Linux on laptops

[Mark Phillips]

Stu,

I am curious about your plans. You mention using older hardware. What type of 
hardware? At what price do you plan to offer your laptops?

A few experiences:

I had an old Inspiron 3000 laptop, and to be perfectly honest Windows 98 ran 
much faster than a vanilla Debian install. Windows 98 for word processing and 
browsing is sufficient.

I installed Debian on a PII with a 100 MHz bus and still found Windows to be 
faster. 

I installed Win 2K on a PIII 500 MHz system and Debian - the response time was 
about the same, although at first, Windows was more responsive. As time went 
one, Windows got slower and Debian remained constant. It was my kids' 
machine, and they installed a lot of Windows games that may have had 
something to do with the change in performance.

Checking Dell's refurbished equipment web site, they are offering a latitude 
(P4, 2.3 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB hd) for under $300. It comes with Windows XP 
installed. Adding Linux takes a little bit of time, but is getting easier and 
easier to accomplish.

My point is that I can get a good laptop with Windows for around $300, why 
would I buy an older laptop with Linux on it? Also, there are times when I 
need Windows - for example for editing my  home videos. The GNU stuff is 
still too young and takes a lot of fiddling to get to work, and needs a 
really fast machine. I have edited a lot of videos on Windows PII laptops. I 
am looking at QEMU as a way to run Windows and Linux simultaneously.

I am not saying you have a bad idea, I like it a lot. You would have saved me 
some time configuring all those older machines! I am just curious how you 
think it will work? 

Thanks!

Mark

On Wednesday 03 May 2006 03:23 am, stu wrote:
> On Wednesday 03 May 2006 07:08, Empty wrote:
> > Wagner, Steven G wrote:
> > > If anyone could post back with a short list of what you like about 
Ubuntu
> > > (if you like Ubuntu) I'd be interested in hearing. I was under the
> > > impression that it is just a very easy, kind of novice distro that works
> > > with a lot of hardware, etc. and installs quickly. Am I missing
> > > something?
> >
> > I like it because it is Debian enough for my tastes, with solid hardware
> > support. It recognized my 10/100/1000 Ethernet out of the box, *and* my
> > IPW2200 wifi card... To me it is aimed more at the desktop crowd. I
> > prefer to save my brain cycles for getting something big and important
> > working rather than mucking with constant patching etc.
> >
> > ~Ben
> >
> 	If / when I get started on this project, I plan to try several different 
> Distros. For the reasons both of you have mentioned above, Ubuntu is clearly 
> a reasonable choice since I'm looking to introduce new users to Linux in an 
> easy to swallow form! Considering the older hardware I'll likely be working 
> with, I'll definitely give Xubuntu a shot - I rather like Xfce4 as a 
> lightweight window manager. I've got a K6-2 400 running it on Debian.
> 	Then, there's also DSL which runs on almost anything, as does Puppy, and 
I'd 
> like to try Enlightenment on a Debian base install, just for giggles.
> 	I'm currently looking for hardware sources, and I'm willing to do some 
> Dumpster Diving if needed! Most of what I'm finding online is either 
> "Refurbed" with Windows preinstalled, or has been stripped of memory, hard 
> drives w/caddies, batteries, and power supplies.
> 
> 	Stu
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-- 
Mark Phillips
Phillips Marketing, Inc
mark at phillipsmarketing.biz
602 524-0376
480 945-9197 fax