Mint 4 or Xubuntu 7.10?

[alanmzifa]

Hi, I've been running various flavours of Ubuntu alongside XP for a couple of years. Not an expert by any means, very basic knowledge, was hoping some experts could answer a couple of questions....

I have an old Dell my 4 yr old daughter uses, currently with Xubuntu 7.10 on. It seems sluggish with this version (it's a PIII 700Mhz with just 256MB RAM) and I think this is due to the resources needed for Xubuntu 7.10. I can't use a previous version of Ubuntu/Xubuntu as Ubuntu 7.10 won't install with less than 320MB RAM - will Mint 4.0 be the same?
Also Xubuntu 7.10 supports my ZD1211B chipped wireless dongle (which presumably Mint 4.0 does). The laptop has no internal CD drive and the external one doesn't seem to play with Linux install CDs so a PXE install would be necessary (that's how I got Xubuntu on) if that can be done with Mint?

thanks in advance for your help.

[catweazle]

Mint or xubuntu should not be a big difference. I do not expect that changing to Mint will solve your problem. I think is has more to do with the apps you are running (many apps on the background ? Added heavy applications after the initial installation ?)

[alanmzifa]

Thanks for your reply.
The only application running normally is Firefox.

[stevenofnine]

You're probably looking at needing a more minimal install on that machine.

You could give MiniMe or TinyMe installs of PCLinuxOS a try.

Not sure about PXE, but PenDrive installs are available if the old machine has a USB port.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

[alanmzifa]

stevenofnone, thanks for the reply and the suggestions. Unfortunately it has to be a PXE as the laptop won't boot from USB and the external CD drive seems to dislike Linux CDs I've put in it.

If anyone has any info on whether MiniMe, TinyMe or PCLinuxOS can be installed from by PXE that would be very useful. The current install of Xubuntu got installed that way.

Jerry_N, thanks for your reply too. 6.06 Ubuntu will install but my problem is with the lack of support for my wireless dongle (Zydas 1211B chipset, renamed to something else now I think). My wireless network also uses WPA2 which the dongle and Xubuntu 7.10 support.
7.10 is also a lot slicker for set-up especially when it comes to printers as you've also noticed.

[MagnusB]

I have Kubuntu running on a similar system (with a 2.4 GHz CPU though) of similar age, though it is a desktop. What I found extremely useful was the alternate install CD and a little app called sysv-rc-conf. sysv-rc-conf lets you disable certain services/daemons which you don't need, some examples is cupsys (printing), avahi daemon (network utility detection tool), bluetooth and some other I can't remember right now. I would recommend looking into that after you have installed.