Shoutbox

Gentoo is *not* for novices: it requires much more knowledge and effort than most distros. For a Linux first-timer, Ubuntu, SuSE, Fedora, and Mandriva all offer good systems.

quote:

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Originally posted by Kilyn
I'd suggest Gentoo for low-powered computers.

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Gentoo on a low-end computer is a double-edged sword: while it does allow creation of an optimized minimal installation, compiling everything takes proportionally longer on a slower machine.  We were never told the specs of what Supersonicdarky describes as "not so powerful", but depending on what that is, a stage 1 Gentoo install could literally take days -- nor would that be the end of it, if he plans to keep his installation up to date.

Gentoo is also not a very good idea for a first time Linux user (he doesn't say that he is one, but I assume so).

Provided it hasn't changed much since last time I used it, I would probably suggest Slackware.  The Slackware installation procedure may not be the simplest out there either, but certainly far easier and much quicker than Gentoo's.

specs:
1.6 ghz (AMD Turion64) - bad/ok
512 ram - ok
SiS M760GX - sux
80 GBs - good

age: under 6 months

name: Acer Aspire 5002

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suse hasnt finished downloading in over 9 hours (only 36%)
and yes i am a beginner linux user

i'll try other distros if suse doesnt work/sux

Oh, that's the royal treatment.  I was imagining something well under 1GHz, with a fraction of the memory you have.  Performance wise, you can run any distribution on it you want -- that would not be considered a low end machine by any means.

search reveals it works fine with Linux (in fact, it seems to ship with Linux in some parts of the world), although a few "hacks" are required (ndiswrapper for the wireless card).

i dont consider my laptop a low-end machine (but i dont think its that good either) if i did i'd say i need linux for a horribly old laptop or sumthing

i'll "hack" it later

quote:

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Originally posted by Supersonicdarky
i need a good linux distro for a not so powerfull laptop (tho i only used linux twice and dont know alot, so maybe it doesnt eat resources like windows?)

i tried ubuntu but it doesnt work on my laptop

any help is appreciated

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have you tried the latest ubuntu? try dapper (6.06)

what about opensuse?

edit: i only just saw your laptop system stats ..and that isn't bad at all..
i was imagining something along the lines of a pentuim 2 with 128mb of ram.. lol.
but yeah still try those distros.
for hacking, try auditor