kaygeebee Posted April 24, 2009 Share Posted April 24, 2009 I have an old but faithful PCG-C1VN VAIO that is really starting to show it's age :( Can anyone suggest what version of Linux would be a good replacement OS to install onto it for it to run more efficiently replacing the current XP install for just general web based use? Cheers :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlit Posted April 24, 2009 Share Posted April 24, 2009 Surely the point of Linux having so many distros is that you get to choose which suits you? Whatever, I guess I'd recommend Fedora or straight Debian. You could try Ubuntu 9.04 but I think you're going to have some issues with speed so personally I wouldn't bother. If Debian and Fedora can't handle it, try Puppy or Damn Small Linux. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaygeebee Posted April 24, 2009 Author Share Posted April 24, 2009 not used Debian before, but thanks for the recommendation. Which version suits the Crusoe Transmeta processor best out of the list Debian offer? Alpha AMD64 ARM EABI ARM HP PA-RISC Intel x86 Intel IA-64 MIPS (big endian) MIPS (little endian) PowerPC IBM S/390 SPARC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlit Posted April 24, 2009 Share Posted April 24, 2009 Intel x86 (or i486/i586, depending on which distro you're looking at, they all mean basically the same thing). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaygeebee Posted April 24, 2009 Author Share Posted April 24, 2009 brilliant, thanks for your help Moonlit... very much appreciated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mat Posted April 24, 2009 Share Posted April 24, 2009 You can compile a kernel from source and select the Transmeta Crusoe processor from the available options to get it customised. While in there you may want to removed kernel level drivers that support things they you dont have, such as sata drivers etc, this will make the kernel smaller to help with the small amount of ram you have. I speak from experience, I have a picturebook myself, C1MGP from memory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaygeebee Posted April 27, 2009 Author Share Posted April 27, 2009 You can compile a kernel from source and select the Transmeta Crusoe processor from the available options to get it customised. While in there you may want to removed kernel level drivers that support things they you dont have, such as sata drivers etc, this will make the kernel smaller to help with the small amount of ram you have. I speak from experience, I have a picturebook myself, C1MGP from memory. Wish I could Mat, my knowledge of Unix systems is slim to none really....... Still, time is on my side so i'll look into it.... I installed Debian on the weekend and too be honest didn't really see much of a performance difference to the previous XP install... a slimline OS with specific kernel could be what I need before I put my picturebook on eBay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mat Posted April 27, 2009 Share Posted April 27, 2009 Well this discussion prompted me to hunt out my own Vaio C1, which has been gathering dust since I bought an Aspire One. I had previously fitted it with an 8GB SSD so I removed that and threw in a spare 100GB laptop drive and installed Ubuntu 9.04 onto it. It works, but it's pretty slow. Also the screen seemed to be driven at the wrong refresh rate for the first part of the bootup process. I rebuilt the kernel (which took about 5 hours to compile) and then the bootup worked fine and everything seems ok, a little faster too with the Crusoe optimisations. Working on it in console mode without loading GDM is a delight, working inside Gnome is pretty nasty though, due to the speed. So, it is possible to run the latest Ubuntu on a seven year old netbook, but it's not advisable. I love the sony, everything about it is better than the Acer, well everything apart from the speed, and the RAM maxing out at 384MB, and the lack of built in wireless, but other than that it's great. If Apple could build a replicate of this machine running modern hardware and OSX, I'd bite their hand off for it. For now though, unless you just have a thing for old hardware (like me) then your best bet it so sell it on eba, where I think they still command quite a premium, and buy a 10" aspire one or something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mat Posted April 27, 2009 Share Posted April 27, 2009 Picture to show it booting into Ubuntu :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaygeebee Posted April 27, 2009 Author Share Posted April 27, 2009 i'm impressed Mat, glad my initial post inspired you... I like you am a massive fan of my picturebook... it took me a while to source one and was very pleased when I finally got one. TBH tho, the speed is letting me down :( It would be with massive reluctance to put it on eBay but as i'm not as skilled as you with Linux I feel like I might have too..... Decisions, Decisions..... :D hope someone from Apple is reading this thread...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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