I have a fairly old Toshiba Satellite laptop. It only has 128 MB of RAM, a fairly slow (800 MHZ) PIII, and a really weak battery. Due to the strange hardware in this thing DSL seems to get confused, so does DSL-N. It seems that screen brightness is software controlled. I couldn't get Ubuntu Lite or Fluxbuntu to work (they would crash during installation). A stripped down varient of PCLinuxOS called TinyMe works, but its apt-rpm package management is slow and it runs fairly slow. Is there a good lightweight linux distro for laptops that runs fine on 128 MB ram and 800 MHZ, I would strongly prefere one based on Debian's apt-get or at the least an RPM system like YUM or YAST, not apt-rpm, (and nothing source based please.) Also can I request one with good power controls and the ability to dim the screen while on battery?

How about Debian? Just install a base system (no gui) and then apt-get your way to a light desktop.

Hadn't though of that, how does Debian do with WiFi cards, how would I dim the screen (if possible), do I need to install the battery manager separate? I have used Debian on desktops, but on laptops I have only ever used distros like Ubuntu. Also some of the packages in the Debian on a desktop are sooooooo old, what can I do to get current versions of software? I know about the stable testing, and unstable thing, but which is best for a desktop/laptop? I want stuff that is up to date and secure, but I don't want stuff that is alpha level and crashes a lot.

You can probably control brightness through acpi.

Xubuntu ????

Tried it, like Ubuntu Lite and the like, it hangs? You know, I might could get a text install and apt-get into a desktop

For wifi, you may need to get the drivers ahead of time.
Not sure about dimming the screen.
Either use Testing or Unstable.

I put unstable on a 233mhz IBM Thinkpad with fluxbox, a few years ago and enjoyed using it. It is so slow that I don't use it much now days.

All I use is unstable for any computers I install debian on.

Debian suggest to run testing/unstable for Desktop machines. Stable is more for servers and contains older but confirmed versions.
I'm running debian for several years on my laptop but I have fairly standard hardware.

Hi Monsuco,
This post just happened to catch my attention.
How old is your Toshiba Satellite ?
I to have an old Toshiba Satellite.
It has only 4MB ram or that is what free tells me.
The hard disk was 814MB but broken now.
I replaced it with a flash 1GB so it is impractical to use swap.
It is from about 1995.
I am working on an embedded cross compiled linux from scratch.
Can not tell you yet if I will be successful but its interesting.
LFS is covered in another LQ forum.

John

I say try Slackware 10.2 or 11.0 (with a light wm, NOT KDE or GNOME). Something like blackbox, fluxbox, etc.

Mine looks like it was made right around 1999 to 2000. It has way more than 4 MB, it has 128, it is old, but not that old.
Hmm, what sort of package manager does slackware use, I am not a fan of compiling everything from source.

Slackware's package management system uses binary packages. Personally, it's my favorite package managment system due to the extreme simplicity (Slackware packages are basically just gzipped binary tarballs). More info here.

To install a package:To upgrade a package:To remove a package:

There are package repositories (like linuxpackages.net which I don't really recommend, because they're homebrew ) if you don't like compiling things from source. Many packages are also available on the install disk.

How much stuff are you gonna install that you're worried about compiling things from source ? If you're really that scared of compiling, go ahead and use Debian or something.

I installed Fedora 8 on my IBM Thinkpad t20 with PIII(700MHz) and she works smoothly. The only problem was to upgrade RAM to 512M. Works everything including suspension, hibernation, network and wifi on PCMCIA

I have an old Toshiba, a 7020CT, that I run Vector Linux on. The basic "Gold" version uses XFCE for a desktop, and runs fine on old stuff like this. Mine has a PII 366MHZ processor and 192meg of ram. Vector is based on Slackware, but is very easy to install, and is more functional right out of the box. It uses slapt-get for packages, or you can use linuxpackages.org for Slackware packages.

Also, there is a package to allow you to control the fan and some other things on Toshiba laptop, which you need. Look here:

http://www.buzzard.me.uk/toshiba/index.html

Good luck.

C