Discussion on:

Best Linux distributions for hardware detection and older hardware

I'd say that Fluppy (remix of Puppy) should be even better for hardware detection, especially on laptops.

http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2011/01/another-view-on-old-friend-or-putting.html

www.damnsmalllinux.org/

CrunchBang is great. I ran that on a Dell Mini9 for years. It was as close to windows you could get in Linux.

One hint for Distros: look at what the hardware makers are using. Dell ships lots of PCs with Ubuntu, so therefore loading up that distro on a Dell PC is fairly painless.

I doubt they have enough tools for proper detection and, even if detected, activation (I mean drivers and firmware)

AntiX M11 has 3 builds available;
Core @ 115-118MB, just the core OS, build your own from there, available with 486 or 686 kernels
Base @ 361-364MB, a simple basic installation with GUI, available with 486 or 686 kernels
Full @ 678-680MB, a beautiful Desktop that is flexible and scaleable, able to easily hold its own as a rock solid, production quality OS that will grace almost any machine, old or new.

Release announcement http://forum.mepiscommunity.org/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=30415

I recently installed Lubuntu on a tiny EEE Asus and everything works fine, maybe not as fast as your latest desktop, but still much smoother than the Windows that was installed before. To be honest, I hadn't the occasion to try the wireless part, but it seems that the system recognizes it.

I too have an old eee pc 900, and
ive tried Lubuntu on it and liked it.
I currently run Xubuntu on it and love it.
Hint - use Synapse. Way beats menus!

Ive tried the regular Ubuntu / Unity, but
that combo is almost too slow.
Firefox? Feh! Chromium - Ah.

I'm a command line kind of guy, so really, I don't need any menus at all. I usually ssh into bigger boxes, and sometimes invoke GUI on those, so on the Fuji laptop, all I need is an Xserver, terminal, ssh, and a browser.

And a driver for my WiFi.

I have a Fujitsu PIII laptop with 256MB of RAM.
I have been running Ubuntu 10.something on it, but it's so slow I rarely use it.

So, I booted Lubuntu 11.10 LiveCD.
My DLink DWL-630 isn't recognized properly. It seems to be, but it just connects and disconnects, and asks for my WPA2-PSK login again.

I rebooted Ubuntu, and it connects fine. I presume there's a driver that's been dropped in the Lubuntu distribution, but I don't see my card listed in the Ubuntu site, either.
lshw:
*-network
description: AR5001-0000-0000
product: Wireless LAN Reference Card
product: AR2413 802.11bg NIC
vendor: Atheros Communications Inc.

Or, should I just install the lxdm on the Ubuntu?
Would that make an overall performance improvement, or is there more to the "lightweight" aspect of Lubuntu?

--
Clarence

I recommend Linux Mint. www.linuxmint.com Its 32bit and 64 bit releases have almost every device driver you can think of. I used the 64 bit distro on an older P3 computer with 512MB of RAM very smoothly. That is until I had 5 audio/ video podcasts downloading at the same time.

Tried the likes of Puppy, DSL, CrunchBang and they do a good job. Found that some picked some hardware up and other didn't. Sometimes you have to try a couple of distros to get the desired effect with old hardware. Most recent try out was Vector Linux, uses the KDE desktop when loaded but does a simple wizard walk through to get installed. Give it a try.

I'd tried Puppy Linux; I'd agree that Fluppy does better at wifi. I'm using Puppeee on my netbook. Both Fluppy and Puppeee are done by jemimah (if I got the spelling right!)

I'm running CrunchBang as my main distro on my eeepc. Absolutely love the keyboard shortcuts. #! used to be based on Ubuntu. Now it's been switched to Debian!

Bodhi Linux is also a good choice as it uses E17 for the window manager. Based on Lucid LTS.

And not to forget Tiny Core Linux! TCL is the smallest at 10MB (now 30MB with other wifi drivers). Absolutely amazing!

I have all of the above on my eeepc

I have used Peppermint and Mint on Dell D610 and D620 laptops. Found all of the drivers on install. I did install with a wired connection, but the wireless worked on first boot. I have had zero problems.

The Peppermint machine with a centrino chip and 512 of RAM runs fine. It goes without saying that it is up and running before a two year newer XP machine can ask for a password.

Mint is a full fledged distro, it includes everything. Peppermint uses GoogleDocs as its office suite. It took about ten minutes to drop OpenOffice on Peppermint and make me happy. I am not a fan of GoogleDocs.

One thing that you can do with older hardware is do a minimal install of Debian from the net-install disk and then add lightweight applications until you have software that works for you. You can install LXDE or even Fluxbox or IceWM. You may need to enable the non-free repositories or directly download a firmware package and install it to get some network chipsets working.

Another possibility is Slackware, but it has no dependency tracking by default. Slackware is especially viable if you have plenty of hard drive space but not much RAM or CPU power. Then you can install everything from the disc(s) and you'll have less trouble figuring out which packages to install. Of course there are also Slacko Puppy and Slax for Slackware compatible minimal distributions.

One thing to be aware of with Puppy is that now they maintain alternate distributions with different bases, and each has its strengths and weaknesses. For example, for some old video hardware, you may have better luck with Wary Puppy than Lucid Puppy, etc.

Another very useful version of Linux is PinguyOs (http://pinguyos.com). It a Ubuntu spin with some elements of Mint and loads of other added goodies. PinguyOS has a 'little brother' called Ping-eee, designed with low powered netbooks (Asus EEE series and others) in mind but it works very well on older hardware too.

It's slick and fast, yet contains loads of pre-installed software.

My experience tells me that the majority of resources on any modern GNU/Linux system is eaten by the Graphical User Interface - usually Gnome or KDE.
Although, both are easy to use and user friendly - I highly suggest to look into XFCE as a replacement. OpenBox is another lightweight choice.
As to distro's, Debian or Slackware are my choice.

"And although sometimes it might require a bit of extra work, the end results will be worth the effort." Agreed...

This is an interesting, full-featured, lightweight Linux distro that was "built from scratch" by a team in Switzerland (and available in several languages). It has an attractive, polished GUI and good hardware support. Their website contains a large amount of excellent documentation, too.

SliTaz can be customized with additional packages from its large repository (more than 2000 packages). You can also choose from a few customized installs (or roll your own) scaled up or down to fit the limitations of your hardware, including one that I've run in a laptop with 48 MB of RAM and a 1.3 GB hard drive.

Even on old, slow, limited hardware it runs fairly fast without requiring a lot of configuration or customizations -- and it looks good (the 'spider' logo notwithstanding).

I've used grml for years and years - there's just nothing like it!!
My favourite version is 2009-05 which still used grub. Later versions have grub2 and they have started with some small x-stuff as well.
Do yourself a favour and download the 2009-05 version and put it on a usb-stick - and you have a mobile 'arsenal'. Command-line only, guys - but hey - that's we need when there is trouble!
I would 'never leave home without it'!!

I have found this to be very fast on anything with 256Mb and upwards: it uses a very fast window manager called Enlightenment and comes highly reccomended.

I have a 9-year-old Toshiba Satellite Laptop. I expanded the RAM to the max (2 GB) and installed a 120 GB drive. It works great with Ubuntu 10.10 that I upgraded to from 10.04. The only problem is that the Gnome screensaver doesn't work. It didn't work in 10.04 either. I installed an alternate screensaver called Xscreensaver and now I have 2 screensavers that don't work. Oh, bother! Should I be running Kbuntu or another version instead?

such as XFCE, LXDE, or OpenBox. I've read on the PCLOS website these community remasters do well on older hardware.

Hey, Jack -- Interesting article, and thanks for mentioning CrunchBang. However, you say it's Ubuntu-based and several months ago (I think) it changed to being a Debian-based distro. If you could, you may want to correct that.

Thanks.