StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Last year I got for free a Dell craptop. Old as it is, I only needed it for my writing. The guy that gave it to me had Lucid Puppy version of Linux installed on it.

The problem is that when I use it to type my stories, it is quite laggy. I'll type a few words and about 5 seconds later the words would appear. At first I thought that it was because of lack of RAM (it had 128megs) so I maxed out the RAM at 256megs. Unfortunately there's no change. It still lags.

Is there a way to make Abiword work seamlessly? Do I have to remove anything to get the word processor not choke?

Latitude CPi 233ST Craptop Specs.

Would I have to reinstall Lucid Puppy with minimum options needed to get Abiword to run perfectly or do I just go and install Win95 and hope for the best?

Well, Win95 isn't going to work any better; probably worse, in fact. Have you looked at a system monitor or some such while AbiWord is open to see what's going on with memory and processor? How much of the hard drive is partitioned for swap space?

Don't know where to look for the system monitor.

I do not think the hard drive is partitioned in anyway. It's a 4GB HDD with over 3.5GB free.

Well, that's problem #1. Linux doesn't have a "swap file" in the normal partition, as Windows does; it requires that a portion of the hard drive be partitioned off separately and formatted as swap, and identified as such in the FSTAB.

It's possible to boot from a liveCD, edit the partitions (shrinking the primary and adding a swap partition [recommended swap is usually double the RAM or so]), but it might be a pain in the ass for your experience level, compared to a wipe/fresh install. Let me look up what tools you have on that distro.

Mkay; do you have the Puppy linux USB/liveCD?

Terralthra wrote:Mkay; do you have the Puppy linux USB/liveCD?

I've recently downloaded the latest LuPu release.

I have very limited knowledge on Linux but when I boot up the craptop it gives me these options to choose upon boot:

Linux (on /dev/sda1)
Windows (on /dev/sdb1)
Install GRUB to floppy disk (on /dev/fd0)
Install GRUB to Linux partition (on /dev/sda1)

Does this help in any way?

How hard is it to reformat and instal Lucid Puppy compared to the Win OSes?

If you boot into LuPu from a USB or CD-ROM, open up GPartEd, and from there, you want to (if possible) shrink /dev/sda1 and add a /dev/sda5 partition formatted as Linux Swap.

From the device readout...does this laptop have two hard drives?

Terralthra wrote:If you boot into LuPu from a USB or CD-ROM, open up GPartEd, and from there, you want to (if possible) shrink /dev/sda1 and add a /dev/sda5 partition formatted as Linux Swap.

From the device readout...does this laptop have two hard drives?

No, only one 4gb drive.

How would I format with LuPu?

Bah. Tried messing around with LuPu, hoping to get it to run smoother and instead messed it up. I can no longer see any icons on the desktop, plus no wallpaper and it no longer reads text documents. Ended up the complete opposite of what I wanted.

I tried booting up directly to the CD but the craptop seems to skip over it. I can't figure out using the command line how to access the CD-ROM. If this gets any worse, I'll bite the bullet and go for Win95. Less of a headache this way.

It'll probably be more of a headache, actually. Someone once wanted us to replace their hard drive and reinstall Windows 98 on their laptop (it had been upgraded to XP, but they didn't have the product key and the drive was unreadable), and I had such a hard time finding Win98-compatible drivers for it that I just said 'fuck it' and installed XP using a key off one of the cannibalized Dell cases in the back room.

Yeah, win95 is shit, really. You are probably remembering it through rose-colored glasses. There are other minimal hardware requirement distributions (e.g. Damn Small Linux), if Lucid Puppy is annoying you.

On the other hand, it may be, based on the age of the laptop that it simply won't boot off of a USB stick or CD-ROM. If you can get into the BIOS, find the "boot" settings and figure out what it will or will not boot from.

Terralthra wrote:On the other hand, it may be, based on the age of the laptop that it simply won't boot off of a USB stick or CD-ROM. If you can get into the BIOS, find the "boot" settings and figure out what it will or will not boot from.

I've set it for CD-ROM as the primary boot but it skips to the HDD. Both the BIOS and LuPu recognizes the CD-ROM. I'm trying to figure out how to access the CD-ROM from the command line. All I get is "GRUB>". How do I change drives?

I might try hooking it up to my computer, format it and then after disconnecting it, try to boot up LuPu from either the CD or USB.

Is their any other Linux OSes other than LuPu that is pretty simple and easy to use?

Well, Can't get into Lupu on the the craptop at all. Must've deleted something important. I've tried to format the hard drive by taking it out, connect it to an adapter and then to my computer but when I put it back I still have Grub on it but I get an error message. GAAH! Gonna have to try again but do a better job.