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Fastbooting Linux For Dummies?
Linux First timer writes "I wonder whether the Linux Gurus of Slashdot could help me with some advice on setting up a Linux system for my wife. She is not at all computer literate, but likes to get on the net for a few minutes every morning to read news etc. She is always bitching that our XP desktop takes way too long to boot 'just to get on the net for a few minutes.' I was thinking that I could take an old laptop we have, do a little first time test drive installing and using Linux, and possibly solve her problem in one go. The requirements for the system are simple: fast as possible boot/load Firefox, easy for a computer dummy to get onto the net, hard to break through random incompetence, and comes with Open Office.org or similar for occasional use. Wouldn't be used for much else. Any useful advice for us two poor Linux newbies? For example, is Ubuntu the best choice for this, or is there a better Linux flavour for the purpose? Any useful tweaks a novice can handle to make it work better for these simple tasks only?"
If you put your system in hibernation mode, the wake up process is much faster then a cold boot... My windows desktop wakes up in less than 5 secs. It boots in more the 3 min...
The decision of a Linux distro for old hardware is somewhat dependent on the age of the old hardware. I've been pretty successful at using PuppyLinux (and MacPup isn't too bad) on a very old Toshiba laptop with 192mb RAM. However, I have found that the "random incompetence" factor is an issue with it, as well as some laptop quirks (X refuses to come back if you close the laptop lid, and you then have to power it off, X doesn't start up on boot, and you have to type "startx" at the command line and chose xmesa or xorg...).
Xubuntu is actually not too bad from the resources side... I tried it on an old 256mb ram/celeron computer. It was pretty slow, though.
gOS also isn't too bad. It's geared towards getting online and using Google stuff... gmail, google docs, etc. It booted faster and the liveCD was faster than Xubuntu, for me.
Another one that I haven't used a whole lot but looked pretty good was TinyME (based on PCLinuxOS I think).
I haven't messed around with this much myself... but instead of making her morning routine specific to an older, outdated laptop you have lying around, what about installing Linux on a USB drive for boot. Usually you can set Bios to detect USB first and installing something small and lightweight would be preferable. If you set up a Bash script to start Firefox I'd recommend Puppy Linux because it's quick and small, but if you want her to be able to mess around with the OS GUI and not "break" anything I think a better idea would be xubuntu instead. Still smaller and rather lightweight, but much more user friendly. The beauty of the USB drive boot though is you can use that old laptop as well as your main home computer without uprooting an existing OS and you'll still have access to all of those files if she wants to do work in OpenOffice or something similar.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Go check here for a list of minimalistic Linux distro's:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Minimal_Linux_distros
Slackware with a XFCE and Firefox/OpenOffice is very, very fast on even older hardware.
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...boots very fast from a CDROM. It would be much faster from a hard disk or SSD.
link
http://michaelsmith.id.au
DSL linux boots insanely fast. On my pentium 2, 300Mhz machine it takes 28 seconds to cold boot off of a CD. And part of that is the delay at the grub prompt! Plus it fires up the applications like a mail client nearly instantly.
main difference is the graphics and dialog boxes are not as sexy as ubuntu
I note that one possible reason linux or windows boots slowly or wakes from hinernation slowly on an older machine can be it's memory starved. For example ubuntu boots on that machine in about ten minutes(!). the machine only has 396MB of memory so it's a miracle ubuntu even boots at all.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Did you note, you'll be wasting equal amount of electricity as a printer printing 10000 pages if you leave your computer on all night long?
[Citation needed]
Dot-matrix? Ink-jet? Colour laser? Laptop? Desktop? Server? Display on or off? CRT? TFT? Storage? Power saving mode?
Notwithstanding that I challenge your statement to be anywhere within an order of magnitude or two off target as a generalised rule, the usage can be radically different depending on the combination. CRT's are different from TFT displays in energy use for example, rather dramatically in fact.
And my work laptop - a Dell Latitude D620 / XP Pro gets unplugged and locked into a desk drawer each night. I close down Outlook and shut the lid. Resumes in about 6 seconds the next morning. Whatever power usage it's consuming in that state, it's not enough to warm the desk drawer it resides in appreciably, and I don't see it spending much time recharging.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
This is the standard of a Linux Newbie (from TFS)?? Recompiling the kernel, modifying startup scripts and understanding SSEx instruction sets?
It's too much. I'm quitting the Linux stuff and going back to Windows. I'm going to download Test King papers, memorize the answers, and get my MSCE certification. Experience and knowledge be damned!