what OS to install on TOSHIBA T8000

Asked by Nay Myo Win

I have Pentium 2, 300 MHz, Toshiba T8000,

i want to use just office on my laptop.

what type of OS and software should i install??

thanks

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said :
#1

I suggest Puppy Linux or Xubuntu.

You can also install LXDE for a lightweight DE ontop of a normal Ubuntu to get the Ubuntu apps with a lightweight DE.

I also suggest you steer clear of heavy openoffice and install lighter alternatives like abiword as they will use less ram and are much better suited to low end systems.

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Nay Myo Win (nmwin) said :
#2

i also want my word processing and spreadsheets to work under Microsoft
Office.

some openoffice formats are not ok in Ms Office.

btw, could you send me the link of puppy linux or Xubuntu that use less
memory and can be run on legacy products

and also workable office version.

thanks

On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 2:50 PM, actionparsnip <
<email address hidden>> wrote:

> Your question #76843 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/76843
>
> Status: Open => Answered
>
> actionparsnip proposed the following answer:
> I suggest Puppy Linux or Xubuntu.
>
> You can also install LXDE for a lightweight DE ontop of a normal Ubuntu
> to get the Ubuntu apps with a lightweight DE.
>
> I also suggest you steer clear of heavy openoffice and install lighter
> alternatives like abiword as they will use less ram and are much better
> suited to low end systems.
>
> --
> If this answers your question, please go to the following page to let us
> know that it is solved:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/76843/+confirm?answer_id=0
>
> If you still need help, you can reply to this email or go to the
> following page to enter your feedback:
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>
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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said :
#3

The office productivity will be installable via the repositories once the OS is installed. You don't download much installable software yourself in Ubuntu.

For PuppyLinux:

ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/puppy-4.2.1-k2.6.25.16-seamonkey.iso
MD5Sum: : 5f9febefd6ce70db1bb2d8538f4e2786

For Xubuntu:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/9.04/release/xubuntu-9.04-desktop-i386.iso
MD5Sum: 7afaff09c4b192415bad703ee564cff8

The files you create in office productivity can be save in 97-2003 format and will be fine with other MS office releases.

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Nay Myo Win (nmwin) said :
#4

thanks

are all alternate install CD or live CDs??

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said :
#5

They are LiveCDs. Their is an Xubuntu alternate CD which you may have a better experience with as it does not run a graphical install which better suits your system.

Here is the ISO and MD5Sum:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/9.04/release/xubuntu-9.04-alternate-i386.iso
MD5Sum: 9b441de60355334caf67143588385ed8

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Tom (tom6) said :
#6

I doubt that Xubuntu will work on that but it might be worth trying as a LiveCd by putting the normal Xubuntu Cd in the cd/dvd-drive and reboot the computer. You should get to a menu where the default option is "Try Ubuntu without changes to this machine", this should get you to a working dsktop which we call a "LiveCd session" most distros (different linux OS's) have this as the default option (except Vector linux) but mostly they don't have such a fancy menu title. Here's a guide if you have trouble with getting to the menu in Xubuntu

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootFromCD

A better place to ask about which distro might be best is in the DistroWatch Weekly column, just scroll righ down to the bottom and ask people there
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090713&mode=67

I would recommend trying a slackware based distro such as Vector linux, Wolvix, Zenwalk but something like sliTaz might be good for this machine too. I would recommend trying Vector first
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=vector
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=wolvix
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=slitaz

Good luck and happy hunting
Regards from
Tom :)

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Tom (tom6) said :
#7

I agree about using AbiWord and Gnumeric (spreadsheet) instead of OpenOffice. Those 2 packages in the Gnome Office are very much lighter on system resources but you have to keep doing "Save As ..." and then change the file ending from ".odt" to ".doc" or ".xls" in order that MS Office has no trouble reading the documents. For some reason MS Office orefers the often proven unsafe formats rather the the more secure ones we tend to prefer in linux.

With OpenOffice go up to the "Tools" menu, "Options" and in the pop-up box look down the left-hand side for "Load/Save" click on the + and at the bottom of "General" see the drop-down menu's "Document type" and "Always save as ...", the MS formats are one or two above the defaults usually set, avoid "template" format because that just gets confusing. The other pages in "Load/Save" are also worth looking at, particularly "VBA properties".

Err, of the Wolvix versions i would recommend the Wolvix Hunter version because it already includes OpenOffice on it's LiveCd ;) LiveCds are great for testing out whether a distro will work but it's usually better/faster after you do a full proper install as outlined in this guide for the *buntus
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot
Saving documents into "Documents" or suchliek in a LiveCd session means they will completely vanish once the machine powers down but it is possible to read and write to the hard-drives instead of the LiveCd's personal folders ;)

I hope this helps!
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Revision history for this message
i (iiiiii-deactivatedaccount) said :
#8

You may try antiX-M8 base. Then you install the Word processor you like (it has all the Debian repos). I don't know about getting MS-Office working on it (maybe with wine?).
http://antix.mepis.org/index.php/Main_Page

Besides that, Puppy for sure. There are really stripped down puplets (puppy derivatives) like TurboPup and Browser Puppy over which you could install the word processor and/or wine.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/index.php?f=35
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=44356

...

Revision history for this message
i (iiiiii-deactivatedaccount) said :
#9

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=103961

There must certainly be other options for you in the Linux world but this is what I can tell for now.

Revision history for this message
Tom (tom6) said :
#10

Well, distrowatch is an excellent place to hunt around fro different distros. Here's a list of some extremely light distros

http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=links#floppy

AntiX might be excellent, i'd forgotten about it. When i used it i found the right-click menu rather than having a set "Start" button on a taskbar took quite a lot of getting used to. Very swish distro from what i remember :) Dsl would have been an obvious choice but it seems to have temporarily died, hopefully not for too long ;)

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Tom (tom6) said :
#11

Paul Yearwood contacted me about a DistroWatch post i made about this to say

"
I have a Compaq Presario that has a PII 400 with 312 Meg of RAM. I have use several "small" distros on it.

I have used PuppyOS Live. It flies when it is loaded entirely into RAM. I can mount all drives, HDD and USB, It also has the advantage of being the only safe way against malware. Being Read-Only, nothing can take over your computer. If only Windows had a way of making a live CD, a lot of botnets would not be possible.

Another I used is Debris which is a mini Ubuntu version. It is live and installable. Warning: The stable version is, I believe, based on Ubuntu 7.04 which is no longer being supported up stream. (The newer version 1.8.3 is based on U. 8.04.) I liked it but by the time I added back in the features I wanted like Open Office instead of Abiword and since it was not updatable (ver 1.04), I just re-installed full size Ubuntu. I now have Debris 1.9.x on a 4 Gig harddrive as a backup for my main system.

I currently have VectorLinux 6 on the Compaq. It is a full size distro but it has ALSAconf utility that allows me to use the onboard audio, something that Ubuntu does not have. There is an elaberate CLI script that I can use but having ALSAconf is easer. It works fairly decently with the PII 400 and the 312 Meg RAM. Be sure to get the Version 6 Vector as it has an improved graphic installer, but you can choose the text based, if you like a challenge.

One piece of information you did not mention was the size of the hard drive on your Toshiba. The Compaq is 8Gig with 3.5 Gig currently free using the Vector. The Debris 1.8.3 on the 4 Gig has about half left. I'm not using that at present so I can not give an exact reading but the CD image is 185.5 MB. It is also a live CD.

VectorLinux also comes in a 64 bit ISO, so I have it on a separate HDD for my main system, a Celeron 430 1.6 GHZ with 2Gig RAM. As far as I can tell, there is some but not that major difference in performance between the old 1998 Compaq and the home built Celeron Shuttle using the same version but 32 bit on the old and 64 bit on the new.

Hope this will give you some ideas on what you can use on your Toshiba.
"

I too hope this helps! I think that installing regular Ubuntu on your main machine as a dual boot (to keep Windows as an option) will help you get used to linux more in order to gain the experience that may help bring the toshiba back to life.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot
However, it might also work well the other way around. Struggling with a tougher distro might help installing & using Ubuntu very much easier. Choices, choices :)

Either way, good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Revision history for this message
Tom (tom6) said :
#12

122 • VectorLinux 6 for the Tecra T8000 (by Caitlyn Martin on 2009-07-14 18:35:00 GMT from United States)

My recommendation would be slightly different than Paul's. The text based installer may not be pretty but it goes through exactly the same steps as the GUI installer. Unless you have a real aversion to an ncurses-based installer I'd go with Vector Linux Light 6.0. Smaller/lighter apps and an IceWM or JWM based desktop will run faster on a 336MHz processor and 256MB of RAM than the Standard version with either Xfce or LXDE. Everything in the VL repository will be available if you must have any heavier apps. I'd go with the Light version on a machine with those specs.

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