On Fri, 13 Aug 2010, Jason Hsu, embedded engineer, Linux user wrote: > On Fri, 13 Aug 2010 11:27:20 -0500 (CDT) Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com> wrote: >> >>>> Has he tried using antiX Linux or Puppy Linux on the old laptop? >>>> You haven't told us anything about the hardware specs. >>> >>> Haven't tried them. I have noticed that you are an advocate. >> >> This is a Dell Latitude D800 with 1 GB RAM. Do you think one of those >> mini-Linuxes will make it do better with YouTube videos in Firefox than >> it is now doing with Ubuntu 10.04? I should also try Chrome. >> > Given that 1 GB of RAM is plenty for Ubuntu, antiX Linux and Puppy Linux > will FLY like a rocket on the same 1 GB of RAM. That said, I'm not sure > if that will resolve the problem of choppy Youtube videos. On my > 10-year-old Dell desktop with a 467 MHz processor and 384 MB of RAM, > Youtube videos at 360p are choppy unless I download them first and view > them offline. (This is the case with any distro.) However, I don't > have choppy 360p videos on my 9-year-old IBM NetVista desktop with a 1 > GB processor and 256 MB of RAM. (This is the case with any distro.) The 360 version of "Nature by Numbers" runs smoothly, but the 720p version is choppy. I don't think running offline would change that, but I'll be studying this further because I am taking that old Dell laptop off his hands (it has three new batteries). >> Regarding this, I suppose it is possible to have Ubuntu and Win7 as >> dual boot and still run XP, say, in VirtualBox. I might actually do >> that. > > In my opinion, it would be better to run Win7 and XP in virtual > machines. The inevitable reinstallation can run in Virtualbox while the > computer is still free for other tasks. As we all know, you cannot > install any Windows OS in 10-15 minutes like you can with antiX Linux. Here's a problem: They didn't give us the installation disks for Win7. They didn't give us any disks at all. I had to use the DVD imaging feature to back up the OS to DVDs and create a 4th DVD for recovery. It is good that I did those things, because I managed to completely hose Win7 immediately after I saved the image. All I did was turn off the computer while Win7 was starting to load. That was enough to damage it so severely that it had to go to the DVDs and reimage the drive. That is quite bad. It should not be that sensitive. Anyway, I might install XP in VirtualBox. We have XP disks. Maybe I can get Win7 disks. I don't know. Another thing -- the Win7 installation is a massive advertisement. It makes me feel kind of ill looking at it. The other horrible thing about Win7 is that a window can pop up that you can't get rid of. One from Norton (obviously a Microsoft partner) asks for your email address, but the X button in the upper right corner of the window is disabled, as is the "Close" option in the drop-down window menu, so you have to click "Next" inside the window to get anywhere. In the end, after about three screens, it let me kill the window without taking my email address, but that was just amazing -- what a-holes! Mike