Other Distros

[mini-jaguar]

Kongoni:
this is a distro meant to use only free open source stuff. KDE desktop. It has lots of options and tweaks, but unfortunately seems somewhat sluggish and bloated, not very fast. A few problems like not all the functions on the partition editor work and I can't find the wallpaper manager (possibly due to a shortcoming on my part). Not too crazy about this but I'll definitely try the next version as this distro has some potential.

Slax:
nice streamlined Slackware (200Mb). I got it to work on an Intel MacBook, but still needs some tweaks to the touchpad. There is a package for this available, I'll try it out. Overall a nice collection of packages on the site. Definitely getting an install. Really awesome standard wallpaper too.

Saluki Puppy:
this works on the MacBook with the touchpad better than any other Puppy, but I still have to tweak it and the Synaptics driver won't comply. I haven't tried too much though. This is also getting installed.

Kuki:
very minimal distro, I guess a version of Xubuntu. Seems fast enough but has very little included software, maybe a little more than DSL and it shows icons for the drives (DSL doesn't). Also doesn't have any games (but DSL has some games). It was meant for the Acer Aspire One, but will run on other computers, however there is not much control over this, as I tried it on two laptops, and on one it worked but on the other it didn't even boot.

[izezi]

Tried to get FreeBSD installed this weekend. No go. Pulling hair out.

I hope I'm not committing a transgression by posting this but saw other people posting shots of Windows so...

I've been trying out PC-BSD 9.0, Isotope, for the past couple weeks. It's based on the new FreeBSD 9.0 release with a graphic installer that puts you into KDE 4. I'm using it on my Sony Viao laptop with Intel 1.6GHz Dual Core and 1GB RAM and it recognized all my hardware, including wi-fi, out of the box without having to tweak anything

Where Puppy has .pet PC-BSD uses .pbi files that act like an .exe and install all the dependencies for the application, although you can still use ports which I favor. System and program updates are scanned for and updated through a GUI.

I've used PC-BSD since the early days and this is the most stable and slick version I've seen to date.

[Colonel Panic]

Tried to get FreeBSD installed this weekend. No go. Pulling hair out.

I hope I'm not committing a transgression by posting this but saw other people posting shots of Windows so...

I've been trying out PC-BSD 9.0, Isotope, for the past couple weeks. It's based on the new FreeBSD 9.0 release with a graphic installer that puts you into KDE 4. I'm using it on my Sony Viao laptop with Intel 1.6GHz Dual Core and 1GB RAM and it recognized all my hardware, including wi-fi, out of the box without having to tweak anything

Where Puppy has .pet PC-BSD uses .pbi files that act like an .exe and install all the dependencies for the application, although you can still use ports which I favor. System and program updates are scanned for and updated through a GUI.

I've used PC-BSD since the early days and this is the most stable and slick version I've seen to date.

That's interesting. I'd have thought 1 GB of RAM was pretty much minimal for PC-BSD - I thought it needed 2 GB of RAM. How well does it run on your machine, especially with , say, several tabs or windows open in Firefox??

[izezi]

That's interesting. I'd have thought 1 GB of RAM was pretty much minimal for PC-BSD - I thought it needed 2 GB of RAM. How well does it run on your machine, especially with , say, several tabs or windows open in Firefox??

FreeBSD sees free memory as wasted memory and uses most of what it has available. Here's a screenshot of top while running 5 tabs open in Firefox, gkrellm, and XXMS so you can see for yourself how resources are being handled. I usually don't keep that many tabs open but it doesn't slow things down any.

I didn't size it down to keep the terminal text as clear as possible.

[Billtoo]

I did a full install of Vector Linux Light 7 with icewm.
Midori and Netsurf aren't very good, using firefox now.
It is good for compiling applications, I've done
mplayer,smplayer,smtube,geany, and firefox 11 with no problems.
Icewm works well too.

[linuxbear]

IThe only problem so far is that I*ve been unable to set up my keyboard correctly, with interesting results when I try to input such things as brackets, at symbols etc.

I have had no issues with Bodhi loaded on an old Acer laptop and an oldish HP pavilion desktop. There's a nasty-gram which comes up on boot, but it vanishes when enter is pushed and I have not bothered to fix it yet. There is also another nasty-gram which shows up during power down, but of course it goes away when the machine shuts down. Other than that, Bodhi is extremely fast on my old lappie and I love the E17 environment.

...I fixed that nasty-gram by removing the enlightenment directory that remembers desktop setup. /.e if memory serves

[linuxbear]

I did a full install of Vector Linux Light 7 with icewm.
Midori and Netsurf aren't very good, using firefox now.
It is good for compiling applications, I've done
mplayer,smplayer,smtube,geany, and firefox 11 with no problems.
Icewm works well too.

Vector is a sweet OS. Are they using the grub critter as default yet or are they still using that LILO bug. I think LILO is not compatible with ext4 (?)

[Billtoo]

Vector is a sweet OS. Are they using the grub critter as default yet or are they still using that LILO bug. I think LILO is not compatible with ext4 (?)

Lilo is the default, it is compatible with ext4, my hard drive is formatted ext4.

[nitehawk]

I've been trying out PC-BSD 9.0, Isotope, for the past couple weeks. It's based on the new FreeBSD 9.0 release with a graphic installer that puts you into KDE 4. I'm using it on my Sony Viao laptop with Intel 1.6GHz Dual Core and 1GB RAM and it recognized all my hardware, including wi-fi, out of the box without having to tweak anything
Where Puppy has .pet PC-BSD uses .pbi files that act like an .exe and install all the dependencies for the application, although you can still use ports which I favor. System and program updates are scanned for and updated through a GUI.
I've used PC-BSD since the early days and this is the most stable and slick version I've seen to date.

I actually got PCBSD 9.0 (xfce) installed the other day. The only problem was that I couldn't find a way to dialup to the internet. When I asked on their forum,....I only got one answer about there possibly being KPPP on the install DVD. There didn't seem to be. Not even when I re-installed with KDE desktop. Nothing for dialup.
I searched the FreeBSD handbook for how to do dialup the hard way,...but still couldn't find anything that made sense. So I went back to just Slackware and Debian for now (and a Puppy here and there).

[linuxbear]

Vector is a sweet OS. Are they using the grub critter as default yet or are they still using that LILO bug. I think LILO is not compatible with ext4 (?)

Lilo is the default, it is compatible with ext4, my hard drive is formatted ext4.

I will need to look into that as Lilo is now probably much easier to configure than the "improvement" known as grub-2

[izezi]

I actually got PCBSD 9.0 (xfce) installed the other day. The only problem was that I couldn't find a way to dialup to the internet. When I asked on their forum,....I only got one answer about there possibly being KPPP on the install DVD. There didn't seem to be. Not even when I re-installed with KDE desktop. Nothing for dialup.
I searched the FreeBSD handbook for how to do dialup the hard way,...but still couldn't find anything that made sense. So I went back to just Slackware and Debian for now (and a Puppy here and there).

PC-BSD is the just the FreeBSD OS with enhancements to make it more user friendly. I know you said you consulted the FreeBSD Handbook but maybe you didn't find what you needed:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO885 ... erppp.html

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/ppp ... shoot.html

I don't use dialup so can't be of more help than that, but it spells out how to go about setting up your connection. Don't give up.

[nitehawk]

Vector is a sweet OS. Are they using the grub critter as default yet or are they still using that LILO bug. I think LILO is not compatible with ext4 (?)

Lilo is the default, it is compatible with ext4, my hard drive is formatted ext4.

I will need to look into that as Lilo is now probably much easier to configure than the "improvement" known as grub-2

Well....you can opt for Grub with the Vector 7 Standard (don't know about the "lite" edition). I just now installed Vector Linux 7 Standard (Gold) on my HP Pavilion laptop. I'm going to dual-boot with Macpup 525,....since that's the only Puppy (that I have found so far) that will work on that particular lappy.

[nitehawk]

I actually got PCBSD 9.0 (xfce) installed the other day. The only problem was that I couldn't find a way to dialup to the internet. When I asked on their forum,....I only got one answer about there possibly being KPPP on the install DVD. There didn't seem to be. Not even when I re-installed with KDE desktop. Nothing for dialup.
I searched the FreeBSD handbook for how to do dialup the hard way,...but still couldn't find anything that made sense. So I went back to just Slackware and Debian for now (and a Puppy here and there).

PC-BSD is the just the FreeBSD OS with enhancements to make it more user friendly. I know you said you consulted the FreeBSD Handbook but maybe you didn't find what you needed:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO885 ... erppp.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/ppp ... shoot.html
I don't use dialup so can't be of more help than that, but it spells out how to go about setting up your connection. Don't give up.

LOL!!! I did give up,....but I actually couldn't find any means for dialup. But you're right,.............I still have the DVD and I most likely will be trying it again. I used PCBSD for awhile back in the number "7" editions,....and it seemed to work just great on my old stuff I had back then (around 2006-2007). There was that KPPP for my dinky little dialup then..........(so sweet).

[izezi]

Don't feel bad, dude.

X stopped working on my FreeBSD 7.4 laptop and I've been trying to get it going again for the past day. so I know how you feel

[nitehawk]

Don't feel bad, dude.
X stopped working on my FreeBSD 7.4 laptop and I've been trying to get it going again for the past day. so I know how you feel

....ah,..hair-pulling time.

[Billtoo]

Vector is a sweet OS. Are they using the grub critter as default yet or are they still using that LILO bug. I think LILO is not compatible with ext4 (?)

I wanted to dual boot vl7 light on a pc that had Ubuntu 11.10 installed on it on an ext4 formatted hard drive.
I booted up the vector dvd and found that it could only resize an ext2 or a fat partition so I booted a puppy dvd and used gparted to resize the ext4 partition and add a new ext4 partition and a swap partition.
Then I booted up the vl7 light dvd and ran the install without touching the mbr or installing lilo, when finished setting up I rebooted Ubuntu and did sudo update-grub in the terminal, it setup my vl7 install and I'm now dual booting Ubuntu and vl7.It put 3 entries for vl7 the first 2 being a graphical login screen and the second boots to the txt login screen which allows installing the proprietary driver for my graphics card.
I installed the lxde window manager, I have icewm and openbox on two other installs but I like lxde best.

[nooby]

I did a full install of Bodhi Linux on a Dell Dimension 4600 old P4
machine.

Then I did dual boot on the grub2 but that where more difficult than I
anticipated.

Some menuentries has " and some have ' around text.

It also seems to need root=uuid for the root partition.

But I am not sure.

Anyway would would be best to install on next free ext3 partition?

I have never had PCLinuOS booted before so that maybe is a good one
to test now when I have normal standard set up with ext3 and full install?

[nooby]

Finally found a way to boot Ubuntu and LinuxMint grub2
full install together with Puppy Linux and also other grub1
frugal booting distros like PCLinuxOS


To get frugal install persistance using PCLinuxOS then
use this code changes_dev=/dev/sda1

Here are my my entries on grub2

menuentry "pclinuxos-phoenix-2012-02.iso" {
recordfail
insmod ext2
set root='(hd0,1)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set xxxxxxx
linux (hd0,1)/isolinux/vmlinuz root=UUID=xxxxxxx BOOT_IMAGE=LiveCD livecd=livecd initrd=initrd.gz bootfrom=/dev/sda1 changes_dev=/dev/sda1 acpi=on fstab=rw,auto
initrd (hd0,1)/isolinux/initrd.gz
}

menuentry 'lupu puppy frugal install ext3 on sda1' {
recordfail
insmod ext2
set root='(hd0,1)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set xxx
linux /lupu528/vmlinuz root=UUID=xxx psubdir=/lupu528 pcie_aspm=force
initrd /lupu528/initrd.gz
}

The sda1 is formatted to ext3

Guys the embarrassing thing is that it took me 2012 -2008= 4 years
to learn it. Why did not somebody tell me straight away already 2008?

Such is very surprising to me. My attitude is that if one can do something
then one share it so many others also can do it. Not to keep it a secret

Edit. To make correct the text above.

PCLOS could do frugal install from 2010 so not 4 years but 2 years.
And it only works on Linux formatted drives.

[Colonel Panic]

Well done nooby! I'll bear that in mind if I ever need to install several grub-booting distros side by side like those.

Thanks to whoever it was who suggested Quelitu as a distro for old computers. I installed it yesterday and am posting from it now. It's working great (and I still have my Arch Linux installation on my other hard drive partition). I think Mint looks a bit better to be honest but Quelitu's ability to run with fewer system resources more than makes up for that on an eleven year old machine like mine.

Cheers,

CP .

[Colonel Panic]

Sadly that didn't last long - I found the application repositories Quelitu was able to access were much more limited than Mint 12's, so I'm back using that instead. I had to clear some of my old Puppies off the drive and, of Puppies, am now just using Tttuuxxx's Classic Pup for the time being.