low cpu/gpu

[godsotherhand]

I am using a low resource "netbook"(actually, kinda old laptop).
its got a 1.4ghz processor, 16mb ATI video card and 512 mb of ram.
Currently i am using linux mint 10 LXDE on it but i would really want to know what other Linux distro i could use to get the most out of it.
Just got myself an external hdd and would like to install on it another linux distro.. Could you please help me in choosing one?
I want to play music/video, suft the web using mozilla(usually got lots of tabs opened) and use my PidJin messenger,all at the same time. nothing else.
That's why i need the fastest distro i can handle..
Having 512MB of ram, i never had ram problems with my lxde installation.. processor is a different thing.
Cloud-based OS is not going to work for me, as i got a really slow connection (10kb/s download..)
Any recomandations?

[Matt267]

I'm using LMDE XFce on my Dell Mini 1018. Battery life is important to me. I'm getting about 40 mins. of extra battery life with LMDE XFce compared to Mint 10 LXDE and Ubuntu 10.10. I now get about 3 hours and 40 mins on a 3 cell battery. (this is with wifi off during meetings/conferences using AbiWord.

Matt

[nunol]

So, you want a distro thats faster than Mint 10 LXDE? Debian LXDE or XFCE is faster than Mint 10 LXDE (or Mint XFCE) but it's also less user friendly.

Crunchbang comes with the Openbox or XFCE flavor and both are faster than Mint 10 LXDE. And so is Bodhi Linux.

AntiX M11 is even faster and is still based on Debian (like Crunchbang).

Puppy is faster than AntiX but is a more basic OS, you are always root and there are no security updates. Puppy is a small download, 130MB (http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pu ... pu-525.iso) so you can start there. Also, Puppy has a lot of derivatives so you have some choice.

Anyway, if it's a CPU problem you may want to leave the Desktops Environments (DE) and move to a Window Manager (WM). I recommend testing a few but Openbox (Crunchbang, Archbang), Fluxbox (Mint, AntiX) and E17 (Bodhi) are god choices.

[AlbertP]

If you want to do much things at the same time, you ought to add some RAM to the box. That may be the cause of Mint 10 LXDE being a bit slow.
In fact Mint 10 LXDE should be very fast on this computer. And which ATI card do you have?

[lmintnewb]

(edit) Feeling like a dog for not mentioning summin that's already under ya nose. The Magic Mint editions ... honestly you might already have everything you need installed right now. Just by tweaking the Mint you have.

I had Mint 10 main ( with gnome, xfce and fluxbox installed.) When I was using fluxbox it would idle at like 80mbs/ram. That's Mint 10 32bit, their lighter weight stuff no doubt runs much lighter and better than that outta the box.

So ye may be doing yourself and Mint a disservice by distro hopping. Might want to look at how to tweak whatcha got. Cause although I haven't used it. Don't doubt Mint's lighter stuff can be made to match pretty much anything else going.

ie: Use a lighter DE, shut off unnecessary startup apps, download bum and disable any unnecessary services that start when ya boot up. Tweak your visual effects to settings that use less. Change ya swappiness to vm.swappiness=10 to cut down on disk writes.



Recently one of the Linux folks on the forums who no doubt knows a thing or 4 about Linux ( exploder ) introduced me to a snappy lil distro called Slitaz. Am actually using it more than the others lately. Fascinating and peppy Linux distro. Total install on my sys is under 500mbs so far. Tiny distro ... good on sys resources. But don't let the size fool ya. It packs a punch !

( slitaz has a variation of firefox called Shiretoko ... Based on FF 3.5.7 or so.) Also comes with a default browser that's awesome on sys resources called midori. But midori is buggy, crashes sometimes ... Locks up and pushes cpu to 100% sometimes. Might be sorted in the newer versions of it though. I had to nix it ... didn't feel like messing with it anymore.

AntiX11 is top notch ... Has a variation of firefox called iceape. Really resource friendly distro as far as I've been able to tell pretty much all the way around. Lightest, fullest featured distro I've yet used. Which being a newb isn't saying much.

Crunchbang get's a lot of positive feedback and promotion from what I've seen and came across related to it. Unlike ubuntu ... guessing CB, actually lives up to the hype. Haven't used CB yet ... based on some resource stats I came across don't really see much point. AntiX is no joke debian based. CB no doubt also very good ... also debian based. Seriously doubt CB default matches up to antix though.

Puppy's already mentioned. One I'm thinking about installing alongside all the rest sometime soon. Absolute Linux 13.37, it's based on slackware and is supposed to be a great fit for older/lower resource hardware ... Which like you, I'm in the 512mb/ram club. Sighs ...

Absolute isn't supposed to be exactly flashy ( eyecandiwise) or uber pretty like the heavy weight bloated stuff. But didn't at all look to be ugly either and if performance is the main concern. Think it's worth looking into.

Don't doubt Mint's light editions could be turned into grease lightning and feather weight sys resource users if someone does a lil bit of homework and tweaking. The Magic Minty developers are no slouches. Just a thought etc ...

[AlbertP]

If your ATI card has only 16MB memory, you cannot get much more out of it than Mint 10 LXDE does. I think that you should just stay with this distro if you don't have any problem with it. If you want something else, but with Mint's user-friendliness, you can use Wattos or Bodhi.