Re: Moving to UNIX

From: David L. Johnson (david.johnson_at_ptd.net)
Date: 11/20/05 

Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 15:46:40 -0500

On Sat, 19 Nov 2005 20:50:34 -0500, General Schvantzkoph wrote:

>
> The 80M of RAM is a real problem, you won't be able to run Gnome or KDE
> with that little RAM. The 2G disk is also a problem, you'll have to strip
> any distro that you install down to a bare minimum to do an install.
> Frankly if Win98 is working for you I'd stick with it.

Amazing how we managed. I used to run linux on a laptop with 12meg of Ram
and an 84-meg hard drive.

to the OP: You can make linux work quite well on such a machine as yours.
 You will have to take care about what you install, and what you use.

A few recommendations:

Use a smaller window-manager, rather than a full "environment" thing like
gnome. fvwm should still be available, and will do you fine. You will
want to favor more command-line options rather than gui-based
applications, which will take some getting used to. But you can still run
X, a browser (Firefox is best) word-processor (Abiword) spread***
(gnumeric) and lots of utilities.

whatever distribution you use, don't install everything. Be picky; decide
what you need and install just that. Keep pre-loaded kernel modules
limited to those you need, also. This will take some work to get right,
but it will give your old machine a new life. 

-- 
David L. Johnson
   __o   | It is a scientifically proven fact that a mid life crisis can
 _`\(,_  | only be cured by something racy and Italian.  Bianchis and
(_)/ (_) | Colnagos are a lot cheaper than Maserattis and Ferraris.  --
           Glenn Davies