[geeks] Distro recommendations

[Chad McAuley]

On 9/22/07, Phil Stracchino <phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net> wrote:
> So, I was recently given a Thinkpad i1300.  It's a fairly decently fast
> machine, with a PIII/750, but with 192MB maximum RAM it's a bit starved
> for memory during compiles.  I initially set it up as a Gentoo testbed,
> and while it's done a good job at that and given me a pretty good idea
> of what configuration I want to use when (or, now, if) I migrate my
> primary Linux desktop to Gentoo, I don't think it's really a good
> distribution for this laptop -- large emerges on it are very slow.
>
> So:  If you were going to install Linux on a laptop that's reasonably
> fast but limited to 192MB RAM, what distribution would you use, and why?
>
>
> Notes:
> I specifically DO NOT want to have a desktop that visually emulates or
> attempts to emulate Windows (the window manager will almost certainly be
> fvwm2, unless someone can convince me why I should try something else),
> and I don't want to be pushed into using any more of either KDE or Gnome
> than I absolutely have to.  I don't care about GUI file managers, I
> don't want trashcans, drive icons and other such Windows/Mac-centric
> crap strewn all over my desktop, and I don't give a rat's ass for
> CPU-hogging feature bling like translucent windows.  And I absolutely
> will not tolerate a distro that goes behind my back and changes settings
> I have configured manually back to what it thinks they should be.
>
>
> --
>         Phil Stracchino                CDK#2
>  Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
>  phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net   alaric at caerllewys.net
>  Landline: 603-429-0220           Mobile: 603-320-5438
>         It's not the years, it's the mileage.
> _______________________________________________
> GEEKS:  http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/geeks
>

I haven't used it in a couple years, but I remember ArchLinux[0] being
a nice lightweight distro.  IIRC the base install is just a simple CLI
environment, much like a base Debian or Ubuntu Server install, and
then you can install whatever additional software you want from there.
 I know it's intended that you hand edit your config files, so you
should have any problems with those being changed behind your back.  I
never had need to use it, but from what I remember reading about the
packaging system it's similar to the *BSD ports system and makes it
easy to custom build packages to enable/disable features, change
compiler flags, etc.  I really liked what I saw of Arch, but ended up
going back to Debian/Ubuntu because I was more familiar with it.  But
I may give it another try in the near future.

And I've got to agree with Nadine's suggestion for Opera on Linux,
especiall the new 9.5 alpha.  It's incredibly fast[1] and has been
quite stable for being an alpha build.

[0]: http://www.archlinux.org
[1]: http://nontroppo.org/timer/kestrel_tests/