[SLUG] Re: slug Digest, Vol 71, Issue 8

[James Linder <jam@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 08/12/2011, at 9:00 AM, slug-request@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> G'day all,
> 
> I'm looking for the right distro to install. I have a couple of laptops that I don't care if they break, so I can take out to work-sites where we're doing installations in sometimes less than hospitable circumstances.
> 
> 1. Because they're old laptops, I need a fairly lightweight
>   distribution - perhaps based on xfce or Enlightenment or similar.
> 2. There for things like network configuration & troubleshooting, so
>   support for media playback is of no consequence.
> 3. Because so many networks are wireless or hybrid with wireless,
>   simple wireless support is essential.
> 
> It seems to me from the distros I've tried, you can have condition 1 met, or condition 3. But not both - most of the lightweight distros seem to assume that one is rpepared to spend half-an-hour on each wireless network setting it up - and whilst I'm not a newbie, I don't really get off on always doing things the hard way.
> 
> Does anyone have any suggestions?

Unless they are Noah cast offs (Then go for Damn Small Linux) or similar
you don't need a light weight distro, you need a light weight window manager
icewm and fvwm both work nicely with 256M (and are nice to use)
I've used icewm on a 64M machine but fvwm is prodly a better choice here.

James