antiX and Fluxbox for Old Laptops
Install antiX to Improve Your Old Computer's Memory Usage
Jun 23, 2008 Mark Alexander Bain
It's often said that as soon as you have a piece of technology sat on your desk then it's already out of date, and this is particularly true of laptops; a laptop bought 3 or 4 years ago will probably be unable to cope with the requirements of many (if not all) of the more current versions of Linux; even 128MB of RAM is not enough to run SUSE 11 with KDE4 effectively. However, there is a solution; it is still possible to install Linux on an old laptop, and for that laptop to be useful - as long as that Linux is antiX.
Installing antiX
antiX is based on the very popular Mepis Linux (or SimplyMepis as they are now calling themselves), and the aim of antiX is to provide the "Magic of Mepis" to the lower spec computer. Mepis pride themselves in the simplicity of their installation and set up process, and antiX is no different - the process is very simple and straight forward; and started by selecting one of antiX's download mirrors.
This is actually the most difficult part of the process - it assumes that you have a decent internet connection speed (although there are torrent versions available), and that you have the ability to burn a CD (as always burn the ISO at as low a speed as possible - this reduces the chances of the CD being turned into a coffee cup coaster). Once the CD has been successfully created then it's just a matter of putting it in the CD-drive, rebooting (whilst ensuring that the PC is configured to boot from the CD first), and then following the instructions.
After a few minutes (and it does take just a few minutes - this is not a massive distribution and so won't take a couple of hours to install) the laptop will be: formatted; partitioned; and running antiX complete with a new user account.
antiX and Hardware
From the moment of logging in onwards it is obvious that antiX is going to be a pleasure to use - to start with the booting is very fast, and then the hardware recognition is exemplary: there are no issues whatever with wireless cards - the internet is immediately accessible via Iceweasel, antiX's default web browser; as soon as any digital camera is attached to a USB port then it automatically appears as a new directory in the file system (for example /media/usbdisk/DCIM/100CRESI) with no mounting or additional software required.
Since antiX handles all of the hardware so well then next area to concentrate on is antiX's desktop - Fluxbox.
Fluxbox - the antiX Desktop
The Fluxbox desktop is very light, very fast and very simple; it consists of multiple work spaces accessible from a toolbar that also contains the icons for any open applications, a system tray and a clock; however, there is no menu on the toolbar for accessing any of the installed applications - the menu is actually accessed by right mouse clicking anywhere on the desktop itself.
The Fluxbox menu is easily modified (by editing the files ~/.fluxbox/menu), and that's something that will be needed when new software is installed - a task which in itself is very easy because antiX is based on Mepis, and Mepis is based on Debian. Installation of new software, therefore, just becomes a case of using the apt-get command.
antiX and Memory Usage
Of course, at this point the astute user will be wondering just how much memory installing antiX will free up, and they will be able to find out by comparing the performance of a few different machines:
- HP OmniBook 4150
- 122MB RAM installed
- antiX Linux
- Fluxbox desktop
- 37MB RAM used
- MSI Mega Desktop
- 1.22GB RAM installed
- Suse Linux
- KDE4 desktop
- 182MB RAM used
- Fluxbox desktop
- 118MB RAM used
With the just minimum of effort and the minimum of time an obsolete old laptop can be turned into a state of the art machine - just by installing antiX.
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