Linux on a laptop?

Soldato
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27 Oct 2003
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East Mids.
How hard is it to put Linux on a laptop and which one would be best for it? It's an oldish Toshiba S4070CDS and I am upgrading as best I can for my sister and thought about putting linux on it. So any help would be mucho appreciated.
 
Associate
Joined
16 Sep 2005
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93
Just download a few live cd's and give them ago see which one install best and you like just have a play with a few different Distributions
I use fedoracore which i am more than happy with unfortunely no good live cds as yet
Lots of people seem to be using Ubuntu
knoppix and kate-os are also good
knoppix live dvd comes with 1000's of programs all ready install so you can have a real good play also good for finding which programs you prefer which is good for when you ready to do a full install
puppy is very light weight and a lot of fun (i would not have it install as my main OS but is good to try
Don t forget a live cd won't interfear which your windows install as nothing is install to harddrives so you can try lots b4 u choose
here a link to good list of Distributions also very good site for sofeware browsing
Clicky clicky
 
Caporegime
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On the hoods
4070? That's a blast from the past! In terms of hardware support, it should be fine. It's all old kit, so it should work well. There'll probably be no 3D acceleration, but I doubt that'll be a problem for you, from what you've said.

What you'll have to bear in mind is that you'll want to run a desktop environment that isn't very resource hungry. How fast is the CPU? How much RAM does it have? You might be able to get XFCE running on there, in which case I'd recommend trying XUbuntu. Failing that, try running DamnSmallLinux and see how it fares. That only uses fluxbox, so it's very light. You can work from there and either find a distribution that will let you set up a light system using fluxbox, or you can fiddle with it and set it up yourself, depending on how confident you are.

My advice would be to cram as much RAM in there as possible and try for XFCE.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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Nottingham
900I said:
I agree with vonhelmet, Download Xubuntu live/install iso.

Having not touched Linux for years due to the hassles of installation - I installed Ubuntu (DVD iso) on a laptop yesterday. Worked like a dream, all hardware picked up without a problem. Only thing I had to do was install a new kernel to run with a dual core cpu - and that was only a matter of typing one line in a terminal window. :)
 
Soldato
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11 Mar 2004
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5,000
I've been running Open SuSe 10.1 on this Dell Latitude D600 for a month or so now.

Its OK, but the powermanagment support is a bit lacking compared to Windows XP. It doesn't support my docking station very well either.
 

Una

Una

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Reading / Lake District
Xubuntu is really nice. I tried XFCE for the first time last week and I doubt ill be switching back to gnome any time soon. (After I have been using gnome for around 6 years)
 
Associate
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1 Feb 2004
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Running Ubuntu here on a Dell inspiron 9300, detected everything (Wireless, correct screen resolution, sound), also tried Mepis 6 (Did not detect wireless or correct screen resolution)

It is just luck of the draw, like people previouly said, try a few live cd's feel what they are like.

One distro could be fine for others, but for hassle for you
 
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