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I'm getting a Dell Latitude C610 1.2Ghz 256MB 30GB, and wanted to query to see what people recommend for a Linux distribution to use on it? Something light and fast preferably. My only Linux experience to date is OpenSuse 10.1 with KDE on my AMD64 X2 desktop system with a gig of ram. So far I was thinking Fedora or Arch. I would prefer some kind of package management and not too much compiling. I'll probably upgrade the memory later. Thanks.

Jason

I'd try Debian Etch, but then again, I'm pretty biased.

- Superb package management, nearly 20,000 packages are available
- As stable or bleeding edge as you want it to be, pick your branch; stable, testing, or unstable
- Very flexible netinstaller, that will allow you to do a minimal installation with only the packages you want, and nothing more
- Take pride in using the original Debian!

jturning wrote:My only Linux experience to date is OpenSuse 10.1 with KDE on my AMD64 X2 desktop system with a gig of ram.

Dude, now I'm jealous!

jturning wrote:My only Linux experience to date is OpenSuse 10.1 with KDE
...
So far I was thinking Fedora or Arch.

To me it seems like you may not be 100% comfortable with the commandline for configuring stuff etc.
(If you are, please forgive me )
And if that's the case, I'd stay away from Arch as it's pretty much all manual text file editing for configuration, except for package management.
If you can wait a week more, Fedora Core 6 will be out and from what I've seen, it should be really nice, for a GNOME user mind you, the KDE experience on Fedora is not exactly optimal, but what can you do? Red Hat has always specialized in GTK and GNOME.

jturning wrote:I'm getting a Dell Latitude C610 1.2Ghz 256MB 30GB, and wanted to query to see what people recommend for a Linux distribution to use on it? Something light and fast preferably.

I'd try Mandriva 2007 (If you don't want to bother installing extra stuff yourself to get Flash, Java, codecs etc. you can buy one of the commercial packages or probably "look around") or Fedora Core 6 (When it's out, and if you want a really good GNOME desktop).

jturning wrote:I'm getting a Dell Latitude C610 1.2Ghz 256MB 30GB, and wanted to query to see what people recommend for a Linux distribution to use on it? Something light and fast preferably. My only Linux experience to date is OpenSuse 10.1 with KDE on my AMD64 X2 desktop system with a gig of ram. So far I was thinking Fedora or Arch.

There's no reason you shouldn't keep on with Suse, although that much memory will make it a bit slow. People have different opinions as to whether it actually has a package management system.

Fedora woks pretty well on laptops these days. If you go that way, I'd suggest Core 5. Core 6 will be out in a few weeks, but I'd wait a bit. I have a desktop with 256 megs of RAM on a 1.4 gig Athlon running FC5, and it's fine, although you might want to turn off services you don't need.

Arch was too much work for me.

Gomer_X wrote:There's no reason you shouldn't keep on with Suse, although that much memory will make it a bit slow.

Nicely said my man, although it's pretty easy to get Xfce running on SUSE; heck it even installs WindowMaker out of the box!

Gomer_X wrote:People have different opinions as to whether it actually has a package management system.

Oh 10.1 definitely has one, a broken one mind you!

10.2's package management stack should be faster, more stable and just work a lot better, but don't expect to see a "perfect" package management system in SUSE until openSUSE 11.0 og SLED 11, there just are some parts, aka the ZENworks parts, that are so utterly crappy that it's hard to put any trust in it, however the dependency resolver, libzypp, and good old YaST are looking to get pretty good a lot sooner.

Gomer_X wrote:Fedora woks pretty well on laptops these days. If you go that way, I'd suggest Core 5.

Gomer_X wrote:istro generally, for Intel Centrino laptops however, wireless can be a little difficult for a new user as you have to compile the driver yourself.

Gomer_X wrote:Core 6 will be out in a few weeks, but I'd wait a bit.

According to the roadmap it will be out on October 11th, which is only 7 days away.

Gomer_X wrote:I have a desktop with 256 megs of RAM on a 1.4 gig Athlon running FC5, and it's fine, although you might want to turn off services you don't need.

Do you run GNOME on that, or like Xfce or lighterewight desktops?

jturning wrote:I'm getting a Dell Latitude C610 1.2Ghz 256MB 30GB, and wanted to query to see what people recommend for a Linux distribution to use on it? Something light and fast preferably.

Why not give xubuntu a shot? If you don't mind an xfce desktop, it should run nicely.

jturning wrote:I'm getting a Dell Latitude C610 1.2Ghz 256MB 30GB, and wanted to query to see what people recommend for a Linux distribution to use on it? Something light and fast preferably.

Why not give xubuntu a shot? If you don't mind an xfce desktop, it should run nicely.

xubuntu runs pretty well on my
Acer Aspire 3005WLCI

Mandriva 2007 is also offered in a mini form now, along with their live CD offering, One.

The Mandriva download site says this about it:

A dual architecture (i586 and x86_64) single CD. You can use it both
on 32- and 64-bit x86_64 machines, the installer will detect your
processor and boot the correct version of the installer. If you want to
use a 32 bit installation on a 64 bit machine, you can select it by
pressing F3 then F6 at the boot prompt. This CD includes the minimal
set of packages for a running system, however you can include an
Internet source of packages during the installation or after the
installation to add extra packages.

I haven't tried it myself, so I can't tell you what is included in it at this time. It's free to download. Although, I'd probably wait until it makes it to the FTP servers. Right now, the Mandrive torrents are pretty busy with everyone downloading the new release.

Tsuroerusu wrote:

Gomer_X wrote:Core 6 will be out in a few weeks, but I'd wait a bit.

According to the roadmap it will be out on October 11th, which is only 7 days away.

The Fedora guys at the LinuxFest on Saturday were saying October 18. I don't know who to believe. I haven't seen news about a delay, but they don't always announce those on the list.

Tsuroerusu wrote:

Gomer_X wrote:I have a desktop with 256 megs of RAM on a 1.4 gig Athlon running FC5, and it's fine, although you might want to turn off services you don't need.

Do you run GNOME on that, or like Xfce or lighterewight desktops?

I am running XFCE on it now, but the usability isn't up to Gnome standards. I like to use the for corners of the desktop for launchers, and I can't do that in XFCE (or I haven't figured it out).

I've run Gnome on it just fine. Gnome 2.14 is quite a bit quicker than 2.12.

I've put Xubuntu on one laptop - a 233 Mhz Compaq, and Ubuntu on an HP laptop 2.8 Ghz. I really like the Ubuntu intall on the laptop. Xubuntu is excellent for lower/older hardware. With both versions, everything works, out of the box. I use the Belkin 54G USB Wireless Network Adapter for connection. No extra work to get it working.

If possible, I'd suggest topping out the memory, and keeping with SuSE. If you don't top out the memory, give Xubuntu a try. I'd recommend using the install CD, and not the LiveCD w/install with lower memory. Ubuntu is, for me, the easiest distro to use, at least for now. I rarely go commandline.

Keep us informed of your laptop adventure.

jturning wrote:I'm getting a Dell Latitude C610 1.2Ghz 256MB 30GB, and wanted to query to see what people recommend for a Linux distribution to use on it? Something light and fast preferably. My only Linux experience to date is OpenSuse 10.1 with KDE on my AMD64 X2 desktop system with a gig of ram. So far I was thinking Fedora or Arch. I would prefer some kind of package management and not too much compiling. I'll probably upgrade the memory later. Thanks.

Jason

jturning wrote:I'm getting a Dell Latitude C610 1.2Ghz 256MB 30GB, and wanted to query to see what people recommend for a Linux distribution to use on it? Something light and fast preferably. My only Linux experience to date is OpenSuse 10.1 with KDE on my AMD64 X2 desktop system with a gig of ram. So far I was thinking Fedora or Arch. I would prefer some kind of package management and not too much compiling. I'll probably upgrade the memory later. Thanks.

Jason

I would say Ubuntu, Fedora, SuSE, and Freespire should be fine. But I would highly reccomend getting your ram over 512MB if possible. That is the sweet spot, and does make a difference. Really, linux is linux and all distros have their focus. Pick one and run with it. Learn it and get used to it. I found Red Hat as my comfort distro, and tend to stay there (prefer RPMs over DEBs anyday).

Gomer_X wrote:

Tsuroerusu wrote:

Gomer_X wrote:Core 6 will be out in a few weeks, but I'd wait a bit.

According to the roadmap it will be out on October 11th, which is only 7 days away.

The Fedora guys at the LinuxFest on Saturday were saying October 18. I don't know who to believe. I haven't seen news about a delay, but they don't always announce those on the list.

I believe it has slipped to at least Oct 17th according to the Fedora schedule