[GLLUG] Interesting fact about Debian Vs. Ubuntu

[Marr]

On Sunday 17 December 2006 10:58am, eduardo cesconetto wrote:
> I been playing around with a Pentium II 300Mhz laptop w/ 96MB of RAM,
> I tried the following distros(in order I tried them):
>
> -Ubuntu 6.10.1 (Installation took 2 hours, System very very slugish)
> -Kubuntu 6.10.1(Installation took 1 1/2 hours, System very slugish)
> -Xubuntu 6.10.1(Installation took 1 hour, System very slugish)
> -Ubuntu 6.10.1Alternative Install. CD (Installation took 2 hours,
> System very very slugish)
> -DSL 3.1 (Installation took 20mins, System somewhat fast)
> -Puppy Linux (Installation took 20mins, System fast, but very poor/
> buggy package management tool)
> -DesktopBSD (Installation took 30mins, System somewhat fast)
>
> After all of this tries and some poking the net, I decided to give
> Debian 3.1 a try, and here is the result: but-kicking fast old
> laptop, rock solid OS, very fast boot, perfect package management and
> total hardware support.
>
> I'd like to hear some opinions on this, since most of the time I hear
> (and do) users recommending Ubuntu/K/X even for older hardware.
>
> []'s
> Eduardo

You might want to give Slackware a try.

I haven't run side-by-side comparisons with Slackware and any of the 
distributions you listed, but a few months ago, when I had the chance to run 
SuSE 9.1 on my (mostly-retired) 450 MHz Pentium-2 desktop PC with 320 (?) MB 
of RAM, I found it incredibly sluggish until I swapped in a hard drive with 
Slackware (10.2), which seemed noticeably "snappier" and more responsive. 
Hard to quantify, really; just my perception, FWIW. I had been using that PC 
as my main desktop machine for a long time with Slackware and was amazed at 
how sluggish it seemed under SuSE, which I only ran after I'd retired that PC 
as my main box.

Of course, 96MB of RAM is on the "lean" side for most distributions, even one 
like Slackware. However, for over 4 years, up until mid-2004, I ran Slackware 
on my 400 MHz (AMD K6-2) laptop with just 64 MB of RAM, so Slackware might be 
worth a try. In fact, that laptop still runs Slackware (10.2), but I've 
already upgraded from 64 to 64+128 MB of RAM. That laptop is still my primary 
mobile PC and runs quite nicely, for my needs.

HTH...

Bill Marr