I posted a thread on the desktop/other-wm section about light desktops for old laptops.
To make a long story short, old and cheap laptops are everywhere, those old p3, p4, and socket A laptops are everywhere, and they make fun toys.
FreeBSD supports this old hardware very well (better than linux in most cases,) and is quite useful in bringing the ubiquitous "old laptop that you were going to throw away but just couldn't" back to life.
Just so you know, I'm talking p3, p4, and socket A laptops here, 256-512mb or RAM max, 20gb-40gb hard drives max, no sse3, and really bad video (S3, r128, old intel, etc.)
Remember the really cool Fluxbox with the really cool conky.cfg that you had back in the day? Or the, "wait, what is that? The wallpaper is really cool though" desktop?
How do we get this old stuff to work again? -Os, Fluxbox, and a really slick, stripped-down kernel? Do I just set cputype and go? Or maybe packages are the best way?
SysCtl stuff? Tuning of some randome file?
People with old laptops on their desk, let's save these things from the trash!
How do we get some speed and usefulness out of these things?
I always thought personally, that a really stripped down kernel, set cputype in make.conf, and maybe something light, like fluxbox, openbox, or windowmaker, was the way to go. But can a 500mhz athlon with 384mb of RAM handle LXDE? Possibly? What about KDE3, or is this just a bad road to go down, as it's just too old, and unusable now? Ideas?
To make a long story short, old and cheap laptops are everywhere, those old p3, p4, and socket A laptops are everywhere, and they make fun toys.
FreeBSD supports this old hardware very well (better than linux in most cases,) and is quite useful in bringing the ubiquitous "old laptop that you were going to throw away but just couldn't" back to life.
Just so you know, I'm talking p3, p4, and socket A laptops here, 256-512mb or RAM max, 20gb-40gb hard drives max, no sse3, and really bad video (S3, r128, old intel, etc.)
Remember the really cool Fluxbox with the really cool conky.cfg that you had back in the day? Or the, "wait, what is that? The wallpaper is really cool though" desktop?
How do we get this old stuff to work again? -Os, Fluxbox, and a really slick, stripped-down kernel? Do I just set cputype and go? Or maybe packages are the best way?
SysCtl stuff? Tuning of some randome file?
People with old laptops on their desk, let's save these things from the trash!
How do we get some speed and usefulness out of these things?
I always thought personally, that a really stripped down kernel, set cputype in make.conf, and maybe something light, like fluxbox, openbox, or windowmaker, was the way to go. But can a 500mhz athlon with 384mb of RAM handle LXDE? Possibly? What about KDE3, or is this just a bad road to go down, as it's just too old, and unusable now? Ideas?