Hi Linuxoids !

I want to buy old notebook & put on it Linux (sure). Everything
would be OK, but I don't have enough money for good hardware
No, I'll don't ask you to help with money (it's not for Linuxoids). I
want to ask for advice. I'll write six points what notebook I want
and you tell me minimum & optimal hardware requirements for each
point apart. Or maybe you have good link for me ?

1. Text reading in console.
2. MP3 playing in console.
3. Programming on C.
4. X, Fluxbox, pictures watching.
5. Net, server.
6. Video & films watching

P.S. Please don't write "I don't know", "maybe", "somehow"...

whats your price range? I have seen decent laptops with a pentium 3 for around $600.

I mean that you have to write minimum & optimal requirements for each point and not to ask me for price range.

I would agree with mipia, a P3 is what you are looking for. I have a P2 400 MHZ with 4 megas ATI Inbult graphics card. It does all you are looking for but simply does not play movies/DVD's smootly as windows would do in that machine. Emulators as xMame, Snes9X are still good for that machine if you like games of those kind.

Get a P3 500MHZ, 128 RAM at least with a 3D graphics card of 8 megas and you should be fine . You could go lower as my P2 - 400 MHZ, but I don't think you can find a laptop that old with a good graphics card.

Take a look at ebay.com, sometimes you can find good things in there, or in a local newspaper of yours for some good deals .

Do you understand what I want to tell you ? No ???
I want to ask you for MINIMUM !!!!!!!! requirement for EACH !!!!!!! of six points. If you don't know the answer than please dont write at all !

quit complaining and go look yourself then

I don't need advice like "Buy notebook with pentium4, GEforce 4, DVD-RW, 250mb RAM and 80GB hard disk". I thought that on linuxquestions.org I never read this.

1. A minimum of a 386.
2. A minimum of a supported soundcard.
3. A minimum of a 386
4. Any supported GFX card.
5. A minimum of a 386
6. Now you're talking! Something with a beefy GFX, or a high-ish processor - anything else will make watching movies less interesting than watching paint dry. I would also suggest you make sure it has a decent soundcard.

All in all, I would have to suggest exactly the same as the above messages. A P3 would do nicely - most have decent onboard sound, and it should be more than enough to watch movies. If it can do movies, then I think point 4 is moot. The movies is definitely the biggest factor here, all the others are achieveable with low-end hardware, so are definitely achievable on higher end hardware.

Do not be so quick to jump to criticism.

"I don't need advice like "Buy notebook with pentium4, GEforce 4, DVD-RW, 250mb RAM and 80GB hard disk". I thought that on linuxquestions.org I never read this."

"Do you understand what I want to tell you ? No ???
I want to ask you for MINIMUM !!!!!!!! requirement for EACH !!!!!!! of six points. If you don't know the answer than please dont write at all !"

How rude... go and figure it out yourself then... or ask mommy

If I have 8mb RAM than can I start X ?
How much space I need to put gcc?
You don't understand that I need cheepest notebook for simple work ?
And cost of notebook can be 70 $

well, my first linux box was thus...
120 mHz pentium, 8meg gfx card, 32 megs of ram.
It worked fine. Dont know about watching movies though.

Also if you look at minimum requirements that are stated with any distro of linux, you should be able to figure it out there.