Suggestion for best Distro to put onto an old laptop

[faintdreams]

I have an ancient (but otherwise fully functional) Toshiba laptop. It is a Satillite 220CDS.

I want to use it as a stand alone writing machine, (with ability ti save to a usb stick), and I think that Linux is probably the best way to go, but I am unsure which linux distro would be the least amount of hassle to install.

The gui doesn't have to be too snazzy (I've used fluxbox before so I'm not afraid of minimalism), but whatever I use it has to support a competent word processing package

My google fu is failing me so I welcome any suggestions.

Thanks (in advance)

Faintdreams

Duh posted to personal journal and no community one  !

Comments

[zvi]

I use Xubuntu on a 2003 dell. It came with Abiword installed, which is a decent, if not excessively flashy word processor.

for long form writing, I actually like to use SuperNoteCard, which lets you organize your work in cards instead of one long flat file, and it works fine as long as you install the JRE.

ohh supernotecard looks very shiny

[faintdreams]

I'd not heard of it before, and will defiantly try it out thanks !

[kerravonsen]

For long form writing, I use TiddlyWiki, which is less specialized than SuperNoteCard, but the wiki form allows you to do similar things. I like it mainly because I can keep everything in one file, and yet keep the notes on a story separate from the story proper. Also, being able to edit from one's browser makes it really portable.

[altarwise]

So Google tells me that a Toshiba Satellite 220CDS has just 16MB of RAM. If that's true then first up, good luck not punching the screen through with frustration when trying to run X and GUI apps, if you're in any way impatient. Secondly, look at very light distros with legacy support like Damn Small Linux. I can't say how easy it is to install, since I've never used it. Thirdly, Abiword definitely is the way to go if you can. Anything lighter you'll be sacrificing features you imply you probably want.

Abiword is probably my best bet

[faintdreams]

I have used it before, and it's feature rich enough for me, but Zvi (see comment above) suggested SuperNoteCard so I might also try that.

And I am a procrastinator extraordinaire so using a sloooow machine is my way of *focusing on the writing and nothing else*.

But yes fair point about slow GUI's and their ability to test a persons patience.

I used DamnSmallLinux once before and didn't like it but that was years ago so I will give it another look, as a lot can change in that time. Thanks

[aphenine]

I several times did a Debian network install. The best thing about the network install is that it installs the absolute minimum of packages so that you can install the rest from the internet. As a side effect, it's really good at making light-weight installs where you need absolute control over the packages you put on it. I especially liked how I could install as much of Gnome as I wanted without pulling the whole thing down (although you have to be careful, as if you trip the metapackage dependency, you get it all).

At the time I installed it, it only took up some 200Mb with the minimum and I got a graphical interface with 400Mb. It's probably the best option if you want something more than the small Linux variants but less than a full Linux distribution, and being Debian, you'll have access to everything that that's in Ubuntu if you want it (and can run it).

Oooh I likie!

[faintdreams]

I hadn't considered a network (as opposed to plain desktop) install before, but the points you raise are all excellent ones.

Thanks you've given me a lot to think about.

[kerravonsen]

I second the suggestion of Xubuntu; Xfce is a reasonably lightweight desktop environment. Or you could install Xubuntu and then replace Xfce with something even lighter like fluxbox or fvwm-crystal.

Remove Firefox, however, because it is a memory hog and will slow down your machine like whoa. I'm not sure what the best lightweight browser would be to use, though.

If you find that your laptop simply has not enough grunt or memory to cope with X, then you'll have a problem, since I doubt that there are any non-X wordprocessing packages around. However, plain text editors such as Vim or Emacs do have many plugins that could help. Also, there are a number of progams around which use the framebuffer, so you could have some graphical things while not running X.

Also, screen is your friend. Also, dvtm is pretty awesome too.

[swisscelt]

I like Chrome. I use it on my netbook running Ubuntu with no problems.

Having said that, I'd consider lynx for a machine with 16 MB RAM. That is, if I needed to get content from the web at all. X windows would be a pain, yes, but there are still plenty of things one can do from the ol' command line.

[asenathwaite]

Have you checked out Puppy, Tiny Core, or antiX? They're all designed for low-powered machines. I haven't tried Tiny Core yet, but Puppy and antiX are very usable and have active communities around them. If what you want to do is write, you don't really need a word processor. A basic text editor like Leafpad should be fine, or if you want something with a little more functionality, try FocusWriter.

[swisscelt]

Ditto the recommendation of Puppy.