Xubuntu + LXDE perfect fit on old laptop

I have recently found Xubuntu with the LXDE windows manager (very easy to add using Synatic) is just about the perfect fit on my old Toshiba Portege 7200 laptop. I had tried Tiny Me previously, but could not sort out the wireless.

I initially had a screen resolution problem. This was resolved relatively easily, i wanted to get the screen issue resolved as xubuntu got the zyxel g202 usb wireless dongle to work out the box (problably due to up to date Kernel) and drop slickly back to wired lan if disconnected.

The fact that we are now succesfully able to install a linux distro on such ancient laptops and get a full functional stable and user friendly machine is a testament to how far linux has come with its hardware support.

I have seen significant progress in the 2 1/2 to 3 years that i have been using linux.

I currently have the following linux boxes

suse 10.2 - email PC, online ordering, dvd burning pclos mini me - general surfing, cd ripping and flac encoding geexbox - flac file dukebox ftp from mini me suse10.3 - mythtv combined front and back end with 2x dvb tuners suse11.0 - mythtv remote front end for viewing in lounge xubuntu - on laptop

I use 2 KVM's so i only need 2 screens.

The laptop lets me view photos , do surfing wired or wireless, capture from camcorder, watch dvd's, play soduku, transfer files to pendrives, listen to music, upload pictures from digital camera, do word processing and spreadsheets. Pretty incredible on 600mhz an 192mb ram.:D

repurpose beats recycle every day.

I was in a computer shop the other day and sat down in front of a dual screen vista that was fast. [like DSL loaded to ram] and asked what is it? Quad Core the owner says. that explaines it I said.

for those of us in the real world it ain't in the budget!

I do however enjoy the 933 P-III media box that plays to the family room big screen DVI/HDMI: 8.10 and VLC rocks!

I agree, LXDE is a very lightweight and easy to use desktop environment. I got an old laptop with a 500mhz Pentium 3 and 128mb of ram running really well using LXDE+Sidux, and Debian Lenny+LXDE was the lightest option I tried on my eee pc. Currently I am running CrunchBang, an Ubuntu derivative that shares many elements with LXDE (Openbox, lxpanel, etc).

I agree that rehabilitating old harware with Linux is FUN!

This is cool will look into this. I installed ubuntu 8.10 on an old PIII and just removed what i did not need. making a really dandy file server. and in the passed post, yes a lil problem with permissons but it was easy to overcome just by reading passed post in this forum. ummm the lil search box at the top really works well. <hint hint> lovesssssssss ubuntu!):P):P

Glad you posted this, as I'm about to play musical windows managers myself.

I'm considering LXDE to replace Gnome on my desktop PC, and I'm considering changing from ubuntu to xubuntu on my old, slow laptop. I'm going to try doing the latter by just installing XFCE and removing Gnome since I think that's probably the only difference between ubuntu and xubuntu.

But now you've gotten me thinking about LXDE on both machines. I like the idea of a common windows manager.

Cammy said: I'm considering LXDE to replace Gnome on my desktop PC, and I'm considering changing from ubuntu to xubuntu on my old, slow laptop. I'm going to try doing the latter by just installing XFCE and removing Gnome since I think that's probably the only difference between ubuntu and xubuntu.

There are actually a lot of differences in terms of applications and packages. If you want to switch from Ubuntu to "pure" Xubuntu, here is a quick and easy tutorial. You can just copy the code straight to the terminal: http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/purexfce

Or just give LXDE a try. :)

snowpine said: There are actually a lot of differences in terms of applications and packages. If you want to switch from Ubuntu to "pure" Xubuntu, here is a quick and easy tutorial. You can just copy the code straight to the terminal: http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/purexfce

Or just give LXDE a try. :)

Thanks for that link. I just installed LXDE on this machine and logged into a session with it. I'll need to fool with it some, because it did funny things like running two copies of Avant, and that sort of thing. I was also missing some launchers from the panel, but those shouldn't be too hard to add. What I couldn't find was a workspace switcher, so maybe I'd have to use the AWN version of that.

Another thing I noticed was that memory usage wasn't noticeably better under LXDE. After logging in to Gnome, before launching any apps, I sit at around 20% ram usage. In LXDE it was about the same.

I need to play around in it some more and do some fiddling when I have more time. The good part is that it's easy to switch between LXDE and Gnome, and all my stuff (conky, compiz, etc) seem to work just fine.

Well, LXDE came and went. I installed it on the laptop, and it seemed a bit quicker, but there were just some things I couldn't figure out how to do (like change the desktop background color when running w/ no wallpaper). I joined the LXDE IRC channel, but I got the feeling that no one there really knew much about how to make LXDE work, like maybe they were also there looking for help, and just taking guesses at how to solve my problem.

I still have it installed, so in the event I find some good documentation on it, I can always try it again.

LXDE was better for me as the swap file usage reduced to nothing. XFCE used a far bit of swap. Firefox launches in about half the time under LXDE that it does under XFCE. If i can figure out how to put shortcuts on the desktops that would be good.