I have a Sony Vaio laptop model PCG 505TS that I’m contemplating trying to convert to a linux machine. I think it is old enough (circa 2000) that it doesn’t seem to make the hardware compatibility list. I’m wondering if anybody on this forum has successfully run a linux version version on this model. Before I invested the time to try it, I wanted to have a hint that it might be possible. The intended use would be some light duty office software and web/ email activity.
Alpenview
Laptops of that vintage typically do not have enough ram nor a fast enough processor for openSUSE Linux. What is the CPU speed, and how much RAM?
You may be better off looking at a more light weight Linux distribution.
oldcpu wrote:
> alpenview;1915797 Wrote:
>> I have a Sony Vaio laptop model PCG 505TS that I’m contemplating trying
>> to convert to a linux machine. I think it is old enough (circa 2000)
>> that it doesn’t seem to make the hardware compatibility list. I’m
>> wondering if anybody on this forum has successfully run a linux version
>> version on this model. Before I invested the time to try it, I wanted to
>> have a hint that it might be possible. The intended use would be some
>> light duty office software and web/ email activity.
> Laptops of that vintage typically do not have enough ram nor a fast
> enough processor for openSUSE Linux. What is the CPU speed, and how
> much RAM?
I have an even older Sony Vaio laptop that I bought refurbished in 1998 that
runs openSUSE (10.3 at the moment and soon to be upgraded to 11.1). It has a 333
MHz CPU and 256 MB RAM. The catch is that I use it as a disk and print server
and X is not loaded on it. I used KDE on it back in the SuSE 8 or 9 days, but
not recently. If you want to run a GUI interface, you need at least 512 MB RAM.
Larry
The system is 300Mhz and only has 64 MB of ram. It sounds like this is too small an amount of ram. Are there and compact distro that you’d recommend I consider?
64MB of RAM is pretty slim. There is a list here of light weight Linux distributions: List of Linux distributions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia but I suspect 64MB is too slim for most of them if you want to run X window (I suspect most will run in a pure text mode).
Some one with experience with a PC running Linux (with X window) with only 64MB of RAM will need chime in.
The system is 300Mhz and only has 64 MB of ram
Seriously, this machine would not be suitable for running any current linux distro with a graphical desktop environment, without more memory installed. You would find the performance intolerable. In addition, I’m guessing the hard disk is probably too small as well.