I plan on reactivating an old computer and installing Puppy. Its been sometime since I've used the Linux OS although at one time years ago I was quite involved with it. The computer involved is an old NEC 233L that I have livened up to the limits of the motherboard. I installed a new PII 333 processor and filled the three memory slots with quality 128MB sticks for a total of 384MB. I replaced the original 3GB hard drive with a 30 GB drive and installed a new 52 CD writer. I'll even be buying old PS2 input devices to insure compatibility. So I've done everything I can think of to give this thing a new lease on life within budget parameters.
I'd appreciate having suggestions from experienced users regarding certain installation choices even though the manual is entirely clear on some of them. Naturally, I'd like the thing to go as quickly as it can and thought these choices might facilitate that. The drive will be zeroed out from the beginning and I'll be installing from scratch from the Puppy Live CD which will be the only OS installed. I see the recommended partition sizes in the manual but would like some up-to-date insights about Linux file systems. I have experience with 2, 3 and rfs. What would be your general recommendations concerning partition size and file system given my specific hardware? Not to stray to far outside the box?
Which Puppy for this old computer?
I gave away a machine with more or less the same spec a while ago... still running...it was our first PC.
The system that ran the best on it was an nlited windows XP.
You may find recent pups heavy even on that memory and a lot depends on if the video card has a proper driver too...sound may be a pain too.. you might want to consider an older pup...4 series maybe to get something useable or 214.x.... but its all very hit an miss.... suck it and see
Mike
The system that ran the best on it was an nlited windows XP.
You may find recent pups heavy even on that memory and a lot depends on if the video card has a proper driver too...sound may be a pain too.. you might want to consider an older pup...4 series maybe to get something useable or 214.x.... but its all very hit an miss.... suck it and see
Mike
Old Computer
I've got an old PII (400MHz, 255Mb of RAM) that I fire up once in a while. (mostly to test out new Puppys). Wary 5.0 works well. Lucid Puppy 5.2 is a little slow. In general stick with Puppys that have the retro kernel.
You will probably want to create a swap partition to get the best performance. I have never bothered to install Puppy itself to a hard drive. Frugal install (running off the cd and making a save file on the hard drive) has always worked fine on my PII.
I'll download Wary 5.5 and let you know how that runs on my machine.
Good luck.
You will probably want to create a swap partition to get the best performance. I have never bothered to install Puppy itself to a hard drive. Frugal install (running off the cd and making a save file on the hard drive) has always worked fine on my PII.
I'll download Wary 5.5 and let you know how that runs on my machine.
Good luck.
Old Computer
I tried out Wary 5.5. It takes a long time to boot off the live CD, but runs fairly fast once it's up and running. Because of that you probably would want to install it to the hard drive.
Seamonkey is slow (which has been true for every puppy since the 4.0 series at least) so you will need a different browser, and frankly the slowness of browsing the internet on a PII is why I don't use mine much anymore. It should be fast enough for just about everything else puppy can do.
Seamonkey is slow (which has been true for every puppy since the 4.0 series at least) so you will need a different browser, and frankly the slowness of browsing the internet on a PII is why I don't use mine much anymore. It should be fast enough for just about everything else puppy can do.
For the persuit of masochism ...
Opera up to 12 is fast ... but it does gulp memory.
Firefox 3.6 is better on memory while still handling most pages well.
Do not even think of browsing without at least flashblock ... older flash might be ok for non video purposes.
Win32 rendering simply works better than X on such older hardware due to its direct nature even if you have a good driver.
mike
Opera up to 12 is fast ... but it does gulp memory.
Firefox 3.6 is better on memory while still handling most pages well.
Do not even think of browsing without at least flashblock ... older flash might be ok for non video purposes.
Win32 rendering simply works better than X on such older hardware due to its direct nature even if you have a good driver.
mike
To reiterate, try either ttuuxx's version 2.14X Top 10, http://www.smokey01.com/ttuuxxx/2.14X/iso-sfs/
or a puppy-4.1.2-k2.6.25.16-seamonkey (94mb) version, from here: http://412collection.co.uk/iso.php Others may or may not agree, but it is a good starting off place.
or a puppy-4.1.2-k2.6.25.16-seamonkey (94mb) version, from here: http://412collection.co.uk/iso.php Others may or may not agree, but it is a good starting off place.