Can I just get rid of XP and install Linux instead?

Thanks.

Ok, here are the specs:

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/MhRKblxjwzLMILLmuVO8nns

You have 1GB of ram(memory), and a 149GB Hard drive.........

Wait for Mike Walsh....he will steer you in the right direction re the most appropriate Linux/puppy variation. You have plenty to play with there .

Really? That's fantastic... I thought it sounds like very little capacity.

So exciting! Thank you. Looking forward to hear from Mike and his puppy!

The capacity of the hard drive is 149Gb....that stores your operating system, music, files documents, photos etc etc

It is certainly not huge but for a second machine it should have enough space for you to play in. It will never be big enough to store dozens of full length movies......but is still a reasonable size. To put it in perspective you could probably store approx 30 full length movies on there without causing any drama at all.

The RAM at 1GB is very small......and it makes me wonder how it ever managed to run Xp !!!...

However, I feel quite confident that Mike will have a 'puppy linux distro up his sleeve that will probably run like lightning with that 1GB

Great. So while I wait for further instructions, what do I need to do with all the "stuff" on this machine? Documents, apps, etc. I transfer or copy everything to a USB?

That would be wise.

Anything you need from the old machine....BE SURE to get a good copy of it......because once Linux is installed EVERYTHING will be wiped. GONE FOREVER.

Dont worry about "apps"....programs.......they will not transfer via usb

Hi cooljay

Totally agree with everything said by friend Condobloke above.

If you want a page of reading on lightweight Linuxes, try here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Linux_distribution

Some of the details in the table are incomplete.

Two not listed there are

• Peach OSI BB (Bare Bones) and
• 4M Linux

My wife's laptop (Compaq Presario C300, circa 2005) has only 512 MB RAM and a 60GB HDD and I run Peach and LXLE on it, with room for a 3rd. Likely 4M Linux which has a really nice wolf as the default wallpaper and she likes it.

 

Looking forward to hear from Mike and his puppy!

He has a litter of them, lol - once you try Puppy you may never look elsewhere?

Enjoy

Wizard

Evening, all.

Well; that's a surprise. A 160 GB Western Digital, eh? Must be one of the later ones, from when they'd quit faffing around with that dozy eMMC flash storage, and decided to use 'proper' hardware. Nice one. That gives you a lot more scope, actually.

@Brian:-

cooljay could run XP on there quite easily. My old Dell now has 1.5 GB, but until recently I was running 1 GB on there, and a P4, too! XP wasn't exactly 'sluggish'.....but progress was, shall we say, 'stately'... 

That N270 Atom, although single-core, has Hyperthreading, and SSE3's, too.....and although only clocked @ 1.6 GHz, it'll be quite nippy. Too many people make the mistake of thinking that clock speed is the be-all & end-all with CPUs; instruction sets play a large part, too. My old P4 is non-HT, and although 2.6 GHz, has only got SSE2's; it still ran XP.

Now, it's triple-booting Puppy instead......and running a whole lot faster!

@cooljay:-

Like I said, that's a pleasant surprise. You won't be limited to the 'special' eeePC build that Jemimah knocked up a few years ago; ah, there was one amazing lass. She used to run rings around some of the senior Puppy devs, from what I understand.....and it's normally a very male-oriented 'hobby'. I wish we had a few more gals like her!

I gotta disappear for a few, but I'll be back a bit later with a coupla suggestions for you. Of course, if you can double your RAM, you'll have still more choice. Even so, things are looking up, my son..! We'll get you sorted out, one way or another.

Be back soon.

Mike. 

Edited by Mike_Walsh, 15 January 2017 - 06:59 PM.

Back again.

Now, before I go any further, I'm going to request the actual model number of that Asus of yours. You should find it on the manufacturer's plate, or sticker, or whatever, on the base.

I just want to see if you can increase the RAM on that little beauty, that's all.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay. Now then, if you go to this link, that's the official Puppy Linux home page:-

http://puppylinux.com/

Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and I'm going to recommend you download both of the 32-bit 'flagship' Pups; that's Slacko 6.3.2, and also Tahrpup 6.0.5. It's not a lot of bandwidth; you're only looking at a couple of hundred MB apiece.

Having done that, have you got a burner on that thing? That's another reason I want to know the model number, 'cos if not, there are other ways of doing it, but it's easiest to install from a LiveCD.

If you're going to burn 'em in Windows, there's one special little app we recommend on the Puppy Forums, specially for this task.

If you go here:-

https://www.terabyteunlimited.com/downloads-free-software.htm

.....and download BurnCDCC, that's what you'll want to use. It's a very small, standalone, self-contained app; you don't even need to install it. Just unpack it, and click on the .exe file. It does one thing, and one thing only; it'll burn an ISO file to an optical disc. That's all it does.....and it's so simple even a complete dunce could use it (and you don't strike me as one of those!)

Pup should scream on that Asus of yours.....and Intel hardware is very accommodating of Linux in general. They're one of the few major players in the computer arena who've gone out of their way to make Linux versions of all their drivers & microcode available to the general public.

We have several Forum members who run these, and they're quite happy with 'em. We've got one lad, 8Geee, who runs 'em exclusively; he has around half-a-dozen different models, and swears by them. Won't even look at anything else, and he's re-mastered his own 'take' on Jemimah's 'Fluppy' (which is what her eeePC build used to be called).

Okay; we can't go any further till I hear back from you. Over to you.....

Mike. 

Edited by Mike_Walsh, 15 January 2017 - 07:16 PM.

The model number is maybe 1005HA? This is on a see-through sticker on bottom of unit.

There is no cd slot.

Excellent; that's just what's needed.

First, the RAM. Good news! You can upgrade your Asus to 2 GB. That's bags of room for Pup to play in; my ancient Dell lappie has 1.5 GB, and it's got plenty of space.

You have a single 1 GB DDR2 SoDIMM 'stick'. You need to get hold of a 2 GB DDR2 200-pin SoDIMM 'stick', and replace the 1 GB with the 2 GB.....but that's up to you. Pup will run just fine with 'only' a Gig, but if you want to try a more mainstream Linux distro (like maybe Ubuntu or Mint), they really will run better with at least 2 GB of RAM. You can never have too much!

Y'see, what makes Pup so amazing, even on older hardware, is that unlike Windows, where the whole thing runs from the hard drive all the time, Puppy loads entirely into RAM.....and then runs from there. RAM is by far the fastest component of any machine.....which is why RAM amount is one of the first things we ask people on the Forum when they want to know how to install Puppy.

Loading into RAM and running from there is what's called a 'frugal' install. There's a method of installing to hardware with very limited RAM, called a 'full' install (like traditional Linux distros).....but it's not referring to the quality of the install. With the 'frugal' install, you get lots of advantages, which you lose with the 'full' install. 

Confusing, isn't it? 

-------------------------------------------------------------------

No CD drive.   Okay; not a problem. Now; it's 1.30 am here in the UK, and I'm turning in for the night.....it's the old time-zone thing, I'm afraid. 

What I want you to do while I'm in the land of nod is to download & install an app called UNetbootin. It's a cross-platform app which allows you to create a LiveUSB (as opposed to a LiveCD).....which you can then use to install Puppy from. OK?

You can find UNetbootin here:-

https://unetbootin.github.io/

You can do this from within XP, before you wipe it out. Sorry to leave you 'in the lurch' as it were, but unless I get some zzzz's under my belt I shan't be any good to you! I'll leave that with you for now, and I'll catch you tomorrow.....and explain how to use UNetbootin.

Mike. 

Edited by Mike_Walsh, 15 January 2017 - 08:56 PM.

Upgrade your RAM to 2GB & find a 250-256GB Samsung 850 EVO on promo for $69-79, you'll really be in business! Most all Linux versions supports SSD's, and if the notebook breaks down, no worries, keep it & install in another, or desktop PC.

Keep the install HDD for backup, just by chance I have the same size HDD myself, came with a refurbished WD Passport of 2007-08 era, only yours is faster (SATA-2), mine's a SATA-1 model. Had I purchased new, would had been SATA-2, it was all I could afford at the time, though to this day, has never failed me. and that's what matters the most.

I have full faith that Mike will steer you in the right direction, so will leave any further OS recommendations up to him. With these low powered notebooks, he can squeeze the most out of what you have w/out any problem.

Now how did you come to the conclusion that you had only 1.2GiB of storage left? Speccy shows your 'C' drive has 100GiB or 71% free space left over & 43GiB or 29% space in use. I'm curious where you came up with the 1,2GiB of space left to work with. Was it a program on your computer? If so, it's not reliable & shouldn't be trusted, or you misunderstood a shown spec. Not to worry, has happened to us all, we're not perfect, nor are expected to be. 

Not to worry, even if your HDD were only 20GiB in size (& I can remember when these wer a big deal), Mike can create litters of Pups on that size of HDD, and many generations of litters on a 149GiB drive.

Cat

Cat, actually I referred to 1.2 GB in error, from memory. It's actually 1 GB and it's RAM. But I was unnerved by what I saw when I looked at "System Information" where it says there is 1,024 MB of total physical memory. And Total VIRTUAL memory is 2 GB.

I have never seen the numbers that Speccy brought up and I don't even claim to understand them, lol.

anyway, Mike, thank you so much for all your help. I won't be upgrading to 2 GB RAM right now. Maybe later? I don't need it for puppy, and I like the idea of having a minimalist kind of set up. And I can always add more RAM later, right?