. But - I also want it to be able to run a very stripped Windoze concurrent (under, or in a window) because I'm addicted to FreeCell and MineSweeper, and I've not seen any on Linux that are near as clean as MS FreeCell.

I've downloaded iso's of SuSE, Ubuntu, and DSL (thus far). DSL is the only one which boots, and I don't really want to use that for my primary OS on the drive.

SuSE - Tries to install, gets kernel loaded, USB and other drivers loaded, then chugs for about five minutes, then prompts me to 'be certain disc one is loaded'. I hit yes, it chugs five minutes, asks again. And again. And again. Very annoying.

Ubuntu - I hit 'install' and it loads kernel, splashes a Ubuntu screen, chugs along, then dies. And I know that this disc is good, at least on another machine, at least run off the disc. Very annoying.

DSL - Yeah, this works but man is it ever barebones. Probably would do mostly what I'd want (internet cruzer, email maybe, light word processing) but I can't imagine it'd run Windoze so as I can play the games I'm addicted to.

Since my problem might be that the old cdrom is too slow or not competent, is there a Linux variant which I can load just a installer of some sort and then complete the install off the internet? Anyone out there loaded a nice Linux onto an old Latitude? Should I toss the Latitude over the railing? (I have really wanted to do so last night and today; I once hurled an annoying desktop out there and it was like a bomb going off, it exploded, almost, shit everywhere, great fun.) I don't need nor want some heavily loaded variant (I went after SuSE because I'd heard it was bombproof; I'd have unloaded most of the apps), I don't need nor want OpenOffice or much else, I just want a lightweight, pretty, barebones OS but has to be heavy enough to manage Windoze for needed games.

Important: I'm not the most talented puter guy; I use them, not remodel them. I know enough to be dangerous, mostly. I need something fairly straightfoward.

So. In the words of John Lennon: Help me if you can I'm feeling down / And I do appreciate you bein' 'round / Help me load some lightweight bombproof Linux distro on this piece of crap before I toss it over the goddamn balcony / Won't you please, please help me?

posted by dancestoblue to computers & internet (24 comments total)

Try Ubuntu with a GUI that doesn't use as much resources, i.a.w. Xubuntu. I got that to run on a Notebook with a 300 Mhz AMD processor.
posted by ijsbrand at 2:39 PM on February 2, 2007

But - I also want it to be able to run a very stripped Windoze concurrent (under, or in a window)

You'll find wine emulation unbearably slow and running VMWare will either be unbearably slow for the Windows apps or force the Linux system into swap all the time (which will, of course, be unbearably slow), and I don't think that Windows 98 or whatever will work in Xen.

I vote for either tossing the laptop over the railing or using Gentoo or something.
posted by cmonkey at 3:06 PM on February 2, 2007

Xubuntu is the right variant of Ubuntu for a machine of that class. System requirements are here. With 128MB RAM, you'll need the Alternate Install CD.

Another lightweight Linux worth investigating is Puppy. This is built to boot quickly from CD and run quickly in RAM, saving your work back to CD on exit if you have a burner. You don't, by the sound of it, but Puppy can also be installed on the hard disk. Finally, if your old machine has a USB port, you can run Puppy off a USB thumb drive, giving you a completely portable computing environment you can use on any machine at all.

Gentoo is a poor choice for a first Linux. The learning curve is too steep for most inexperienced users.

With 128MB RAM, you are not going to be running Windows in a window under Linux. It will be completely, unfeasibly slow. You can set up dual-boot, but that won't give you your games.

Freecell is no problem: the AisleRiot multi-game solitaire that comes pre-installed with the Ubuntus has FreeCell (and Spider) rules built in along with about 60 others, and works better than MS FreeCell for my money. Not sure if it's in Puppy, but if it isn't it will be an easy install.

Can't help you with Minesweeper, because I don't play it so I've never gone looking for it.

Many Windows apps can be run directly in Linux using Wine. Wine Is Not an Emulator, it's a compatibility library, so it's much less profligate with machine resources than a VM plus a guest OS would be. I'd expect something small like MS Minesweeper to run just fine with Wine.
posted by flabdablet at 3:16 PM on February 2, 2007

128M of RAM is pretty damned small. Is there any way to upgrade the memory in that thing? No matter what kind of reasonable app you try to run in such a tiny amount of RAM, your system is going to thrash -- which means performance drops by about a factor of 50, if not even more.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 3:33 PM on February 2, 2007

I can see that Steven has never used Puppy.

Puppy can't thrash unless you actually give it a swap file to thrash into. Everything runs in RAM, all the time. If you try to load up more concurrent apps than will fit in RAM, you simply can't do it. The apps that come with Puppy are specifically chosen to be frugal with RAM in the first place, and then judiciously trimmed to make them even more so.

Steven also seems to have forgotten that in the heyday of Windows 98, 128M of RAM was considered pretty damned big. One of the schools I work at is still running Windows 98 on workstations with 128MB of RAM. I've put ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1 directives in all their SYSTEM.INI files, and as a result I very rarely see any swap file usage at all, and the machines all run briskly.

Just because a modern machine loaded with today's bloatware runs like a dog unless you put 2GB of RAM in it doesn't mean you can't get good performance out of old machines with the right software.
posted by flabdablet at 3:58 PM on February 2, 2007

BTW I just went looking for Minesweeper in the Applications->Games menu on my Ubuntu desktop, and found "Mines". To my admittedly uneducated eye, it looks pretty much equivalent to MS Minesweeper.
posted by flabdablet at 4:01 PM on February 2, 2007

The underlying problem is probably that, once the kernel and initial root filesystem is loaded through basic BIOS-level routines (ones that allow the computer to see the CDROM drive on boot), the OS itself doesn't have hardware drivers that allow it to see the CDROM drive, so it can't find the full root filesystem to continue the boot process.

One thing you might be able to do is use a "Network Install" variant of the OS installer, one where everything it needs for basic installation is in the initial ramdisk root fs (initrd) loaded with the kernel,if one is available for your choice of distribution. I believe such a thing exists/existed for Debian.

Or, you could boot DSL or Puppy, partition and format your harddisk and copy the compressed root filesystem from the XUbuntu install CD over the network from another machine that can read the CD. Then reboot, booting off the XUbunut disc, and tell the OS loader (grub or lilo or whatever) to look on the harddisk for the compressed root fs instead of searching for a CD. (I've done something very much like this with Knoppix several times.)
posted by xiojason at 4:22 PM on February 2, 2007

Additionally, you might find that the (X)Ubuntu "Alternate" install CD might work where the Live CD fails.

There are various sets of alternate Ubuntu installation instructions, including installing from Knoppix (if you can get Knoppix to boot on that machine), installing over SSH (which you might be able to do from DSL or Puppy), installation from a Minimal CD (which sounds similar to the Network Install type disc I mentioned earlier), From Windows, From USB Stick (which your laptop probably doesn't support booting off of...), from an NFS drive (another possibility from DSL or Puppy), Boot From Firewire Disk (which might have some advice applicable to your situation as well), and, possibly most relevant, Boot From USB for computers that don't normally support booting from USB devices (if you can borrow a USB CD drive and move the CD from the proprietary drive to the USB CD drive when it needs to find it).
posted by xiojason at 4:48 PM on February 2, 2007

Do you have a floppy? Follow the directions to install Debian from floppies. dist-upgrade to Ubuntu from there.

Or look up debootstrap and one of the ways to get from a floppy-bootable Linux to being able to debootstrap. It's a means of installing any Debian variant (e.g., Ubuntu) from the net from the most modest of beginnings. It's not the simplest process in the world (but it'd be my preference in your shoes.)

Fluxbuntu is an even smaller Ubuntu than Xubuntu (and I've put Xubuntu onto a 233 MHz Pentium with I think 64M of RAM, but performance sucked.) Either Fluxbuntu or Xubuntu should be fine for what you want.

flabdalet's right -- you're not likely to find joy with emulating Windows on that machine; Wine may satisfy your needs.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 5:13 PM on February 2, 2007

I'd read recently about this project which is a graphical installer for Debian that you can just point and click under Windows, but as I already run Ubuntu I haven't tried myself. I understand there's versions for other distros available or forthcoming.
posted by Abiezer at 6:28 PM on February 2, 2007

Ah, here's the Ubuntu sister project.
posted by Abiezer at 6:29 PM on February 2, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

I have used the Ubuntu "install.exe" with some success. It was easy, but the download sure took a while. It uses a built-in torrent client.
posted by wzcx at 6:41 PM on February 2, 2007

Zed, what was the limiting factor in your 233MHz/64MB Xubuntu install? Did it thrash, or jwas it ust a lack of raw processing power? And did you try Fluxbuntu and/or Puppy on the same machine?
posted by flabdablet at 8:15 PM on February 2, 2007

Hey Gang -

Thanx so much - my tomorrow is now spoken for, looking up, following up, finding what'll work. I'm going to post in here (this thread) once I get a way to use this little sweetie; I just don't want to put it out to pasture, not quite yet. Gonna look into Puppy, look into all the ubuntu's referred, and other methods also shown here; surely I can make this thing work.

And I think xiojason is maybe onto the problem, as that seems to be where the puter hangs - it gets partway in and then goes away. So, maybe load DSL, partition the drive as recommended, etc and etc. More to be revealed.....
posted by dancestoblue at 8:18 PM on February 2, 2007

I wanna be like the cool Linux people, so sexy, achingly hip, and suave

You want a mac, not Linux. Linux makes you a big nerdy geek, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Important: I'm not the most talented puter guy; I use them, not remodel them. I know enough to be dangerous, mostly. I need something fairly straightfoward.

You might be really happy with a mac. Even a 400 mhz g3 ibook (cheap!)
posted by b1tr0t at 10:32 PM on February 2, 2007

Linux is not just for big nerdy geeks any more. It's well and truly ready for civilian use.

For somebody who wants a cheap computer they can just use and not have to worry about, it's hard to go past Ubuntu. Avoiding the Microsoft tax makes it possible to get a complete, capable (if not bleeding-edge exciting), new, fully assembled computer and all required software for under AU$400.

I've done several Ubuntu installs for people who think of computers as means to an end rather than an end in themselves, and so far, everybody's been pleased with it. It's also cost me less time in followup support than is typical for Windows installations.

It used to be the case that Linux cost far more time in fiddling than most people could justify to avoid paying Microsoft a few hundred bucks. Not any more. Windows now requires more fiddling and tweaking to get it up and running and safe than Linux does.

Installing Ubuntu on most x86 boxes is a far easier and more straightforward process than installing Windows plus drivers plus antivirus plus antispyware plus Java plus Office plus Firefox plus Thunderbird plus DVD burner plus DVD player.

Suck it, haters.
posted by flabdablet at 12:13 AM on February 3, 2007

An aside: after my recent Vista 64-bit install, I have to say that installing Linux is much easier. What a nightmare I just came out of.

For your minesweeper/solitaire/whatever needs, if the Linux equivalents don't satisfy you then running them with Wine will be perfectly fine contrary to statements made about Wine running dog slow. Wine has come a long way, baby.
posted by melt away at 4:19 AM on February 3, 2007

Just to clarify: the haters I addressed the "suck it" to now appear to have had their hatred expunged from this thread (gads, the power of flagging and moving on!) and b1tr0t wasn't one of them.

Now, I think, a game of AisleRiot FreeCell and off to beddie-byes. Got a tricky Windows install to do tomorrow morning.
posted by flabdablet at 4:39 AM on February 3, 2007

Zed, what was the limiting factor in your 233MHz/64MB Xubuntu install? Did it thrash, or jwas it ust a lack of raw processing power?

233 MHz is pretty slow in general -- GNU Emacs on the console dragged. But in XFCE, Firefox plus pretty much anything else would grind it to a halt due to thrashing.

I don't doubt one could do a lot of useful things with the machine with DSL or Puppy (and without fat apps like Emacs and Firefox.) But I have other machines to endlessly reconfigure...
posted by Zed_Lopez at 9:01 AM on February 3, 2007

I had similar problems with Ubuntu, Dell and touchpad combination. Having a normal external mouse instead of the touchpad actually let me install, when with just the touchpad, Ubuntu would hang. After you get it working with the mouse, there are some workarounds at the Ubuntu forums, but I must admit that none worked for me. I always used the mouse.
posted by Yavsy at 3:37 PM on February 3, 2007

For haters:

I'm typing this on a Dell Inspiron 8200 running Ubuntu Edgy, upgraded in place from Ubuntu Dapper. Dapper installed with no fuss at all, and worked right away. The Inspiron 8200 has a touchpad and a nipple, with separate buttons for each, and can also use a USB mouse. All three devices worked as expected without me needing to do anything clever.

I chose to improve video speed by installing the proprietary nVidia driver, but even that was a simple package manager exercise. No poking around on the Web looking for nVidia drivers was required. Ubuntu's automatic update manager has since upgraded those drivers several times, among hundreds of other updates, and everything just kept working flawlessly.

For dancestoblue:

Yavsy's tip could well be worth a try; the Dell BIOS is indeed a dark mystery :-)

What model is your Latitude, anyway?
posted by flabdablet at 4:41 PM on February 3, 2007

I found Opera (version 7.x, I think) to be a lot more responsive than any of the Mozilla variants the last time I ran a low-memory Linux. And a lightweight desktop or window manager is my preference for that setup, too--XFCE is pretty beginner-friendly, although Fluxbox, FVWM or something like that would be a little bit snappier. I'm guessing whatever Xubuntu ships with works pretty well, though.
posted by arto at 8:25 PM on February 3, 2007

I have been using ubuntu for ~2 years and here's what I would try to do with that machine, but depending on your level, that might be a little to... advanced. But that's my trick to a net install on ubuntu.

- grab a server install CD
- install the thing, log in
- sudo apt-get install linux-image-386 xubuntu-desktop
- reboot into your new XFCE desktop
posted by a007r at 8:29 AM on February 4, 2007

If you're after a base system, you're better off with the alternate install CD than the server install CD -- you can install a CLI-only system then install xubuntu-desktop (or whatever) without needing to install a different kernel, because you started out with the right one.

But the original poster's situation involves difficulty with installing from CD in the general case, probably due to driver issues. That's why I pointed to a floppy-based solution.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 12:08 PM on February 4, 2007