Distro Recommendation

PDD

Hi Folks,

I was hoping someone here could suggest a good linux distro for my needs. I have an old Dell D610 with 1.5GB of RAM. I am looking for a Ubuntu based distro if possible with a low memory footprint as I will be running the OS and a large number of tools at the same time such as LibreOffice, Eclipse, ROR Server running Redmine/Trac. From what I've found some good options seem to be

Ubuntu XFCE
Bodhi Distro

Any and all feedback is welcome.

Dave

JonathanAnon

I'm running Ubuntu on an old laptop with 256MB RAM.. I'm running version 9.10.. It can do one task comfortably, but multitasking is not really possible.

Telchak

I've found Xubuntu to be the fastest Ubuntu spinoff. It runs perfectly (with multitasking) on a really old 1.2GHz, 256mb laptop. Was a major step up in performance compared to regular Ubuntu, and a shocking difference to Windows XP (:

PDD

@JonathanAnon - Cheers for the feedback mate, I dont think I would have considred running vanilla Ubuntu on 256Mb RAM but now I know it can. If I didnt need to use the laptop to run my full Dev environment I would have no problems whacking on Ubuntu. Unfortunately as I will be running a RubyOnRails on it, one or two word docs open at a time, a browser for dev work and possibly an IDE aswell so I guess Im wondering if this is possible given my hardware constraints.

Naikon

Debian stable or RedHat/CentOS. These two have a sick level of stability. Arch(even stable) is the complete opposite. Not really for professional use imo. If you don't mind stuff breaking once in a while, go for Ubuntu 10.10 or Arch or whatever.

If you need stability, Ubuntu LTS, Debian stable and RedHat/CentOS are the best choices. It's really a compromise between stability and features. You gotta decide which side to tip. What is really great about Debian, is the wide range of support. Debian kFreeBSD uses the freebsd kernel with a GNU userland, so you can have the nice features of BSD, such as the PF firewall.

BopNiblets

Linux Mint just released a LXDE version that might suit?
http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_julia_lxde_whatsnew.php

JonathanAnon

PDD wrote: »

@JonathanAnon - Cheers for the feedback mate, I dont think I would have considred running vanilla Ubuntu on 256Mb RAM but now I know it can.

Well I guess what I mean is that if it can run on 256MB, it gives you a lot of work to room with regarding other apps given that you have six times my RAM.. I actually in a kind of similar position to you ... in that I have an old laptop (Celeron 1500Mhz, 256MB) that used to have Windows XP Home REALLY slowly... I wanted to get a lightweight free O/S running on it that I could get wifi Internet access and play DVDs on.. And I've managed to get it all running..

I found a few documents relating to Ubuntu 9.10 on how to reduce the overheads further by changing sizes of swap files, turning off remote access, turning of the scanner daemon.. etc etc.. You should look in to that as well for whatever distro you choose..

pickarooney

I have an old Windows XP laptop lying at home with 256MB of RAM and a CEleron 1.6 or something. I was thinking of putting Jolicloud on it. Has anyone tried this on a laptop?

JonathanAnon

pickarooney wrote: »

I have an old Windows XP laptop lying at home with 256MB of RAM and a CEleron 1.6 or something. I was thinking of putting Jolicloud on it. Has anyone tried this on a laptop?

You need to be careful about getting the hardware working as well though.. I had to use NDISWRAPPER and the windows xp driver to get the laptop's wireless working.. Took a lot of effort to get it working..

Capt'n Midnight

would ubuntu server have lower memory requirements ?
server has 5 year life so older versions are still supported

and you can install LXDE on either desktop or server for a light gui

Redisle

pickarooney wrote: »

I have an old Windows XP laptop lying at home with 256MB of RAM and a CEleron 1.6 or something. I was thinking of putting Jolicloud on it. Has anyone tried this on a laptop?

Installed Linux Mint 9 XFCE on a similar laptop recently, old Celeron Fujitsu thing. Runs just fine and picks up all the hardware. Joilcloud is grand if your well into your cloud computing.. but other than that a normal desktop is nicer IMO.

pickarooney

That old machine doesn't even recognise my USB memory stick so I'm afraid it will have to die in XP

PDD

Hi Folks,

Cheers for all the suggestions, I just thought I would update here in case its useful to anyone else.

I installed Lubuntu which runs at less than 400Mb RAM / 4-6% CPU usage with Chrome (10 Tabs) and a few other windows open including an instance of Redmine Bitnami Stack running in the background too. To say that I am impressed is an understatementm, in fact I think I've just converted. :-P

Dave