+Dick Montage Subscriber² Posted September 16, 2008 Subscriber² Share Posted September 16, 2008 OK, so I got my mother an eeepc, and damn it flies. With such low hardware specs it's amazing! Made me think - I have a few older laptops knocking about - could I do something similar with them? What variant is the EeePC running? How easy would it be to put something similar - with launcher - on a previous Windows laptop? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richardsim7 Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 Well I know you can get Ubuntu-EEE edition, not sure that helps :p -Rich- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Dick Montage Subscriber² Posted September 16, 2008 Author Subscriber² Share Posted September 16, 2008 Just looked - I like it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Dick Montage Subscriber² Posted September 16, 2008 Author Subscriber² Share Posted September 16, 2008 OK, it's using Xandros. But my point being - is this Linux showing that it can be a great OS on a limited hardware platform? If so, going to mess with a laptop later. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+jamesyfx Subscriber² Posted September 16, 2008 Subscriber² Share Posted September 16, 2008 It's running a heavily modified version of Xandros. The standard version isn't going to be the same. Similar, but not the same :p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shakey_snake Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 The Xandros on the eee is specifically modified to run with speed on the eee's hardware. This actually causes more problems than it helps, like my only 1 month old eee901 is stuck with firefox 2.x because ASUS never updates their repositories and most other repositories can cause problems. :( ubuntu-eee is, in the same way, specifically prepared for the eee's hardware, so I don't think that would work well for you either. For a graphical launcher, the closest thing you could do for an old laptop would be to get Ubuntu Netbook Remix. As for speed, one thing you could do would be to build as much as you can from source. Of course, this defeats the purpose of Ubuntu and .deb packages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markwolfe Veteran Posted September 16, 2008 Veteran Share Posted September 16, 2008 OK, it's using Xandros.But my point being - is this Linux showing that it can be a great OS on a limited hardware platform? If so, going to mess with a laptop later. Which distro is much less important than how it is set up. Which desktop (gnome/kde/opembox/icewm/etc.) makes a big difference. Also which apps are chosen (OpenOffice is nice, but it is huuuuge!) makes a large difference on the resources consumed during operation. Even things like XOrg can be replaced with a lighter (and less capable/flexible/powerful) Xvesa implementation of the X Window System. I think that lightweight, low-end computing is where Linux can really shine and become an attractive option for OEMs to use to provide an acceptable performance to the customer at minimal hardware (and no licensing!) costs to themselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elv13 Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 EEE use iceWM, it is light, ut not that much. JWM is a better choice if you like win95 style desktop with few color. About X, the EEE run Xorg, but I don't. I switched to XFBDev (same familly as Xvesa, but load even faster and speed is good (for 2D) if you got an accelerated framebuffer). They are hard to find (and even harder to build correctly) but the KDRIDE (tinyX) familly have quite a few member, like Xvesa, XFBDev, XVia, XNeo and a bunch of other (like 12). They are all fast to start, but XFBDev is the fastest with less than 1/5 of a second. Personally, with XFBDev and AwesomeWM, my debian (I am a gentoo user, but I didn't have time to compile one on that turtle) load the desktop in 1/3 second after init rc4. I did write an autologgin exec and a dynamic windows manager to work with it. If I want to change WM (to JWM, KDE4 or fluxbox in my care) I can in a grub submenu, and the resolution too (if I plug an external monitor). Config are not persistant when made from grub, but an init script take care to save them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Dick Montage Subscriber² Posted September 19, 2008 Author Subscriber² Share Posted September 19, 2008 Elv13: I understood about 5% of that - but it's given me things to lookup. Cheers :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damian Posted September 19, 2008 Share Posted September 19, 2008 OK, so I got my mother an eeepc, and damn it flies. With such low hardware specs it's amazing!Made me think - I have a few older laptops knocking about - could I do something similar with them? What variant is the EeePC running? How easy would it be to put something similar - with launcher - on a previous Windows laptop? You can use Ubuntu with Netbook Remix on your laptop. https://launchpad.net/netbook-remix screenshot: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Dick Montage Subscriber² Posted September 22, 2008 Author Subscriber² Share Posted September 22, 2008 WOW. Just put Ubuntu on an old (Pentium 3, 256mb Ram) laptop. It's become a relevant machine again. So far just using Firefox and Pidgin, but that's mostly all my GF does. Next step - some way to manage her iPod on it :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Decryptor Veteran Posted September 22, 2008 Veteran Share Posted September 22, 2008 Which distro is much less important than how it is set up. Which desktop (gnome/kde/opembox/icewm/etc.) makes a big difference. Also which apps are chosen (OpenOffice is nice, but it is huuuuge!) makes a large difference on the resources consumed during operation.Even things like XOrg can be replaced with a lighter (and less capable/flexible/powerful) Xvesa implementation of the X Window System. I think that lightweight, low-end computing is where Linux can really shine and become an attractive option for OEMs to use to provide an acceptable performance to the customer at minimal hardware (and no licensing!) costs to themselves. I wonder how DirectFB would run on a device like that, it provides hardware acceleration and such, yet it runs on internet phones. http://directfb.org/screenshots/directfb_on_tuxscreen.jpg And low-end computing really is where linux can shine, my router only ever has about 5% CPU usage at any one time, and the only thing on it that isn't "free" is the firmware for the wireless hardware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markwolfe Veteran Posted September 22, 2008 Veteran Share Posted September 22, 2008 WOW.Just put Ubuntu on an old (Pentium 3, 256mb Ram) laptop. It's become a relevant machine again. So far just using Firefox and Pidgin, but that's mostly all my GF does. Next step - some way to manage her iPod on it :) I don't have an iPod, but I hear that amarok (media player) or gtkpod (specific app for iPods) work. If you have machines older than that, and you like Ubuntu, I might recommend Xubuntu, which is a Ubuntu foundation but uses the lighter XFCE manager and replaces a few other heavy apps with slightly slimmer versions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Decryptor Veteran Posted September 22, 2008 Veteran Share Posted September 22, 2008 There's even a customised version of Xubuntu for the EeePC. http://wiki.eeeuser.com/ubuntu:eeexubuntu:home It's based on Xubuntu 7.10 though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elv13 Posted September 22, 2008 Share Posted September 22, 2008 WOW.Just put Ubuntu on an old (Pentium 3, 256mb Ram) laptop. It's become a relevant machine again. So far just using Firefox and Pidgin, but that's mostly all my GF does. Next step - some way to manage her iPod on it :) Actually, you should try xubuntu (to switch from ubuntu: sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop), it use less ram and look almost the same. About the iPod, just plug it in. If it is not the latest iPod, it will work. If it is, then wait few month (unfortunally), the time for hacker to reverse engineer it. My old iPod 5g worked fine on Ubuntu (with rhytmbox) and Kubuntu (with Amarok) 2 years ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Dick Montage Subscriber² Posted September 24, 2008 Author Subscriber² Share Posted September 24, 2008 Well, been using RhytmBox which is a fine way of getting songs onto the iPod - but doesn't seem to allow you to take playlists over? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Dick Montage Subscriber² Posted September 25, 2008 Author Subscriber² Share Posted September 25, 2008 Any further suggestions over RhythmBox? Lack of playlist support is a bit of an issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fish Posted September 25, 2008 Share Posted September 25, 2008 List of iTunes alternatives Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PL_ Veteran Posted September 25, 2008 Veteran Share Posted September 25, 2008 Any further suggestions over RhythmBox? Lack of playlist support is a bit of an issue. amarok, if you haven't tried it. I know quite a few will disagree with me, but I think Exaile isn't too bad. It's like amarok except based from the ground up on GTK+ instead of Qt. I'm guessing you're using regular Ubuntu, so you'll be using GNOME, which uses GTK+. Maybe it's just me, but I found it faster than amarok (which uses Qt, which is found in KDE, which is standard on Kubuntu) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Dick Montage Subscriber² Posted September 26, 2008 Author Subscriber² Share Posted September 26, 2008 PureLegend: Cheers. I'm going to look at that Amarok - it looks a bit more "complete" than Exaile right now. But thanks for your opinions also! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.tony Posted September 26, 2008 Share Posted September 26, 2008 WOW.Just put Ubuntu on an old (Pentium 3, 256mb Ram) laptop. It's become a relevant machine again. So far just using Firefox and Pidgin, but that's mostly all my GF does. Next step - some way to manage her iPod on it :) Maybe it's just me, but I have a laptop that is similar, if not the same (mine's a Dell Latitude LS with a Pentium III 500mhz and has 256MB RAM as well), and I find XP boots much faster than Linux. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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