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Old Laptop; Scrub Win2000; install Linux????

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by gtmedley 1 view

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I have an old Dell Lattitude with Win2000 that is slow and rickety. It has been replaced, but I was wondering if it would be possible to totally remove Win20000 OS and replace with Linux for web browsing and OpenOffice? Just curious. I am not a techie. Is there a easy way to do this? Thank you.

17 replies

by gtmedley

Thanks...

I'd like to make this a 100 percent Linux machine without any Windows components. Can I scrub the HD and start from scratch with Linux? Installing Linux appears to be the easy part -- ridding the machine of Windows is the hard part. Or perhaps I don't have to do this. Thanks, Gary

by peconet tietokoneet

This will take up to four hours to do, so do it overnight.
Killdisk here:
http://www.killdisk.com/
Select this version:
Download Bootable ISO Image of Active@ KillDisk to burn CD.

This will get rid of your operating system completely so that you can start a fresh.
Hope all goes well.

by boxfiddler Hot topic

the drive to whatever the default Linux file system is. No Windows will remain.

Boot from it, run it as a Live CD first to see if it finds and can utilize your hardware. If it does, there will be a shortcut on the desktop that says 'Install Ubuntu'. If you install, it will reformat leaving no traces of Windows before it installs.

by slayer_

What is the system specs of your Laptop, Many Nix's, especially Ubuntu have steeper system requirements especially compared to Windows 2000. Your laptop may not have the power for it. (It will work, it just wont be pleasent)

Also, your hardware may be incompatible. You should run a LiveCD of whichever distro you want to try on your laptop before nuking Windows. You may find that your Nix distro will not work with your current hardware. Which is a common problem for dell laptops (or so I read here).

by gtmedley

The machine is a Del Latitude CSx H500XT

66 megahertz clock speed. A whopping 6 GB HD. Impressive, eh?

Gary

by slayer_

Otherwise might I suggest Windows 95? lol

by gtmedley

Hard drive size? Chip speed? Memory? What if I dropped in a 40 or 80 GB new hard drive for $50. Would that change the equation?

With a fresh HD, could I install Linux directly onto the new HD?

As you can tell, I'm not a techie. :) Thanks for your help.

by slayer_

66mhz is the minimum for Windows 98, and will happily run windows 95, you need AT LEAST 300mhz to run Ubuntu at any usable speed, and Id say at least 600mhz if you want to do anything more than look at the desktop background.

Unless you got your CPU speed incorrect.

Edit-
I decided to look it up for you.
System Type: Laptops
Manufacturer: Dell
Model Name: Latitude CSx H500XT
Bus Type:
HD Bus Type:
CPU: 500MHz Intel Pentium III
Standard Memory: 64 MB (non-removable)
Max Memory: 320 MB
Number of Sockets: 1 socket
Native OS:
Is what the internet says about your laptop.
I do not recommend Ubuntu for this system, DSL Nix would be a better choice, or ask around other Nix gurus here for lighter distrobutions. I was Told Mandriva Spring 2008 was a good distro for aged computers. I was going to try it on my oldie, but then my oldie went nuclear.

by rob miners

Damn Small Linux is a very versatile 50MB mini desktop oriented Linux distribution.

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Damn Small is small enough and smart enough to do the following things:
Boot from a business card CD as a live linux distribution (LiveCD)
Boot from a USB pen drive
Boot from within a host operating system (that's right, it can run *inside* Windows)
Run very nicely from an IDE Compact Flash drive via a method we call "frugal install"
Transform into a Debian OS with a traditional hard drive install
Run light enough to power a 486DX with 16MB of Ram
Run fully in RAM with as little as 128MB (you will be amazed at how fast your computer can be!)
Modularly grow -- DSL is highly extendable without the need to customize

by jdclyde

depending on how much RAM he has. (we haven't been told yet)

I would make sure it is a MINIMUM of 256m, checking Kingston.com will give the right memory for that laptop.

I am running MINT on a P4 1.5, but don't know how it would work on a system half it's speed.

Puppy linux is a nice small one. Designed to run off a flash stick.

Got an old PII 400 I am about to try this on.

by gtmedley

...not 66.

Also, it has a 6 gig HD and 256K of memory installed. Bus Clock is 66 mghz.

This was originally a corporate machine from a dot.com (ah, the good ol' days) and has Win2000Pro and Win98. I get both options on bootup, but it won't run on Win98; something about missing files.

I'd like to scrub is all and run some version of Linux. Would a new HD be a way to start "clean"? How could I remove the unusable Win98? Do I need to free up HD space to run Linux?

Sorry for all the questions. You have all been a great help. Thank you. Gary

by slayer_

That while most motions were snappy, when you tried to load something, it would just seem to sit there, no mouse curser animation or nothing, giving you no indication it was doing anything. After you loaded each app once it got significantly better, with the exception of making sudo gui sessions, which took almost 5 minutes to load with no actual indication of it working. I had it set to an icon, so I would just click it and go watch TV for 5 minutes.

I tried the stock GUi and one called xfer I think..... Both were crazy slow. So I would definitly say 200mhz is far to low for Ubuntu. I had 256mb of RAM btw :).

The machine just recently detonated, so I never got to try any other nix distros on it.
Tho I tried DSL nix on my main machine, and was not impressed with the feel of the GUI. Particularly how the mouse buttons worked and how after 10 minutes of going through menus I could not find anything to change my resolution. It may have been obvious, but I couldn't find it :(.

by seanferd

the old one is fine.

Someone suggested http://www.killdisk.com/ or you can also try http://www.dban.org/

These programs can be used to wipe the drive. If you have a Win 98 startup disk, you can Fdisk and Format the drive.

Most Linux distros I've tried offer partitioning and formatting at the beginning of the installation procedure, as they do not use the same filesystems as Windows. You can simply choose to delete all partitions and use the entire drive for the Linux installation. (In other words, you can have the Linux distro you choose perform this operation for you.)

Here is one site you can use to check out various Linux distributions:
http://distrowatch.com/

Most all distros have a Live DC version available. You can download the ISO file, burn it to CD, then boot from the CD drive. This allows you to test drive various distros with different desktop environments without installing. Many will also let you start a full installation from the Live CD, if you so choose. Note: as you would be running off a CD, it will not be as fast as an installed OS, and will need to do first-time configuration every time you boot from the CD, as nothing is written to the hard drive (unless the Live CD allows for you to set up a swap and config partition on your HDD, and you choose to do this).

Take your time choosing a distro, so you are using something that works well for you. Of course, you can always install a new distro if you decide you want something different.

Also realize that the desktop environment ("appearance") can be changed as well, to something that best fits your needs. Many distros have more than one installed, and all you need to do is switch between them.

Have fun. Post back if you have further questions.

:)

edit:
Ubuntu system requirements at bottom of this page http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/desktopedition

No processor spec is mentioned, however.

In general, look for the "system requirements" on the website for any distro (or any software whatsoever, for that matter). If your system is a bit better than minimum requirements, you should be good.

by boxfiddler Hot topic

Linux Mint 2, Fedora Core 6, and Ubuntu 7 all install easily and run quite nicely on it. No dialup, but I don't really care about that.

by jaqui

my Dell Inspiron 3000 is an old laptop.
266 MHz Pentium-mmx, 144 MB ram. [ 128 mb sdram and16 mb onboard cache available to total 144 mb, maxed out. ]
40 GB hd.

runs Mandriva, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, DSL, Puppy just fine.
PCLinuxOS, requires a p3 @ 500 MHz because of their compilation and configuration choices.

installation of ANY distribution will give you the option of keeping or removing windows.

pick a distro and give it a try.

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