Computer and Technology | Ubuntu Linux | Web Development

Oh yes, I had another unforgettable experience with Linux and here it goes…

My sister-in-law, Elaine, owns a Celeron 766Mhz PC with 2GB Harddisk and 64MB of RAM. Audio and video cards are built into the motherboard and so video memory is shared. Well, this setup is quite old and it runs slow even on Windows 98. When I switched to Linux, I installed Fedora Core 2 to this PC and wow, it was very very slow. And so my search for a lightweight Linux distro started.

I came across Slacware Linux which is claimed by many to be fast and stable. I went to its website – www.slackware.org – and checked. I found out that they have ZipSlack – a stripped down version of the latest OS release and it was only 47MB – zipped. ZipSlack installs on a FAT32 harddrive and requires only 100MB for installation. It was no headache. I downloaded it, unzipped the stuff and followed the instructions. In less than 15 minutes, the Celeron 766Mhz PC was running on Linux! No headaches involved.

Then I realized that it didn’t come with a GUI, so I downloaded the GUI from the Slackware download site (plus some other apps), installed them, and poof, there it goes. I never knew that installing Linux was this easy! There is one problem though, the PC reboots randomly which I don’t think is a problem with Slackware Linux but a problem with the hardware. Perhaps, the RAM needs replacement.

Here’s the setup:

ZipSlack (from Slackware 10) OS
X Graphical Unit Interface
XFCE4 as Windows Manager
Mozilla 1.7 browser
Gaim Instant Messenger
OpenOffice for Office work
Plus some games…

So that’s how things went. Now, I’m considering to use Slackware Linux as my regular distro.

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