Debian 7.5 finally usable at for me

Discussion in 'all things UNIX' started by zapjb, May 23, 2014.

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  1. zapjb

    zapjb Registered Member

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    This is my experience ymmv. I've been dabbling in Linux for ~10 years. I've tried dozens of live distros.
    And I go through a lot of 2nd hand PCs 99%+ are laptops.

    Every once in a while no OS Windows nor Linux will play nice on these PCs.

    My current victim is a Dell D610 laptop. When I upgraded the RAM to 2GB it would not post, so it's stuck at 1.5GB. Ime very few PCs run W7 decently with less than 2GB.

    So off to Linux for my Delly. So Ubunto 14.04 in about 5 flavors (K,X, L etc) won't load or I get freezes, Mint 13 LTS won't load, DSL, Puppy about 4 diffent versions & spins no soap, Tiny Core, WattOS & a few others.

    So I really respect Debian & those hundreds of contributors of Debian code. I like many consider Debian as the parent of almost all repos. But whenever I take my Debian pure it never works for me.

    So like many times before I'm at the end of my rope with my D610. I'm obsessive & won't let it defeat me. So I look up Debian to see what current spins there are. I pick 7.5 i386 CD version. Some kind of light DE embarrassingly I can't remember, didn't write it down & currently am too lazy to turn the DEll on to look. Maybe I'll update this later.

    Well 7.5v i386 works perfectly! I had to search around for wireless firmware but I got that sorted. So if you dabble I'd recommend Debian 7.5 is worth a look.
     
  2. fblais

    fblais Registered Member

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    The lightest DE it comes with is LXDE, then XFCE.
    KDE and Gnome 3 are heavier.
    Did you try Linux Mint LMDE ? (Debian Edition)
     
  3. zapjb

    zapjb Registered Member

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    Don't remember if I tried Mint LMDE. LOL now that the D610 has an OS that works I'm not changing anything except for updating.
     
  4. Kerodo

    Kerodo Registered Member

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    After over a decade of distro hopping, I have also settled on Debian most of the time. It just works. Like you said, I had to grab the wifi drivers to plug in during the net install, but other than that, it's almost perfect. Overall, it's pretty nice. I also use Ubuntu and Mint, but usually return to good old Debian.
     
  5. zapjb

    zapjb Registered Member

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    Glad for you, really I am. I meant I tried Debian as a last resort almost. And despite many previous times on different PCs Debian not working, it worked this time.
     
  6. Kerodo

    Kerodo Registered Member

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    Yep, gotta go with what works most of the time. I do remember Debian being too much of a pain several years back, but Debian 7 seems pretty good. Anyway, glad you got something that worked. :)
     
  7. Veeshush

    Veeshush Registered Member

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    I just started getting into Debian this past month (having only ever used it before with Tails). I've been wanting to throw a i386 version on an old super socket 7 system (late 90s) and see how that goes. Let me know what lightwight version you used (I've got debian-7.5.0-i386-netinst.iso downloaded atm )
     
  8. zapjb

    zapjb Registered Member

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    It's labeled debian-7.5.0-i386-CD-1.iso. From here: http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/7.5.0/i386/iso-cd/
     
  9. keithpeter

    keithpeter Registered Member

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    Google Clonezilla and get a USB hard drive.

    I have imaged the hard drive of this old Thinkpad and I can restore from an image in minutes.

    Did you use an 'expert install' and select a light desktop or no desktop at the 'task select' stage? I think that CD-1 will install Gnome by default and that isn't light!
     
  10. Veeshush

    Veeshush Registered Member

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  11. zapjb

    zapjb Registered Member

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    It's the Gnome DE then. Thanks. It runs well as is.
     
  12. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

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    CrunchBang 11 is also very light. It's basically Debian 7 with an OpenBox desktop. It will run well in 700 MB RAM.
     
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