Any linux suggestions for an old Dell XPS T450 box?

[struggle4progress]

I need a distro that's not too hard to update and install packages on -- offline, since it has only a dialup modem

Ubuntu Jaunty loading off livecd seems painfully slow and although there is an offline workaround for Update Manager, it doesn't seem entirely straightforward

[pokerfan]

1. How much Memory and disk space do you have?

Have you tried just going ahead and installing Jaunty? As I'm sure you're aware, you can't really evaluate system speed from the Live CD.

There's always Puppy Linux:
http://www.insidesocal.com/click/2009/06/coming-home-to-puppy-linux.html

[struggle4progress]

2. Stupid thing only has 128MB RAM, which is probably why Ubuntu is horrid. I put Puppy on a stick

after your rave in another thread, so I'll try it off the USB

[struggle4progress]

3. I can't try Puppy off the flash since the System won't recognize a flash as a mounted device during

boot: no matter how I rearrange boot options, the USB flash doesn't get mounted until after the OS. So I'll have to burn the Puppy iso to a CD to try it.

[pokerfan]

4. Well, memory is pretty cheap these days

http://www.computermemoryoutlet.com/Dell-Dimension-XPS_T450-memory.htm

Might want to do that in any case.

[struggle4progress]

5. Yeah, I probably will. I priced some earlier and made sure I knew how to pry open the case.

But that box is a decade old and I have other better machines. So it's not worth more than whatever I'm willing to spend simply for experimental purposes right now, which I'd cap at <$100. I could max its memory for that but don't really think it's worth it. It's just a sandbox where I can try experimental stuff without worrying much

Puppy booted fine off a burned CD, BTW. It looks clean and it's running fine on 128MB RAM. I really like the toggle hidden files feature

[pokerfan]

6. You might find this entertaining

I stumbled upon Puppy Linux while checking out my various Linux options. It was a very good find. This distro is specifically built to run in system RAM (random access memory), so it executes commands and loads program and data in a flash. Even if you boot the computer from the CD drive as a typical live CD, once loaded into RAM, Puppy Linux no longer needs to access the CD. So unlike a true Live CD boot, you can remove the Puppy Linux boot CD and do other things with the drive, such as access other CDs/DVDs or burn data and music to an optical disk.

http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/Migrating-to-Linux-Part-2-Avoiding-Separation-Anxiety-67679.html

I didn't realize that once Puppy is booted, it's entirely memory resident, even in 64MB. One doesn't realize how bloated Windows has become until one looks at Linux.

[RoyGBiv]

7. I used that on an old laptop ...

It has 64MB of RAM.

The difficulty with it was getting a desktop GUI running properly. Most of the major modern ones are built to use gobs of memory and GPU power and are not suited to these kinds of machines.

I ended up using XFCE, and it worked fine.

[struggle4progress]

8. Thanks. I'll consider playing around with that

[RoyGBiv]

9. Have you tried Damn Small Linux?

It uses fluxbox as a desktop manager.

It will run with as little as 16MB and run entirely in memory with 128MB.

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

[struggle4progress]

10. Nope. But I will now. thanks, Roy.

:toast: