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Gerbalblaste · 31-May-2005, 10:41 AM #1

I recently purchased an old Dell Inspiron 3000 Laptop for $25 and i would like to put linux on it. I am New to linux and am trying to find a linux distro that would run well on it. all i want to do with this laptop is word process and listen to music.

System: Dell Inspiron 3000

Microprocessor: Intel Pentium 200 MHz w/ internal math coprocessor

PC Card: 2 PCI controller Texas Instruments PCI 1131 CardBus controller

Memory: 32 MB SDRAM (Max. 144 MB)

Harddrive: 20 GB

Audio: Crystal 4237B sound card (Sound Blaster Pro-compatible voice and music functions)

Monitor: 12.1" builtin

Video: NeoMagic 2160 64-bit (128-bit hardware-accelerated) PCI card

Mouse: Synaptics Touch Pad

Main Battery: lithium ion (max. 3.3 hours)

Disk drive: 3.5" floppy (removable)

CD-ROM: external usb

Other: Infrared IrDA 1.1 port, USB port (1)

Original OS: Windows 95b

CouchMaster · 31-May-2005, 10:50 AM #2

Two obversations,
32MB ram isn't much, and can you boot with the external CD drive?
If so you can run some 'Live' Linux CDs and see how they will work.

Gerbalblaste · 31-May-2005, 11:07 AM #3

1. for $15 i can add 64 mb of ram (is it worth it?)
2. i will find out about the cd drive in 2 days (i loaned it to a friend)

Any suggestions about beginner friendly distros?

CouchMaster · 31-May-2005, 11:19 AM #4

$15 for 64MB of ram sounds good to me! (Just make sure it works)
And you need to make sure you can boot with your CD drive - If you can't it means you are going to have to try using boot floppies and it's going to get frustrating really quick.
You might also do a search for 'laptop linux' and see which distros you find there.

Whiteskin · 31-May-2005, 06:45 PM #5

Yeah... you can run linux. Easily. I was, for a long time, running a D266XT, which isn't much faster. Only thing you need to watch for is big GUI envrionments. Stay away from gnome, gnome apps/kde,kde-apps like the plague. They take up massive amounts of resources on a small box like that.

Gerbalblaste · 01-Jun-2005, 08:47 AM #6

i prefer a gui, i don't like using a text only interface.
Is there any low resource gui that i can use?

CouchMaster · 01-Jun-2005, 09:29 AM #7

You might be able to find your laptop here,
http://www.linux-laptop.net/
and what distros are on it...

Gerbalblaste · 01-Jun-2005, 09:38 AM #8

they use redhat 5.1 and also suggest slackware. i did find a Website giving instructions on slackware 10 installation on this laptop, but its way over my head.

Insp3cta · 02-Jun-2005, 11:26 PM #9

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

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