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- martalli, on 11/09/2008, -0/+20Our office is littered with castaways - mostly pentium 3 computers "Buit for Windows 98" that are all happily running ubuntu without any difficulty. Using Linux can ressurect an older computer to a useful status again. The requirements for Vista have started to become affordable, but they are completely unnecessary, as the news about Windows 7 actually having lower requirements seems to suggest.
- regeya, on 11/10/2008, -3/+16People voted for it. Any more dumb questions?
- NixiePixel, on 11/09/2008, -0/+10I revived an old HP laptop with Ubuntu. It isn't super slim, nor is it super light, but the new OS seems to work great and will allow me to get a few more years of useful life out of it, since it can't handle "modern" Windows operating systems.
- harryterry, on 11/10/2008, -1/+9that article is wayyy too long...
- martalli, on 11/09/2008, -0/+8xubuntu has long been purported to have a smaller footprint, but its footprint is not much smaller than its more popular siblings, ubuntu and kubuntu. I wonder if the author would be better functionality out of the ubuntu netbook remix, gOS, fluxbuntu, Mepis antiX, or some other distro built for this purpose. DSL and puppy are great choices here but the author was apparently disappointed with their spartan approach.
- Mujokan, on 11/10/2008, -0/+7I'm interested in this topic because I don't know much about Linux, but I'm thinking about buying a second hand laptop and running some version or other on it. My Windows desktop is about at the end of its life, and I'm about to move countries yet again; but I don't want to get a new desktop right now, so I'm thinking about that as a transitional option just for writing and surfing. So... I dugg it.
- d0nkeym0nkey, on 11/10/2008, -1/+8Once Apple drops support for PowerPC in future versions of OSX, my 12" powerbook will go the Linux way.
- AutomatorXV, on 11/10/2008, -0/+6I can testify for this guy. I managed to pull a 10 year old Dell Dimension V400 (355 MHz) out of retirement with the aid of Xubuntu. Albeit that the the PC can't handle anything more strenuous than surfing the web, it still leaves me with an extra PC when the others are taken.
- Braintricks, on 11/10/2008, -0/+5I can't believe you've done this.
- Codename, on 11/10/2008, -0/+5The XFCE interface is fairly light, runs very good on older laptops.
- NerveBand, on 11/10/2008, -3/+7All I know is, where Vista gave me only 1 1/2 hours of battery life, Ubuntu gave me an additional hour.
- Lane, on 11/10/2008, -0/+4wow Ive been looking for something like this all night! I really hope that the netbook remix works well. lets face it, all a lot of people want in a notebook is office applications and the internet.
- thedez, on 11/10/2008, -0/+4It just goes to show that as hardware gets exponentially better, software doesn't. In fact, most just gets exponentially more bloated.
- Benno, on 11/10/2008, -0/+4For anyone in the US that lives near a Freegeek, you too can get an old laptop with ubuntu installed. I don't know about the others, but at the PDX Freegeek (http://freegeek.org/) you can pick up a ~400MHz for $10 -$30 dollars (no hard drive, only guarantee is that it can POST) or higher-end laptops (P4, 1.5GHz +) with the OS pre-installed and tested for about $150.
- gamemaster357, on 11/10/2008, -0/+4worst way to end an article ....ever
"small children, you know, and they like to check out Daddy's toys." - arjie, on 11/10/2008, -0/+4Dude...you missed the point.
- inactive, on 11/10/2008, -1/+4Long story short: he used an old notebook and installed xubuntu, rather than buying a new netbook.
- thedez, on 11/10/2008, -2/+5Maybe if site designers would optimize their code and make a no Flash version of their sites....
- inactive, on 11/10/2008, -0/+3Does XFCE come with a network manager yet? that was always a pain in the ass
- Elranzer, on 11/10/2008, -0/+3With AJAX and Flash, it seems even surfing the web is strenuous.
- darthjure, on 11/10/2008, -0/+2I've got Xubuntu on a laptop and it brought new life to that machine. It did, however, take a long time to set up. Getting the wireless card working was the biggest obstacle. In the 21st century you shouldn't have to use the command line for anything, so that was weird. Also had trouble getting the volume buttons to work - now they kinda work. I can hear sound when I play DVDs, but don't get video. It took a couple of hours of research and work to just get the sound on DVDs. Still, I can surf the internet and can even watch YouTube.
- iofthestorm, on 11/10/2008, -0/+2Yay google translate: Then you will not be a bit of a computer.
Wise words indeed. - MattBD, on 11/10/2008, -0/+2For something like that I'd rather use a minimal window manager - IceWM and Fluxbox are both good choices. It's not hard to remaster Ubuntu Mini Remix to include the software you want and create your own custom distro that way.
- inactive, on 11/10/2008, -0/+2Used Xubuntu for awhile on a HP OmniBook 500 Apart from a simple hack for the sound everything worked quite good.
- monocyteLSU, on 11/11/2008, -0/+2I think I spaced out halfway through the article.
- Elranzer, on 11/10/2008, -0/+2Why wait?
http://www.yellowdoglinux.com - ThePenguin, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1"I figured out that if I downloaded my favorite shows from Revision3 instead of watching the flash, it worked great."
- YourNameHere1, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1Install Wicd, Wifi-Radar, or NetworkManager for wireless.
- Mujokan, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1I think it says "That means you can't use computers at all" but I'm not sure.
- tgunner, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1I got the 1000h and I like it. I used a program called sharpkeys to remap the shift key and then swapped the key caps around. My typing speed with it is great. I love the 1000h.... the 6 cell battery is much better than all the other's three. I get about 4.5 to 5 hours of battery with Wi-Fi ON. It's perfect for notes in class, as well as just dicking around.
- Axtell2k5, on 11/10/2008, -1/+2Stories like this are infinitely more entertaining (and useful) than another review of some new, overpriced new system that has far more operating capacity than what 90% of users need.
- masterkenobi, on 11/10/2008, -2/+3I installed MicroXP on an old P3 laptop recently. Seemed to work pretty well.
- Icetype, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1I tried Yellowdog linux on a 15" Ti powerbook. I didn't care for it. You need like 6 install CDs.
There's an unofficial PPC Ubuntu that's a lot better. Ubuntu is awesome. - iofthestorm, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1Yeah, XFCE isn't really that much lighter than GNOME, although it's fairly full featured. I tried installing Xubuntu a while back on a similar laptop from 1999, a Toshiba 12" with a PII 266 and 160MB RAM, but it was still fairly slow, although that might have been because of slower HD/CD-ROM speeds.
- Icetype, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1I ordered a Dell Mini 9 last night. I got the base model + bluetooth and webcam. You can get a 2gig memory stick for it for $20, and a 32GB SSD for $99. I'll probably wait on the SSD until it's a little cheaper.
My friend bought the Eee and broke it immediately. The screen was easily squished in his backpack. - SteelFrog, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1I've installed Xubuntu on a an older machine I have that used to run as file servers (P3, around 600mhz with a gig of RAM or so) and it ran pretty badly. I was expecting Xubuntu to run quite a bit faster than Ubuntu, but the difference was barely noticeable.
- GavinZac, on 11/10/2008, -1/+2block you, you say? report you? fine by me!
- Ellipsys, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1If you have the money, there's also the consideration for the Asus S101, which is pretty much a MacBook Air for significantly cheaper. In addition the Asus N10 is like an upgraded netbook, with a discreet graphics card. Most people seem to prefer it over the Eee 1000 models.
- dizsid, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1the whole point was to say that he did it for cheaper than 350$... so yes the author has a very valid point when he made the comment you quoted..
- kiwiboyus, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1I have an MSI Wind with that touch pad and it doesn't bother me at all, I also use a MS 3000 bluetooth mouse with it. I have added 1GB RAM, changed out the Wifi card and replaced the 80GB hard drive with a 320 GB one. I get 4.5 to 5 hours battery life from my 6 cell battery and I am triple booting Ubuntu, XP and OS X, soI'd say pick up the Wind ;)
- regeya, on 11/12/2008, -0/+1As some others say, Xubuntu's footprint isn't that much lower than mainstream Ubuntu. Nevertheless, it's still a bit smaller; if you need to go smaller, learn about some of the window managers available for the *n?x/X11 platform. Window Maker is a decent windowmanager, for one, while many, many people like minimal windowmanagers such as Openbox and Fluxbox. There's a whole slew of things to check out. Have fun. :-)
- newwatch51, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1Yeah, Xubuntu is WAY too heavy for a PII. I'd recommend Slitaz or DSL.
- Nephersir7, on 11/11/2008, -0/+1I revived a network-less pentium 2 with Linux Mint XFCE edition, and it was really useful to go from a useless win98 machine with only wordpad to a full OS that had OpenOffice, a mp3 media player, image editor, USB SUPPORT so i could back up my win 98 files i had on the 4gb hdd after all those years. It taked 3 minutes to boot but it was worth it
- lilrabbit129, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1I'm in the same boat. My 12" 867Mhz is just a bit too slow for my day to day tasks. I want to turn it into a netbook type setup, but the backlight isn't stable which is just too annoying.
- eivi, on 11/10/2008, -0/+1Ubuntu on an 8 year old thinkpad x21 crew. The little beauty weighs like two kilos, and must have cost a fortune back in 2000. I got it for 50 euro.
- inactive, on 11/10/2008, -2/+2i once installed Xubuntu in a Pentium 2 machine and it worked like crap
- DJWilsonX, on 11/10/2008, -2/+2hey It was well-written and funny.
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