Installing alternative to XP and Linux Lite 2

[john9159]

I can no longer install XP on my elderly Toshiba Satellite and Linux Lite 2 is woefully slow which I suppose is due to there being only 750Mb of RAM installed (difficult to source).
I found an alternative to Windows on a popular auction site, the disc is Linux mint 13 XFCE 32 or 64 bit lightweight alternative to Windows XP 7 or Vista (aka Maya).
Has anyone any information on this?

[bitsnpcs]

Hello,
which model of Toshiba Satellite is it, or which ram is it, how many slots does it have, how many are empty ?

[Ottawagrant]

There is one question that is VERY important to what you might do. > What do your parents use their computer for? If it's just to read/send email, look at pictures of the kids/grandkids, then there are some very light weight Linux distributions that will do. Can you can give a general idea of what they use it for on a daily basis?

[rokytnji]

https://distrowatch.com/search.php?categ...+Computers

If Linux-Lite is slow on this unit. Mint xfce will be even slower. You need to run a window manager instead of a desktop environment and
and have very few background processes running when idle.

I set something up like you want, for my autistic grandson.


http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/...ost5648944

[rokytnji]

Another alternative. Install Fluxbox into Linux Lite and set it up to boot into that instead of xfce. Run a lighter browser than firefox.

Learn using Linux to the point you can make your install your own.

[Ottawagrant]

Rokytnji: Thanks for posting that link to DistroWatch. You saved me from a quiet Friday. I'm downloading a few of those distro's right now to try. Some I've tried before, but there were a few that are new to me. Some of the one's I've never tried sound very, very interesting. Time to break out the spare hard drives!

[torreydale]

john9159,

Linux Mint 13 is only supported until April of this year. 

It would help us to help you if you did provide the model number for your Toshiba Satellite.

[newtusmaximus]

I ran Puppy Linux on my Toshiba Satellite pro A10 1 GB ram ( 2 slots 500 MB)  They also have a very helpful support group , especially for Linux newbies .  Their Live CD is a great means of trying it out; I always have a copy  for computer emergencies.
ux release
www.puppylinux.org/downloads/

[f23948]

i use Puppy Linux and Linux Lite too

[trinidad]

Try Porteus, on a USB or an HDD. As suggested already Puppy should run okay too. Also if there is an option in the BIOS to allow HDD to set disk parameters rather than OEM setting choose it. Nothing runs faster than Porteus on old hardware but it needs Frugal to set up on HDD. Linux Lite should run fine except for Firefox due to CPU loads. Use a lightweight browser instead and all will be well. After install of LL try increasing swappiness. All my LL 3.2 OS's regularly run up to around 400 to 500 mb ram. 1gig of ram is quite adequate. 500 will kick you to swap sometimes but not slow things much. Your slowness is more than likely caused by CPU loads. On a 1.88gig CPU Firefox in LL 3.2 sometimes pulls 100% CPU in brief spurts. Nothing available has lighter CPU loading than Porteus, except manual minimal installs of Deb.

TC