[Dreylivude]

I know this question has been done to death, but I have some specific needs...

I have a main windows machine that I do most of my work on, which includes a lot of photoshop, maya and mudbox work as I am a 3d artist.

I also have a vaio latop that's about 4 years old now that I still take with me when I go home for a week or so and still need to get a bit of work done.

It's a bit slow lately (I'm a very experienced windows user so I've done all I can think of there) so I've been trying out a few linux distro's in the hopes of finding one to use on my laptop. Now I have a few nit picks that keep making me want to slap XP back on it and just suck it up.

I'd like something pretty bare minumum so most of the laptops power goes toward the applications I need. I'm going to be trying out blender and gimp for that stuff, so no worries there. I'm currently trying ubuntu and so far it's done the best job of using my laptops hardware (Wireless, FN buttons for brightness, volumn etc) Where as some other ones I tried (openSUSE and Fedora) were less forgiving.

The problem with ubuntu is that it doesn't seem to be very fast. Even firefox lags considerably when there are a few tabs open.

So, any ideas would be great. Something like ubuntu but really stripped down but with everything an artist would need. Or even something really small that boots up in front of windows xp, so if I just want to check e-mail or something I can use that right quick, or if I need to get actual work done I can boot into xp and just suffer through a bit of lag.

Laptop is a sony vaio vgn-fs660/w
1.37ghz intel centrino
80 gb hard drive
1gb ram
nvidia geforce 6200 go

distro's tried:
Ubuntu
openSUSE
Fedora
linuxMint
Ubuntu Studio

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there are 2 you have missed out there, both run a live cd,

pclinuxos - http://www.pclinuxos.com/ - i am running this on a 1ghz amd cpu with 256 pc133 ram, wonderfull,

or

mandriva - http://www2.mandriva.com/ - this is on my main pc (3.4 prescott and 2gb ddr400),
there are extra repositories you could add for unsupported software (not in the official repositories due to various licensing issues - eg win32 codecs)

i use mine for video editing - it sails through

[hawklord]

there are 2 you have missed out there, both run a live cd,

pclinuxos - http://www.pclinuxos.com/ - i am running this on a 1ghz amd cpu with 256 pc133 ram, wonderfull,

or

mandriva - http://www2.mandriva.com/ - this is on my main pc (3.4 prescott and 2gb ddr400),
there are extra repositories you could add for unsupported software (not in the official repositories due to various licensing issues - eg win32 codecs)

i use mine for video editing - it sails through

[edge2022]

You could try out another version of Ubuntu, that works great with an old system. Get Xubuntu from here: http://www.xubuntu.org/

PCLinuxOS also would work well.

[Titan8990]

The Linux learning paths (this is my opinion):

Ubuntu -> Debian -> Gentoo/Arch

SUSE -> Fedora/RHEL -> Gentoo/Arch


Spin-off distros like Zenwalk, PCLinuxOS, and Madriva are essentially just the their primary distros that are configured in a particular way. I typically always recommend main distros due to their support (Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Slackware: http://en.wikipedia...._distributions).

As far as specializations:

Ubuntu: Desktop (bleeding edge), server (LTS only)

Debian: Server, embedded devices

SUSE: Desktop (stable)

Gentoo: Enthusiast

Arch: Enthusiast

Just because I have listed something above as particularly good in a certain area does not mean they can't function as anything. Linux is very flexible because they follow a bit of standards.


Now, to the question:

So, any ideas would be great. Something like ubuntu but really stripped down but with everything an artist would need. Or even something really small that boots up in front of windows xp, so if I just want to check e-mail or something I can use that right quick, or if I need to get actual work done I can boot into xp and just suffer through a bit of lag.

If you don't mind some configuring, you can get a lot of performance out of older machines by starting with a minimal install and only using what you need. Using window managers such as fluxbox, blackbox, or awesome window manager can greatly increase the performance of machines but can have steep learning curves.

Most main distros have CDs for minimal installs:

Ubuntu: https://help.ubuntu....ation/MinimalCD

Debian: http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/

SUSE: http://en.opensuse.o...inimal_Hardware

Gentoo: http://www.gentoo.or...in/en/where.xml

Arch: http://www.archlinux.org/download/


Note: Arch and Gentoo do not have installers.

Edited by Titan8990, 29 May 2009 - 07:11 PM.