Re: debian on laptop w/ limited ram/speed/HD
On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 10:05:05PM -0500, Matt Price wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> A middle-aged (~4 years old -- so, not old, not new) laptop is about
Join the club 40s :-)
> to become available to me, and I'd like to install debian on it.
> The system is an HP Omnibook A4100,
> P-II 300
> 96 meg ram
> 20 gig hard drive
You have a fast machine with lots of memory and HDD as long as you stay
in console. I say if you configure correctly, it is OK with X and
compact applications.
I use i486 DX2 50MHz 20MB-DRAM 2GB-HDD for my gateway where I can read
and write mail OK with mutt/vim/fetchmail/procmail/exim combination.
I run BIND/DHCP/... on it too. It takes 1 second to start "mc" screen
but mutt is usable even from remote terminal.
So as long as you use console, you are fine.
> I'd like to take the machine on a month-long trip, where I'd use it
> mostly for writing and checking email. My *preference* would be to
> run:
> -a minimal GUI
If you insist on X, use blackbox or flashbox. They are small and fast
WM.
> -mutt, plus something to fetch my mail from a remote location
mutt to read mail
vim to edit mail
fetchmail to get mail
procmail to sort by header etc.
> and...
> -openoffice.
That is big software. As long as you keep other staff small, it may be
usable on X. Do not use too much color or virtual screen which eat
memory. Keep daemon minimum.
> sigh. I'm a bit concerned that openoffice can't feasibly be run in
> such an environment; but I'm revising a book manuscript that was
> originally written several years ago in Word, and I really, really,
> really don't want to have to edit it in emacs or something.
Just a thoughts. New Word can save document in XML or HTML. If you are
reorganizing few contents, you may be able to get-by by saving document
into these format and complete editing documents in text file.
--
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Osamu Aoki <osamu@debian.org> Cupertino CA USA, GPG-key: A8061F32
.''`. Debian Reference: post-installation user's guide for non-developers
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