Andrew Lentvorski wrote: > Joshua Penix wrote: >> On Mar 23, 2008, at 2:46 PM, Tracy R Reed wrote: >> >>> I am betting it won't be able to do as much as the Linux version due >>> to resource usage and lack of support for the hacked down XP install. >> >> Sadly I'm seeing a lot of less-technical EEE users giving the Xandros >> distro a quick spin, and then wiping it and loading Windows XP. The >> worse part is that they tend to follow up a few days later with "hey >> XP is so much smoother on this, I'm staying with it." >> >> On modern hardware, even scaled down stuff like the EEE, Windows XP is >> pretty tight and speedy (remember, it came out in 2001). There's >> software called nLite that makes it ridiculously easy to strip down an >> install well underneath the storage requirements of even the 2GB EEE. > > I was about to make this comment as well. We're used to talking about > Windows as a bloated pig in the context of current Windows and current > hardware. > > So, in 2001 that's probably something like a Pentium III 1GHz. Not that > much different from the EEE. And the EEE gets an advantage in that RAM > is faster, FSB is faster, and hard disk is faster (but smaller). > > That's going to be a pretty nice XP machine. Of course, most people are > going to install a pirated version of XP, but that's another issue. > > Contrast this against the bloated pigs that are Gnome and KDE combined > with weak Linux graphics drivers and interactive latency issues and you > have a walking advertisement for Windows. >
So maybe this is a good time to review the status of distributions customized for simpler or older hardware? lwn keeps a distro list that has about 100 entries categorized "special" """Special Purpose/Mini All the distributions listed in this category are specialized for a particular task. Most of them are small, since limiting the functionally can also limit the size. However there are some Special Purpose distributions listed here that are not small. """ http://lwn.net/Distributions/#special A number include words like older systems, at least one is for customized for Azus eeePC; EeeDora. (maybe that was already mentioned by tracy?). The list includes Puppy Linux, which has a lot of cheerleaders. There's also distrowatch (which I think actually prepares lwn's list) http://distrowatch.com/ but I don't see categorizations, on that site. They do have reviews, though. Anybody know of any better-targeted list for simpler/older hardware? Regards, ..jim -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
