[sf-lug] sf-lug Digest, Vol 31, Issue 20

[Rick Moen]

Quoting terry (a10cuba at hotmail.com):

> I need help instaling linux on an everex pentium mmx 200 laptop I
> tried suse 7.3 ,10.3 xbuntu errors during install. any one want to
> take a crack at it? 

It would help _a great deal_ if you would specify the model of Everex.
And also give the full text of the errors you saw (but I'm guessing you
didn't bother to transcribe them, so you'd have to try a second time,
and this time take contemporaneous notes).

Also, if it just happens to be either an Everex Expressnote 586, an
Everex StepNote 2053T, or an Everex Stepnote XT5000T -- or a model
_similar_ to one of those -- then you're in luck and should see:
http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/other.html

See also (overlapping coverage, but from different umbrella sites that
are worth knowing about):

http://tuxmobil.org/everex.html
   Everex Expressnote 586 (aka LEO DESIGNote 3500 Series)
   Everex StepNote SA2053T
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/Everex
   Everex StepNote XT5000T
   Everex StepNote SA2053T

Finally, I think you're going to have to take into consideration the
fact that you're attempting to cram modern Linux distros -- which tend,
these days, to require that minimum 256MB RAM or so be present just for
the installers -- onto a 1997-era machine that, correct me if I'm wrong,
probably has on the order of 64MB total RAM on it.

Taking the RAM limitation as given, and assuming it's no _worse_ than
64MB total (which could be the case, too):

Debian or Slackware are, among a small number of others, possibilities
(barely!), _if_ you take care during installation to not do dumb things
like install GNOME, or KDE, or XFCE4 -- or probably even Firefox.  In
general, installing distros onto low-spec hardware is not recommended
for newcomers to Linux[1], as it requires care in areas that newcomers
wouldn't even think about (e.g., trimming undesired services, shutting
off unneeded virtual consoles, etc.).

Contrary to many subscribers to this mailing list, I specifically do
_not_ recommend selecting Linux micro-distributions such as Damn Small
Linux or Puppy Linux as the distros of choice for low-spec machines, as
such distros' limitations are far too severe.

(I couldn't fathom for quite a long time why some regulars kept making
that exact same bad-advice recommendation.  Recently, I've arrived at a
guess:  They like the micro-distributions because those relieve them of
the necessity to understand how to install _only_ desired packages from
a real, full-featured distribution, and to disable unwanted startup
processes.  Hence, they can achieve apparently good results on low-spec
machines without having to learn how to do installations _well_.  This
attraction is understandable, I guess, but it'd be smarter to knuckle
down and learn, finally, how to configure installations, rather than
just picking a super-tiny distro because it never occurred to you that
your job of performing a Linux installation isn't _ever_ done just
because the distro installer program has terminated -- and _especially_ 
on a low-spec machine.)