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Desktop Linux: The dream is dead

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f0dder:
I found Zenwalk to be the best distro for my 700Mhz PIII with 128mb ram, the laptop came with Win2k, and struggled with XP. A quick check of the site shows it still holds true to those principles, and it's looks super slick.-Eóin (October 22, 2010, 02:43 PM)
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Looks decent - too bad there isn't any (easy-to-find, at least) "about zenwalk" page... like, short design philosophy blurb, highlights of the standard system packages, choice of windowmanager/desktopenvironment (looks like Enlightenment from the screenshots), etc... would make it easier to judge if it's worth giving a try, without hunting through the wiki :)

Looks like it's in active development, that's a plus. I'm a bit wary of the smaller linux distros, would suck ending up with something that doesn't have regular (package) updates, or where development suddenly dies. Anybody remember the slackware crisis when Volkerding was ill? Or been stuck on a system where package updates felt pretty random? (Archlinux, I'm looking at you - was a pretty nice experience apart from the packages, though... and their "pacman" package manager was pretty good proof that linux filesystems are affected by fragmentation ;) )

ljbirns:
Perhaps - just don't expect miracles, the current slick and easy-to-use distributions are  heavier than the distributions 5 years ago... so if the hardware is really old, you'll probably still be limited to some of the "techier" and not-so-pretty but more lightweight distros.
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256 K  ram   1.0  Celeron processor   came with XP installed

Renegade:
Sorry for the nostalgia, but I am reminded of this video:

Video
-Josh (October 22, 2010, 02:40 PM)
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That was awesome~! :D

mateek:
It was the final minute of play.  I study Hebrew full time on my own on a TV website with subtitles (usually).  I played with Windows 7 on one of my half broken Thinkpad T23's (Pentium3 era IBM, they are all I use outside my home PC) until I was confident I should put it on the one I dedicate for carrying around and hot spots, etc.  I'm all set up, hang my router out my window here in my apartment building, get comfortable on the shady bench, plug in my earbuds, and........no video.  Just sound.  Hmm, a plug in problem?  Video acceleration settings?  I should specify that the only video having trouble is on that particular webpage that uses a Windows Media Player plugin.  The other installed 7 on my other T23 is working fine on that webpage and with every other file as well.  I had the same positive results with a few 'trial runs' with a boot CD.  When I exhausted all my repair options, I was almost resigned to spending September - October studying indoors. 

Then I saw an article about Ubuntu's new netbook edition recently. I'd been playing with the OS over the years, but the last time I got stuck when trying to get my wireless PCMCIA cards recognized and WPA working.   I said to myself, "Well, if 7 installed on one of these pieces of junk and is working better than XP, why not give this 10.10 netbook edition a try?"  That was almost a critical error.  When I did install and try to start that edition the boot timed out and probably never found any hardware recognizable.  However, after a frustrating hour for not having my glasses on I finally noticed on the bottom bar was a drop-up list with the option to boot to a regular Desktop edition, and that...WORKED!!!

I probably shouldn't be so excited, since I can't hibernate, or sleep, or allow a screensaver without wiping the session, but so what?  I'm in the lobby down here replying to this thread, and not stuffed into my apartment tonight.  All of a sudden I might even be able to sell a few of these T23s to someone with low standards like me one of these days.

I went from thinking of Ubuntu as some sidelight to fiddle with to my bread and butter OS overnight.

ljbirns, I would definitely give it a try, and I'd love to hear how things go.

Josh, that video was , ty!

delwoode:
It's the programs stupid!

I only stick with windows (xp) because the big program makers, (among my fav. progs are ADobePhotoshop and premiere) dont make progs for linux varieties.  I know you can slip into some sort of emulation etc. but I am not interested in having to do that every time I want to use photoshop!   If a few of the big prog makers made a version for linux I would have changed long ago. As it is I doubt I ever will

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