Maximun Slack/Debian versions for an old box...?

[fox]

Give me a suggestion...

P233mhz MMX w/32mb ram and a 2gb HD

I've installed a non-graphical version of Slackware (7.something) and then upgraded to 8.1 and put X on it (the binaries form xfree86.org, not the slackware-customized, don't ask me why).

Rigth now it runs quite 'decently' (xfce+gnome without nautilus), except for Abiword (that for some really odd reason only recognices the space, backspece and delete keypresses, but nothieng else), but I'd like to know how far could I push the 'upgrading' without getting a big solw down...

So, which do yo people think are the highests versions of Slackware or Debian I could put on it?
Would OpenOffice run decently? Any idea of a good file manager (better than xftree but faster than nautilus)? Any warnings on x-programs I shuldn't run (resource eaters)? Any alternatives for the later ones?

[jtpenrod]

quote:So, which do yo people think are the highests versions of Slackware or Debian I could put on it?
Would OpenOffice run decently? Any idea of a good file manager (better than xftree but faster than nautilus)? Any warnings on x-programs I shuldn't run (resource eaters)? Any alternatives for the later ones?

I had a Dell OptiPlex GSa (P II (232MHz) 32MB RAM, 2.0GB HD) not too long ago. It came with Win 95 as an OEM install. I put Mandrake 8.1 on that even though 'Drake recommended at least 64MB of memory. I had it running KDE with very few problems (mainly a Lucent Technologies WinModem that refused to work with 'Drake). Other than that, the only other problem was that Konqueror ran very slow, and seemed to hit the swap part a helluva lot. Although Mozilla ran just fine. The limited amount of memory limited that ol' Dell to running no more than three or four apps at once. During the install, I had to force a text-only install as 'Drake didn't seem to like the vid card, although once X was configured, I had full graphics. Given that experience, you just might be able to run the latest Slack or Deb versions.

Of course, there's no way that ol' Dell would have run XP.  :mad:
_______________________________________
Live Free or Die: Linux

Their fundamental design flaws are completely concealed by their superficial design flaws.

[Calum]

i'd say just use slackware 9 and see how it goes, but there might be reasons you don't want to do that. my suggestions for file managers are gentoo and xfm. i don't like them and i still use konqueror but they are better than xftree! and they both are available as slackpacks (i forget exactly where from).

also, are you using the slackpack of abiword or the source version? and is it from before or after you upgraded? i won't know how to help, but maybe there's something in there that will enable somebody to tell you why abiword isn't working.

[Calum]

file managers (i too am looking for a good one that's not konqueror to run in xfce in slackware) which i think look like they are worth a try are as follows:

apache file-manager - not sure about this one. looks like it needs apache to run and it may not have too many functions.

emelfm - i like the sound of this one although i haven't tried it yet.

Chuck's filemanager page has many other filemanagers that certainly i will be giving a try. if you find a good one, please post saying which one it is.

edit: and: http://www.rule-project.org/en/sw/

[ April 14, 2003: Message edited by: Calum: crusader for peace & freedom ]

[Calum]

okay, i tried out emelfm and dfm last night and both are really good. i prefer dfm because if you use it alongside the likes of xfce or windowmaker it provides a lot of features that you would expect of kde or gnome, like desktop icons and folders, 'open with...' dialogues, and so forth.
here's a quick shot of my desktop with xfce and dfm going:
http://calumsmusic.netfirms.com/dfm.jpg

while dfm doesn't have the eye candy of Aqua or KDE, it does have most of the features of those interfaces (if you use it alongside XFce that is).

now the only thing i have a problem with is figuring out a way to get dfm to start when i start xfce...

[ April 15, 2003: Message edited by: Calum: crusader for peace & freedom ]

[KernelPanic]

You can safely use the latest versions of slack/debian core OS's on that hardware. You just need to be careful with your choice of WM.
I would definitely NOT reccomend OpenOffice, it will run like your gran.

[Calum]

yeah, use abiword and kword if you can (of course you need to install a lot of KDE libs et c to use kword) or else SIAG Office ( http://siag.nu/index.shtml ).

[KernelPanic]

Use dillo as a browser. It doesnt support frames/flash/DHTML, any of that S***, but it is very fast and light. You could try Phoenix for any more multimedia 'sites you require access to.

[Faust]

Is pheonix free software ie : apt-get able?

[Doogee]

err, lots of free software isnt apt getable, what the fuck are you on about.


But it probably is  

[Faust]

so far i just haven't seen a single decent free software program that isn't apt-get able.  I mean jesus these people have made the anarchists FAQ apt-getable for goods sake!  just yesterday I tried -

#apt-get install kitchen_sink

and it worked!

[Calum]

well phoenix is open source, you can get binaries at mozilla.org for OS/2, linux/i386 and win32, and probably others, however i did notice that the red hat 8 repository at freshrpms has an rpm of phoenix 0.5 in it, meaning that if you have red hat 8, you can just apt-get phoenix and that's it.

there are two things about that - one i don't know if apt has those for non RH8 linuces, also i strongly recommend using the latest phoenix nightly. it's a lot nicer (and ironically more stable!) than the most recent 'stable' version, which is 0.5. all you need to do is download the binary tarball from mozilla.org, untar it into /usr/local (or i prefer /opt) and drop a symlink into /usr/bin and you're away. i'd take this method over the rpm method because you know where all the phoenix files are (in /opt/phoenix) instead of rpmd all over the place. just my opinion.

i find many sites do not work in dillo, sadly, dillo is great and is stable, but is only as good at rendering webpages to about the standard of netscape 1 or so. this is no bad thing, that's a lot better than nothing, plus it does it while still weighing in at 300k!

[ April 15, 2003: Message edited by: Calum: crusader for peace & freedom ]

[fox]

Ok, first, thanks for the answers.

About the file managers, I downloaded some and I'm going to test'em when I get som time.

So you say the highest versions are ok?
Yep, I suposed so, as long as I stay away from Gnome2 and KDE3...

No OpenOffice? Alrigth, I'll give a look at that Siag thing (I hadn't heard of it before)
Or else I'll have to stick with Abi... if it worked...

Any idea of what could be wrong with abiword?
It lets me open, save, select and change the formating of the text, and insert newlines, spaces and tabs, and erasing text... but it just refuses to understand any other keypress, I even tried to press ALT+ some ascii code, but again, only newlines and spaces are acepted. It's really weird.

[fox]

Oh, and about Dillo, I kinda like it, so bad it can't handle forms in a proper way (I could stand all the others drawbacks, but not that one)

Anyway, Phoenix works fine (just a bit solw on startup), so why bother?

[Siplus]

hmm...i really have no idea what could be wrong, and i'm just curious:
try to copy and paste a word into abiword. i doubt it'll help us, but if it doesn't even show a pasted word, then you know something's really messed up