Compaq 1260 & Slack

[Capt. Cautious]

Good Day folks,
While I have not seen much on slack here & I have an old Compaq 1260 with a 6 GB HD, 64 of ram & I think it has one usb port ( I'll have it back from the shop next week - power connection problem) I want to use it as a linux box. I know about the use of a swapfile to get around the ram problem but I am wondering if Slack would be an appropriate OS for this older laptop or weather it would be better to install one of the older knoppix eg: 3.6 or 7? Yes I have read all the wiki's and a good part of the material on HD install. I know the risk and assume it willingly. I do have some cmd line ability but I am not proficient and do keep a refference handy. I just don't know all the distros and have never used slackware. I am more familiar with Debian and Knoppix. I also want to learn PHLAK on a system it does not matter if I crash it. Any suggestions from you experts out there? I'd appreciate it.
I Remain~ In Service & In Health,
Captain Cautious

[OErjan]

i use Debian Sarge 3.1R1 (latest stable) on a P1@100Mhz with 74M ram and 6Ghdd, and same Laptop has Slackware10.2 (latest stable release)installed.
both work great on it (i use icwwm as KDE and GNOME are too heavy).
it is no performer but it is ok to surf and do mail...

[Capt. Cautious]

OErjan Blessings & the Top O' the Morning to you,
I thank you for the quick response. Since I'm more familiar w/ Debian I'll try that first. I really don't recall the cpu speed. I'll dig out the manual tonight and see what's workable. Again, Thank You.

I Remain ~ In Service & In Health,
Captain Cautious

[Capt. Cautious]

Here again,
I finally found the specs it has a AMD K-6 /333 processor with a nominal 5 GB HD it said 6 on the info sheet, but it reads 4.97GB on the scan. With only 64 of ram I had to create a swap space and so far the debian Sarge 3.1R1 and while it was a bit to install it seems to be working now, slow, but what the heck. BTW, by increasing the swap to 512MB KDE runs slow but runs. icwwm runs slick. I finally found the pcimcia wireless card but haven't tried it yet. May have some wuestions when I do. Thanks a lot, OErjan.

I Remain~ In Service & In Health,
Captain Cautious

[OErjan]

yeah, KDE works but i have seen glaciers move faster.

[Capt. Cautious]

OErjan, Good Day to ye,
Yes, KDE is slow, but with the swapfile it only runs about a half as slow as on my AMD 2400 machine w/ 512 RAM. I wm using WM on it and it runs pretty darned good. It seems that the HD is touted as a 4 GB but the drive still reads like a 5 GB. Weird, but it does what I need. Now if I can get it to load PHLAK I'll have many hours of learning fun. I really appreciate the help. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, I had to format the drive to load the debian Sarge. It didn't like something on the drive.
I Remain ~ In Service & In Health,
Captain Cautious

[Tom Tiger]

Mmm.... doesn't suprise me that KDE is slow.... but why use it on a low end machine at all? If you want to get a
little more speed out of it.... well WM is good, but for fun try another great Debian distro, www.damnsmalllinux.org
Damn Small is only 50 megabytes big, is Debian, runs with Fluxbox as a windowmanager (I redid this distro with ICE as a WM) and is very very fast. Lowest machine I've used it on was a Toshiba Satellite 4000 (PII 266, with 100 mb of ram) which runs it pretty fast :-)

L8tr... Tom



OErjan, Good Day to ye,
Yes, KDE is slow, but with the swapfile it only runs about a half as slow as on my AMD 2400 machine w/ 512 RAM. I wm using WM on it and it runs pretty darned good. It seems that the HD is touted as a 4 GB but the drive still reads like a 5 GB. Weird, but it does what I need. Now if I can get it to load PHLAK I'll have many hours of learning fun. I really appreciate the help. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, I had to format the drive to load the debian Sarge. It didn't like something on the drive.
I Remain ~ In Service & In Health,
Captain Cautious

[Capt. Cautious]

Good Day Tom Tiger,
I want to use it on the older machine for learning purposes with a OS that I can reload as "I" see fit not as Winblow$ or the practice want me to. Secondly, and maybe most important is, I own it. The practice owns everything else including the system at home. So if I crash the compaq I can just reload it and go on. If I crash the other boxes I have to go through the whole nine yards reloading winblow$ XP-Pro, network, server links... You get the pic :) I really want to thank you folks for all the help here. BTW the servers runs SuSE 8.2 w/ Samba, with all else Win xp-pro clients.

I Remain ~ In Service & In Health,
Captain Cautious

[Tom Tiger]

Yep, I've been there. In my case I dropped windoze because of the security issues, and spyware, mallware addware ect....

I started out using good old Knoppix 3.1 on my notebook, got hooked and replaced windoze with Linux and on the plus side it has become part of my job aswell :-) Backups are more easy than with windows.

At the moment I'm running Knoppix 4.02 on my Sat Pro 4600 and Ubuntu on my Sat Pro A10.

Good times ....

L8tr... Tom

[dannyboy]

Wow! Linux on laptops! Can you guys help me on mine too? I posted my inquiry in the "Very old laptop converts...." , I need help on what is proper for my situation, the specs are too low and i don't even know how much RAM my WinBook LM has, and I am a newbie, just learned linux this Feb2006, but at best got a lot of guts top try this out, ehehehe, so help me God. So if it crashes, no nine yards right Captain? Aye aye! HeeEELp! Oooops...shhhh....help please :D

[Harry Kuhman]

dannyboy, here's your help (http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/etch_di_beta2/i386/iso-cd/debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso), particularly a good choice with that healthly "no harm if it doesn't work" additude. And in case you are wondering the above link came from here (http://www.us.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/).

[dannyboy]

I'm back and I just finished my ZipSlack problem. So i suggest you use ZipSlack, this is a Slackware variant from slackware.com and it's nice since you can run it from DOS mode, and yes witouth changing the filesystem, fat32 shall remain. I maintained my Windows 98 SE for future uses that I don't know yet, just in case.

Get all files that you need first before installing ZipSlack.
Get zipzlack.zip and probably fourmeg.zip(for increasing swap if system ram is 4 MB, it increases to 8MB). Get X11 and other X11 components from ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware/slackware/x/ . Read the faq.txt from zipslaxk.ztp for installation instructions. You may be editing your windows config.sys and msdos.sys , but I don't quite understand it anyways.

After installation of ZipSlack(just plain unzipping to c:\ anyways), I restarted windows to MS-DOS mode and then went to c:\linux then activated loadlin.exe (i don't know why, but if i skipped this part it starts anyways) then typed "linux" in the prompt and voila linux starts! And now it's up to you on the X11 installations...unless you post it i will be happy to share my experience.

Hi Harry may I say "YaiKz!!!" my WinBook does not do netinstall, it has no modem and CD-ROM nor a floppy drive, tsk!
But that link I will save it for my other Pentium Desktops, they are in dust right now, I will resurrect them with your link for a tryout.
Salamat po kaayo! Thank you very much! Encouragement from gurus are best than their detailed instructions.

[Harry Kuhman]

Hi Harry may i say "YaiKz!!!" my WinBook does not do netinstall, it has no modem and CD-ROM nor a floppy drive, tsk! That's pretty much going to crimp the ability to install most things on it, as well as run Knoppix. At some point you have to consider if the hardware is worth the trouble, and this seems like one of these point. I'm not clear on how you install much of anything to it.

[dannyboy]

I got FastLynx version 2.0 (free download, i googled it)like Laplink using parallel cable. I transfered the needed files from an internet connected PC to the WinBookLM thru FastLynx version 2.0 and it works fine. Just run the software on both systems and voila, trasfer!

[Harry Kuhman]

I got FastLynx version 2.0 (free download, i googled it)like Laplink using parallel cable. I transfered the needed files from an internet connected PC to the WinBookLM thru FastLynx version 2.0 and it works fine. Just run the software on both systems and voila, trasfer!
Yea, I used some technology like that back in the last millenium . But without a floppy, modem, CD drive or, I assume, a network card, just getting the FastLynx software on that WinBook could be an issue. But at least you're getting some use out of the old hardware.

[dannyboy]

Good thing FastLynx can upload itself from my Desktop PC to the WinBook thru it's "upload option" thru a serial cable or COM1 port. Try googling FastLynx version 2.0 , there's a website authorized by the authors of FastLynx to give it for free. This is so handy!

But this WinBook came with FastLynx in it already so I have not experienced uploading that. And I don't have a serial cable. So if all else fails, all devices not detected by linux, you can still transfer large amounts of files thru DOS. Then work your way thru DOS towards a totally Linux everything. I suggest maintain DOS while not yet sure if your troubles are done. I'd say delete Windows but not DOS.