Linux on old laptop

Billy Tallis wjtallis at ncsu.edu
Sat Sep 25 02:50:40 UTC 2004


> On Fri, 2004-09-24 at 16:15, Billy Tallis wrote:
>> I have an old Toshiba Satellite Pro 445CDX laptop with 16MB of ram, a
>> Pentium
>> MMX 133 Mhz processor, and a 1.4GB hard drive.
>> First, is it feasible to run linux on this machine?
>
> Depends on what you run and how fast you expect things to be.
>
> I have run Linux on a Toshiba 440CD.
>
> You will want more memory.
>
The RAM is upgradeable to 144MB (EDO, mind you), but in a Toshiba specific
size, rather than an SODIMM or something.

>> Second, how much in the way of FC can I use? I cannot use anaconda, because
>> it
>> does not let you continue with only 16MB. I would, however, like to use rpm,
>> especially fedora SRPMs that I can compile on my faster desktop with FC2.
>>
>> It seems to be an uphill battle, as knoppix is hard to get working and
>> doesn't
>> seem to realize that the screen is only 800x600.
>
> It is also a pain because that chipset needs to be overclocked to work
> correctly.  (The Windows driver also overclocks it.)
>

The only problem with the display that I have found is that the text mode has
part of the text off-screen whenever the LCD is in use, but not when using
only an external monitor.





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