After being impressed with Mandrake Linux 9.1 as I wrote in the previous post, I decided to install it on my old Compaq laptop (an Armada 1592DT). This is a Pentium 233Mhz machine with 64MB of ram and a 3GB hard disk. I had a feeling this was going to be a mistake and I was right … the latest ‘desktop-based’ distros are quite resource intensive, even if you’re not running much, just X. Of course I didn’t run KDE or GNOME, but even booting the machine and logging in was painful! The whole installation ordeal made my laptop so hot I had to prop it up on some cd cases to cool it down.

Oh well, I used to have a perfect Slackware installation on it running Fluxbox as the window manager and Opera as the browser. Distributions such as Slackware and Debian are really very useful in situations like this, because you can install just the minimum amount necessary and get on with it. So I scrapped Mandrake and installed Debian 3.0r0. No problems so far, I’m using the same fluxbox/opera combination. A very light window manager, and quite a light browser. Opera only takes up about 14% of memory on start up and is taking up about 35% right now, which is fine as browsing is the primary purpose of this machine anyway. Oh well, lesson learned. Shiny new desktop distros just don’t belong on older and slower laptops, even with many services turned off. You’re better off going with a light-weight distro like Slackware or a minimal Debian install.