Hi, so I just go a laptop for free. It has 2GB Hard drive, 430MHz celeron CPU, 8mb ATI Rage GPU, and 512MB memory.

So I thought it would be nice to install some kind of linux distro. Right now I use ubuntu 12.04 on my main desktop PC, but I can't use it for the laptop because it's HDD too small.

Could anyone recommend me a nice linux distro that HAS desktop and would take up ~1GB of HDD space?

Thanks in advance.

A Raspberry Pi distro might work? http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads

Lubuntu is the lightweight version of Ubuntu.

Lubuntu fits in ~1GB? Remember that whatever he installs on it, there needs to be lots of free space for other data.

Last time I did something like this (with a 2GB SD card - yeah, emergency OS) I had used some distro that would let you choose the packages from the site and it'd generate a bootable image for you ready to copy in the drive, but I can't remember the name right now. There's also this http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ 50MB only. Not sure how usable it is, though (or if it's maintained, I don't really track distros).

Thanks everyone. I tried Puppy lucid, but it's really not my thing, looks like child's OS. Tried StiLaz everything seemed very nice, except the one fact - it lags very much when you scroll or move window.

Yeah lubuntu doesn't fit me because it needs 2gb of space. I will probably try out "Damn small linux" but I don't have spare CD's now to install it.

Anyways, thanks again. If anyone has more suggestion I would like to hear them.

hi, i was juz browsing and stumbled into you post, and i was in you sheos before. hahahaha

your final distro choice depends on your linux skill and what u r using it for
nevertheless, for your choices, i think you should read "Lightweight Linux distribution" on wikipedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Linux_distribution)

no offence guys, but anything fork from ubuntu would fill the hdd from a basic setup
not much hdd space for anything else

my personal choice is slitaz, extremely light, 30mb image file and and install space of less than 512mb
my was 200++ mb, leaving rooms for other things. apps are edequate for basic offce suite and webrowsing
puppy linux would be my second choice.
lastly if you really know your ways around linux CLI(command line interface), use a debian and build it your self wif any packages u need.

then again i dont know what u use it for nor your linux skill
but, good luck and pay it forward
hahahaha

p.s. wikipedia link i posted is a gud place to start
i would also recommend trying on a live usb first, and see if it fits your needs

 

Lubuntu fits in ~1GB? Remember that whatever he installs on it, there needs to be lots of free space for other data.
 
Last time I did something like this (with a 2GB SD card - yeah, emergency OS) I had used some distro that would let you choose the packages from the site and it'd generate a bootable image for you ready to copy in the drive, but I can't remember the name right now. There's also this http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ 50MB only. Not sure how usable it is, though (or if it's maintained, I don't really track distros).

 

DLS is a gud choice, however due to a hiatus in the development for few years back (2008-2012,recently it was revived) some of the repo is abit outdated IMO. also, i havent use it since the hiatus, so i dont know about current development
but i has a low memory footprint thou :)

everything seemed very nice, except the one fact - it lags very much when you scroll or move window.

You have hardware from the late 1990s. Specifically note the 400MHz CPU and the 512 MB of relatively slow memory. The graphics card supports DirectX 5.

You simply cannot install a modern distro on this hardware and expect it to perform well. Modern software is designed for modern hardware. A modern processor is about 20x more powerful than yours. A modern machine has about 12x the main memory than yours. And the graphics card, well, technology has undergone a near-complete fundamental transformation since that era.

Modern software makes assumptions about hardware specs that really don't apply to that old of a machine.

That hardware might work well with a Linux distro of similar age. Perhaps Debian versions Potato (circa 2000) or Woody (circa 2002) would run nicely on the machine.

What frob said.

Except for the HDD, that HW can take Debian 3.0 with KDE 3 just fine.

Also Mandrake was a good distro in it's time (now Mandriva).

Puppy Linux!!

Runs in RAM, boots from USB, (you do have USB?).

Wary version is specifically for older machines.

Cunningly, it will boot from a CD, and save changes back to it!

More modern versions based on Ubuntu or Slackware are excellent (and fast not needing HDD access).

Desktop is JWM but LXDE etc available from the repositories.

Also Slitaz, Tinycore, and DSL (Damn Small Linux).

Regards

gvnmcknz