Mint 9 LXDE installed on Omni Book 4150 PII Laptop

[HOOHAA]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post here. However, I'm not new to Linux, I've been using Linux for the past 2 months or a bit more. But yes, overall a very beginner user to Linux

I know the title of this thread could be shocking and it would be even more when you'll come to know that I just installed Linux Mint 9 LXDE on a 12 old laptop with PII CPU @ 366MHz, 64MB of RAM (PC-100), 4.5GB HDD and that laptop has NO CD-DRIVE (it's dead), NO Floppy Drive, NO LAN port, One USB 1.0 port. The HDD was almost dead but I found a tool to format it and fix the bad sector/blocks.

Installation done by connecting the HDD of that laptop to my PC through a mobile HDD enclosure with an USB connection.

It's quite long story. I've been trying to breath new Linux life in that laptop for a month or so. I don't really want to go through that but imagine a 30 days and nights of hard working until I made it. I didn't want to install Mint as it's so slow (I know the minimum system requirement for Mint and LXDE - Thank you ) but I had no choice ... that was the only way as the other 10-15 distribution failed to bootup the laptop after installation.

Now, after this short introduction ... I'd like to know:

1) Is there anyway I could install a very light desktop manager instead of LXDE? HOW?

2) If the answer of Q.1 is YES then how can I remove/un-install LXDE and keep the other one?

3) What else I could do to make it faster? any way to tweak and play around so that it would be faster?


Note that laptop "had" Windows XP SP2 and it was SO MUCH SLOW even though XP could be run under such specifications. Mint now is slow but a bit faster than XP overall.

Thank you so much!

P.S.
Please, don't tell me why are you doing? it's not worthy ... etc. I simply won that challenge I set to myself. That laptop was hopeless and I was posting in many other forum in order to find the cure and how exactly I could install Linux but no one managed to help. I don't blame them because that laptop was 90% dead. Guess what? It's not anymore.

[HOOHAA]

Just in case you don't believe me

[HOOHAA]

Am I posting on the wrong place or what? it says LXDE and I have LXDE installed.
Please, if this is the wrong place, let me know.

Thank you!!!

[capt]

For question # 3, I would guess that a upgrade to 256 MB of ram is possible as I have a laptop with the same processor. I use Slitaz on it and runs very well using Midori for web browser.

capt

[HOOHAA]

For question # 3, I would guess that a upgrade to 256 MB of ram is possible as I have a laptop with the same processor. I use Slitaz on it and runs very well using Midori for web browser.

capt

I'm not planning to pay anything for that laptop. It was 90% dead and it's up and running now. Not sure how that will last so upgrading is not an option, I'm afraid. However, thanks a lot for your reply
At least, someone replied.

[HOOHAA]

Looks like my first post is too much complicated to be understood. I'll make it easier for everyone

How to install:
a) Fluxbox
b) Openbox
c) IceWM
and replace LXDE in Mint 9?

How to un-install LXDE?????


I don't need LXDE, I need something lighter like the above WMs.

I guess installing any WM could be done via few commands in CLI/Terminal but I'm not sure how to get rid of LXDE.

Thank you!

[drewkeller]

I think you can install whatever window manager you want in the normal way (Synapsis) and then you can select the manager at the login screen ("session").

[marshag63]

That's awesome! What did you use to work over the harddrive? Looks nice! What brand laptop - looks like maybe HP?

Oh, you have a PCMCIA wifi card working! 90% dead and now with working wifi! Good job!

I have an all-in-one PC (i.e., monitor is part of the computer) and the CD-ROM went bad, but I still had a floppy to work with - made a boot floppy with Plop Boot Manager and used it to boot a USB stick.

One thing you can do is turn off the auto update application and stuff in the system tray (or at least the minimum). Not sure how much of an impact that would make. Even not using a wallpaper (just a color) can help.

LXDE already uses openbox.

Fluxbox is nice - I have it on a netbook. If you like to use keyboard shortcuts - it really flies! I like a clean desktop with no icons.

You can install fluxbox or ICE or anything else and choose it at login from the session manager.

MDG

[HOOHAA]

Linux Mint 9 LXDE was installed on my PC (P4 3.0 GHz - 512MB RAM) and it's using 105MB of the Physical RAM and yes, it's a fresh installation with nothing added yet.

I've been trying many distributions with that laptop. I'm now connecting the HDD of that laptop to my PC using USB-Enclosure and I just installed Mint LXDE. At the beginning, it was using 370MB of Physical Memory but it's cool and quiet now

I just updated it and going to remove many unnecessary packages and will report back here.

Thanks!

[Kendall]

Just a quick note regarding desktop environments and window managers. It's difficult to get a well integrated desktop environment that's lighter than LXDE. You might try Enlightenment as it's lighter on some systems but in my experience they tend to be about even in idle RAM usage presuming all the same underpinnings. One option is to just log into the pure Openbox session available in Mint LXDE. Absolutely nothing has been done with it and you literally just get a gray screen and a minimal menu, but it's light.

[HOOHAA]

Hello Kendall

Just a quick note regarding desktop environments and window managers. It's difficult to get a well integrated desktop environment that's lighter than LXDE.

Agreed, it's difficult but not impossible

You might try Enlightenment as it's lighter on some systems but in my experience they tend to be about even in idle RAM usage presuming all the same underpinnings.

I hate it. I tried to use it but that was only for few minutes. Not my cup of tea.

One option is to just log into the pure Openbox session available in Mint LXDE. Absolutely nothing has been done with it and you literally just get a gray screen and a minimal menu, but it's light.

Yes and it took only 14MB from my Physical RAM on my PC so that's the best option so far
However, I'm trying to learn how to configure it to add some extra options. Not sure how as of now but I'm going to do some search. Never tried it before.


I'm now installing the updates for my fresh Mint 9 LXDE. After that, will remove some extra packages. I removed so far 35 packages and I'm trying to remove those packages which are loading at startup time. I'm thinking to remove gnome-keyering.

So far, Lubuntu beats Mint 9 LXDE. It took only 72MB which is less 30MB than Mint LXDE.
I hope I could reduce it to something near 75-80MB.

[Kendall]

You'll probably want to hang onto gnome-keyring, do some Google searches for why it's important. To cut back on idle ram usage I suggest removing things such as mintUpdate from the autostart file. Regarding Openbox configuration there are some good resources online, notably some of the documentation from Crunchbang.

[HOOHAA]

OMG O_o

I just put the HDD back to the laptop and ... I just can't believe it O_o

1:45 minute = from turning ON to LXDM
1:15 minute = from login to Desktop

Total = 3 minutes!

WOW, we're talking about Pentium 2 @ 366MHz and 64MB RAM and it's +12 years old laptop! oh and this OS (Mint 9 LXDE) is NEW and much recent than XP!

Funny thing is, on the initial start, it took 30MB of Physical RAM so I realized that some services did not start because (maybe) it's a laptop and not connected to my PC anymore (where it used to take up to 110MB of Physical RAM).

Long story short ... I removed more than 35 packages but the most important package that you need to remove in order to get a much better performance/speed is: mintupdate. Yes, it's the Update Manager.

For Openbox, I managed to install the Menu I need to access all the applications and services. I'll keep testing and see which will be better to use.

Seriously, Linux RULES all the way

[HOOHAA]

You'll probably want to hang onto gnome-keyring, do some Google searches for why it's important. To cut back on idle ram usage I suggest removing things such as mintUpdate from the autostart file. Regarding Openbox configuration there are some good resources online, notably some of the documentation from Crunchbang.

Hey, we posted at the same time please check my previous post

I did not remove gnome-keyring because it doesn't take really much from the RAM.
LXDE minimum requirement is 128MB RAM while I'm using it on 64MB RAM on P2 so I don't think it could be better than this

I might remove the Network Manager as well.

Thank you

[HOOHAA]

I can't believe that I'm back again to that old laptop last night, I could sleep so I decided plug it in and turn it on and it's on for the last 10 hours now. I have managed to update and upgrade it, both applications and Kernel and I have managed to remove some packages like Power Management, Update Notifier, XScreensaver and some other. However, I still want to remove more to reduce the slowness. The RAM is out of discussion FULL and the machine is using SWAP Partition more than anything else, I'm very much aware of that. I have done many tests on my other machine (P4 with 242MB RAM upgradeable to 464MB) and I can tell when the machine is using the swap and when it's not without looking at any Task or System Monitor.

I'm typing this from my test machine (P4 with 464MB RAM) and using Mint LXDE 11. It's different somehow as I can't find many Menu items on Mint LXDE 9 which is installed on the Omni Book HP Laptop.

After I did what I want, proved to myself and other that Linux can work on such old machine much better than Windows, I'm planning to use this machine now. Yes, I'm serious. I want to use it as a web-browser ONLY, nothing else. That's why I even removed Abiword and planning to remove many other packages. Yes, I know Abiword has nothing to do being slow or fast as it's not running in the background but I do need more space on the HDD as the total size is 4GB only.

Anyway, I'm open to any suggestions. I don't think I can remove GNOME-Keyring Package so I'll keep it.

Any idea will be highly appreciated

Edit:
Conky is showing:
CPU Usage: 8%-9%
31.3MB/55MB RAM Usage - 56%
40.7MB/541MB Swap Usage - 7%
Processes: 108

This is when idle.

[Ferre]

Talking about old laptops : I own a 11-years old Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600 - 800 MHz/128 Mb - laptop. Almost everything I tried didn't work in a proper way or was painfully slow. Some time ago I decided to try PCLOS Bonsai Openbox and it works okay Of course it remains an old slow laptop but at least it works again. Personally I preferred a Debian base (like Mint or so ) but I always have that incredibly annoying screen resolution issue. Despite all the advice I received from everyone I still cannot bring that resolution higher than 800x600 while it's a 1024x768 screen. That's why I'm stuck with this PCLOS-distro where I have a perfect screen and actually a pretty useable computer.

And for me goes the same : I don't upgrade or throw away my old thrusty laptop

P.S. = this is not my only computer, I just keep this laptop as a test platform for fast, simple distro's.