I recently inherited an older computer that really isn’t much good for anything. It is a Toshiba Tecra 8200 with a Pentium III processor and 256MB of RAM. Since it is a little older, and slower than the modern day stuff, I decided I wouldn’t put Windows on it because lets face it, that would just be painful. I decided to put Linux on it because as one of my old bosses once told me,
“You can run Linux on an empty soda can and an o
ld 9 volt battery if you wanted to!”
Since this laptop isn’t much better than an empty soda can, I decided I would give it a shot. I put Xubuntu 7.04 on it because of the lower overhead than regular Ubuntu with Gnome. I couldn’t use the regular Live CD installer though, so I had to use the alternate install cd that uses a text based installer instead. Now everything is working fine.
What I am going to use this for though is something my wife can use when she goes to the coffee shop. She keeps asking if she can borrow my laptop, but I am always using it. Besides, my laptop is running Linux also, which she doesn’t care for so much.
How am I going to make her use this one, when she doesn’t like Linux in the first place? Easy, I am not asking her to completely make the switch (That would be suicide). No, I am only asking her to use this as something to play with when in the coffee shops, or wherever she needs to take a laptop. She still has her desktop PC at home with Windows on it for anything important to her. I also changed the GDM login screen to make it look like a Windows XP welcome screen, and the desktop wallpaper to the grassy fields to make her feel a little more at home! If only I can find a Windows XP USPLASH theme also then this laptop will be complete!
Originally Posted on Bauer-Power By El Di Pablo
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Why make your wife suffer? I’m currently running the exact same processor with 500mg of Ram and Windows XP. I have a ton of stuff preloaded on bootup in memory and it still runs great.
By the way, I found you via BlogRush. I’m glad that it’s working for you because I’m getting zip.
Cheers!
…BB
500MB of RAM is that laptop’s max. This oone currently has only half of that. Sure, Windows XP will run on it, but not at it’s best capacity. I had XP on a similar system a few years ago, and it would take 5 minutes to open anything. With Xubuntu, everything is a lot smoother.
The math is pretty simple:
Linux = Less overhead than Windows.
Bauer-Power
To each their own right! I just put up an article that shows you which services can be disabled allowing a p3 256 machine to run xp smoothly… I would use open office instead of MS Office though!
@BlogBloke – I think you are the ONLY hit we got from BlogRush. We have decided to stick it out to the end of the month seeming we have hundreds of thousands of credits…
I found this funny Tux with butterfly wings/Windows Lilo boot screen for my laptop! Not as good as a Windows XP usplash screen, but it will do. Besides Grub breaks after ghosting, so I need lilo anyway.
Here is the lilo splash!
Why not use it for something like the world computing grid project? I run this on my home machine which is used for Hotmail, Excel, Word, and Scrabble. And of course, Halo! And perhaps some occasional pron…
Never heard of that. Sort of reminds me of the SETI@HOME project.
How did you do this? Can you tell me or send me the link?
Hey Gadget Girl! Are you asking how to install Xubuntu? Well, you can download the CD iso here: http://is.gd/boL7
There is a start. What else specifically do you want to know?
To make Linux look like Windows take a look at http://www.scorpking.za.org/node/2