My Linux Laptop Evolves

Back in December I gave a brief description of my diskless laptop that was, at that time, running Xubuntu linux. And it ran pretty well… for a while.

Unfortunately, it started suffering from intermittent but frequent siezures that lasted for 30 – 60 seconds, especially when online.

Reading the Ubuntu forums, I tried a variety of things, including cleaning out the CPU ventilation system (which I should have done at the outset!). While this reduced the duration of the freezes, it didn’t eliminate them.

So, I figured I had two possible issues: 1) a hardware problem; or, 2) Xubuntu doesn’t “like” my laptop. Being unable to isolate a hardware issue (but not for lack of trying), I decided to try yet another linux distro. Enter Linux Mint. (http://www.linuxmint.com/ )

Mint is an Ubuntu/Debian-based system, which includes Firefox, OpenOffice (2.4), and GIMP, just to name a few. It also seems to contain sufficient codexes to handle most of the multimedia stuff on the ‘Net.

Installing to the USB drive was not difficult at all. I followed the advice of PenDriveLinux ( http://www.pendrivelinux.com/linux-mint-6-flash-drive-install-via-cd/ ) and everything seems to be running smooth again.

Let’s see if I can stick with this one! (Or do I have a hardware problem??)

stay amused.

Xubuntu on a diskless laptop

After trying several different USB-installable linux distros, I am currently using Xubuntu on my Gateway MX6920. It seems to be working quite well.

Criteria for my linux distro selection were:

1. preferably Debian-based; I use lots of different applications, and didn’t want to deal with doing builds (e.g., as I would routinely need to do for a Slackware-based system) or finding out that there were issues with some of the apps I wanted.

2. USB-bootable; the distro must install to a USB drive – preferably 2 Gb or smaller. This would allow me room to expand on a 4 Gb drive, which are cheap!

3. small desktop environment; XFCE or similar. KDE eats too much memory for my tastes in the restricted environment I’m using. Gnome is a bit smaller, but is growing.

4. preferably preinstalled or easily installed OpenOffice suite. Although most of the linux distros easily accommodate OO, I was hoping somebody had optimized an install to one of these small systems.

I previously tried Linux Mint (http://www.linuxmint.com/), which I found to be a reasonable system. Unfortunately, Linux Mint didn’t work very well on my laptop. In particular, I had problems with the WiFi – sometimes it would work, and other times it wouldn’t. I never did sort out why. I just moved on…

…to DreamLinux (http://www.dreamlinux.com.br/). I liked DreamLinux. It had a decent array of applications, and seemed to work pretty well with my laptop… until the darned WiFi started acting up again – in the same way the Linux Mint had. Sounds like a driver problem, eh?

Since I had some prior exposure to Ubuntu, I decided to give Xubuntu a try (http://www.xubuntu.org/). So far, this is my preferred system.

So, why all this USB stuff? I acquired the laptop with a blown hard drive. Being too cheap to purchase another drive, I decided to experiment with the system a bit. I removed the drive completely, and started messing with live CDs instead.  Unfortunately, CDROM drives are slow, noisy, and they eat battery.

So, I went to the next step – boot from a USB stick. I found my battery life increased from 1 1/4 hours out to about 3 hours compared to the liveCD approach. And, the system boot fast (45 seconds) and runs fast.

So far, I’m happy with this new toy. Time will tell whether I stick with Xubuntu, or see what else there is out there. And, of course, I can always just load up a different USB stick and give my laptop multiple personalities.

Feel free to comment on my system or yours!