Sorry, I haven't been following the entire thread, but, for what it's
worth, I got pretty good performance running RedHat 5.2 on my junky old
75Mhz Pentium with 16MB of memory. It wasn't blazing, but it worked
fine for what I wanted. I don't know what apps you were planning to
use, and there may very well be some compatability problems with the
newer apps and the older os, but if you can get by with those older
apps, you're probably fine.
Honnestly, I remember the system did everything I needed back then
pretty well, and probably would still do most of the things that I'd
want to do now, ie. compile code and run it. It wouldn't be flawless, I
seem to remember having problems getting Java running, a few other
problems, but I think it'd be a great way of learning Linux. I
sometimes think about loading 5.2 on my current machine just to see if
it'd really blaze, but no time.
But, as long as the system's got a web browser, vi, and a compiler, what
else do you really need?
-Charles
demon_jr808 wrote:
To everyone that responded to my previous post, thanks!
This is a more specific version of my previous question, but I hope
everyone doesn't mind.
I wish to learn and become profecient in using Linux, but at the moment,
the only thing holding me back are my hardware requirements and what I
will actually be using the Linux system for.
I am looking to purchase a laptop, but being very, very, very, poor, I
can not afford anything close to a modern system. As a result, I have
been looking for refurbished laptops at the very low end of the scale,
ranging around $100 to $200. As a result, the only laptops I have been
able to find are very low end, ranging from 486 to Pentium 133 and with
ram ranging from 8 MB to 16 MB, along with hard drives that barely reach
1-2 GB.
From my past readings regarding Linux, I have read that Linux requires
very little in the way of hardware to run fast and smoothly. Many of my
readings at the time, indicated that a 486 system with 8 MB was more
than sufficient to run a Linux system. From what I have read, a system
that would appear slow in Windows 95, as a result of old and dated
hardware, would become amazingly fast in Linux. This being the case, I
believed that Linux would be an excellent choice of OS to install on an
old and dated laptop.
I will be using the system for mainly two tasks: as a learning ground
for Linux and web page design. I am just a newbie when it comes to web
page design, however I can code very simple pages using HTML, CSS, and a
very simple text editor, such as Notepad on Windows. This being the
case, for a Linux system, I would need a text editor similar to Notepad
along with browsers, such as IE or Netscape. I have used Pico a great
deal in the past, however that was only in the shell. Since I wish to
practice making web pages in a graphical environment, believe I will
have to use the Linux GUI.
In regards to the Linux GUI, I really have no idea what the difference
is between X, KDE, and Gnome. However, I have read that running these
"applications" increases the hardware requirements on the Linux system.
Now taking into account the above, what kind of system would you recommend?
