TO-Tech Blog

Just a note to myself to revisit and re-read this Linux.com review of the TinyMe 2008.0 Linux distro…

Big things come in TinyMe

I wanted to try out Xubuntu on an old Dell Latitude L400 notebook because its Xfce X11 windows manager is tuned for low-RAM systems (the L400 has 256MB RAM). Unfortunately, it only managed to display half the screen making it unusable. So, I left Puppy Linux running on the Dell.

Sorry for the blurry image. I took the photo with a camera phone.

I have an old Dell Latitude L400 notebook in my office that I’ve used to test various Linux distros over the years. However, while 256MB RAM and 10GB hard drive space seemed like a lot back in 2001 or so, it is a bit on the small size for many current distros (Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.). So, I decided to give Puppy Linux 3.01 a try.

The installation was quick and painless. Pay attention to the dialog boxes as they appear though. One advises to install Grub on the MBR instead of the dialog box suggested area. This is what worked for me.

The only problem for me was the usual one when installing Linux on a notebook: Wireless LAN configuration. Puppy Linux saw the inserted 802.11b WiFi card. And, I was able to enter in the required configuration information. But, after repeated tries is did not connect to either of two wireless access points in my test area. Fortunately, the wired Ethernet connection went painlessly and I was on the network.

The notebook is responding very nicely for an old Pentium III 700MHz box with 256MB RAM. It probably boots faster than any other notebook I have running Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Mac OS X. The 7-year old notebook went from a clunker to a useful tool again after installing Puppy Linux.