Why did I decide to update Debian?

Last night, I somehow decided to update the Debian Lenny I had been using on my 600 MHz iBook for a few years. It was a mistake.

Only after the update and first boot of Wheezy I remembered having encountered severe problems in getting the X running on this old laptop.

After the update I got a bunch of error messages somehow caused by the Wacom drivers installed by default. After removing the xserver-xorg-input-wacom, I was able to boot the box without endless error messages.

But when I gave the magic word startx on the command prompt, I got black screen instead of the ratpoison window manager. Ouch. Again.

It seems I need to go through this Xorg configuration hell once again in 2012. Or should I just uninstall the whole xorg and live on the console and screen? Or should I finally get rid of this lovely white laptop?

Legacy OS 4 Mini needs only 800 MHz & 256 MB

EENpup 2010 Mini Beta has beeb rebranded as Legacy OS 4 Mini. The distribution should run OK with most of the hardware made in the 21st century.

New to Legacy OS what’s with the name? Legacy OS as the name suggests is a Linux Distribution designed to run on obsolete Legacy Hardware. A User should be able to bring back to life a PC or Laptop running a Pentium III or 4 Processor. This release of Legacy OS is targeted at users running a minimum of the following: Pentium III 800Mhz Processor with 256Mb’s of Ram with a minimum of 4GB for the Hard Drive. Those with the last generation of Pentium 4 Processors with 1GB of Ram and a 40GB plus size Hard Drive will enjoy applications that open fast and run fast.

I'm not sure if I would enjoy using some of the default applications on a box that barely meets the technical requirements. For example, if you really need to have flash and Firefox you should at least consider getting hardware that has a bit more RAM and processing power.

For more information and download links, see the Puppy Linux Discussion Forum.