I have a Sony Vaio PCG-9401 and it's soo old that one of the RAM ports doesn't work leaving it with a grand total of 128MB of RAM. I want to install Linux on it (any distro that will work) but it stops reading the disk and shuts off after a while. The battery has completely died so it does not carry a charge anymore. What solutions do you guys suggest when I have a 12GB hard drive? Linux distros I have tried: [list] [*]Ubuntu (alternate CD) [*]Xubuntu (alternate CD) [*]Vector Linux (standard gold) [/list] I'd like to use this for homework (OpenOffice.org), messaging (Pidgin or Gaim), and Internet browsing (Firefox)

Try [url=http://www.damnsmalllinux.org]DSL[/url]

Puppy Linux and SLAX are good alternate choices too.

Take a look at www.slitaz.org Using on a generic box with 128MB RAM currently as LiveCD and am pleasantly surprised with its speed. hth oldcity

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/linux-newbie/8441-distro-look-here-before-posting.html ^^ Useful link that, though the only one it suggests that hasn't been is ZenWalk (haven't tried it personally). The other solution is to do a very minimal Debian install, and then use something like XFCE (reasonably lightweight) or (for the very lightweight) FluxBox, IceWM or FVWM (there are more lightweight ones, I just can't think of them right now) as your window manager. http://www.go2linux.org/installing-a-light-linux-operating-system-debian-fluxbox ^^ If you ignore the irrelevant parts of that, it's a good quick reference for a light install (really, it's just "Install *base* Debian [not the desktop environment version, just base] setup sudo, install FluxBox and a few choice apps" and you're done). Edit: Fixed typo [Modified by: Penguin on March 28, 2008 04:10 PM]