Arch Linux

jpoveda

Member

From: Guayaquil, Ecuador

Registered: 2011-02-01

Posts: 17

Old AMD Laptop

I find a very old laptop on my house and I want to get it up and running. I installed Arch recently and everything cool. It has a mobile AMD Athlon XP-M 2000+ 1,53Ghz processor and has 224 MB of RAM. Which will be the best Desktop Enviroment for its' specs? Can I install GNOME on this specs?

Thank you.

andrewthomas

Member

Registered: 2010-05-08

Posts: 52

Re: Old AMD Laptop

I would say no to GNOME.  Probably ldxe would be ok.

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jpoveda

Member

From: Guayaquil, Ecuador

Registered: 2011-02-01

Posts: 17

Re: Old AMD Laptop

Thanks! I was thinking to go either for XFCE or LDXE... Also a friend of mine suggested OpenBox. Let's wait for other opinions...

lifeafter2am

Member

From: 127.0.0.1

Registered: 2009-06-10

Posts: 1,332

Re: Old AMD Laptop

XMonad, Awesome, Subtle, Fluxbox ..... pretty much any of the lightweight WMs.

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tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Old AMD Laptop

Also, get more RAM.

moetunes

Member

From: A comfortable couch

Registered: 2010-10-09

Posts: 1,033

Re: Old AMD Laptop

I am typing this on a 700mhz pentium3 with 256mB ram and use both fluxbox and dwm here. Using just a window manager works fine but a desktop environment would be too heavy for so little ram. It is very usable with only firefox and thunderbird obviously slow to open. More ram would be good but your system should be more usable then this one if you steer clear of full desktop environments.

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Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: Old AMD Laptop

Definitely more RAM. LXDE will work very well on what you have now. The problem will start once you open Firefox. Or any other browser really, the modern web has become very demanding. So yeah, more RAM.
Oh, and Openbox is what LXDE uses as it's window manager.

milso

Member

Registered: 2010-11-16

Posts: 112

Website

Re: Old AMD Laptop

Lightweight Applications

WindowManagers

Good 'ol wiki

Last edited by milso (2011-02-04 11:29:21)

jpoveda

Member

From: Guayaquil, Ecuador

Registered: 2011-02-01

Posts: 17

Re: Old AMD Laptop

Ok now I have a different problem. I'm trying to install Arch in this computer that I told you, but when it is in the Package Installing phase it, the installation crashes and stops. I certainly do not know what happens. But it sends lots of error lines. I'll post here the last 5 in case anyone can help or at least tell me where I can research for a solution:

[<c104a63d>] do_softirq+0x3d/0x50
[<c104a9fd>] irq_exit+0x6d/0x70
[<c1005b00>] do_IRQ+0x50/0xc0
[<c10f4059>] sys_open+0x29/0x40
[<c1003cb0>] common_interrupt+0x30/0x38

Well, that was it. Anyone has any idea?

Last edited by jpoveda (2011-02-04 12:51:42)

lagagnon

Member

From: an Island in the Pacific...

Registered: 2009-12-10

Posts: 1,087

Website

Re: Old AMD Laptop

I would first of all suspect faulty RAM. Suggest you run memtest first from any Live Linux CD.

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moetunes

Member

From: A comfortable couch

Registered: 2010-10-09

Posts: 1,033

Re: Old AMD Laptop

On an older computer sometimes reseating the ram will fix that sort of issue.

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jpoveda

Member

From: Guayaquil, Ecuador

Registered: 2011-02-01

Posts: 17

Re: Old AMD Laptop

Which of the two memtest? Because on the Live CD I have two options: Memtest and Memtest+

jpoveda

Member

From: Guayaquil, Ecuador

Registered: 2011-02-01

Posts: 17

Re: Old AMD Laptop

On an older computer sometimes reseating the ram will fix that sort of issue.

I don't want to sound like such a noob, but how can I reset the RAM?

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: Old AMD Laptop

He said "reseat", not "reset". Basically, take the ram out and put it back in, making sure it's inserted properly.

jpoveda

Member

From: Guayaquil, Ecuador

Registered: 2011-02-01

Posts: 17

Re: Old AMD Laptop

Ok thanks for that. Sorry for being such a noob... xD

jpoveda

Member

From: Guayaquil, Ecuador

Registered: 2011-02-01

Posts: 17

Re: Old AMD Laptop

Update: I have run Memtest and CPU Test and I have reseated the RAM and put it back properly but I still have the same problem... Is there anything else I can do besides throwing away this old laptop???

Thank you.