As time pushes onward, the computer word grows exponentially in size, accomplishments, features, advances, and of course... system requirements. The latter is more a burden than a benefit if you ask most people who have the pleasure of working with computers day in and day out, but the Linux community has a decided advantage over most: They have the ability to control their destiny and the hardware it will run on.
Sure, some of you will immediately say “X or Y distro is bloated to the point that is comparable with Microsoft Windows at this point� and you aren't wrong for saying so. Linux has grown to a size where it can easily put Windows to shame in terms of sheer girth. Linux in the year 2004 has more bells and whistles than Windows could ever dream of, and that's not a bad thing... unless you are the proud owner of hardware that Thomas Edison would be able to easily identify in a line up.
So what do you do with that old Pentium II 266MHz laptop or PC that's been stashed in your closet for the past three years? Is it possible to actually use it again as a worthwhile companion for performing everyday tasks that your new 3GHz computer handles so easily? Well, the full answer could be very complicated if we were to cover ever last little detail, but the short answer is simple: YES.
VectorLinux can (and always has been able to) take an old dinosaur of a computer and render it just as useful as the day that it was new. Seriously. Built on Slackware Linux, one of the most stable and best performing distributions available today, VectorLinux has been optimized to the point that it outperforms every other distro I've tested on older equipment... without fail. So, if you've got an older computer that you were getting ready to throw out the door, dust it off, purchase a copy of VectorLinux, and bring it back to life.
Features:
Linux kernel 2.6.7
Glibc-2.3.2
Gcc 3.2.3
XFree 4.3
KDE 3.2.3, XFCE 4, Fluxbox, and ICEwm
Mozilla 1.7
VASM
L to R: VectorLinux loading KDE 3.3, the Konqueror web browser
Installation
If you've ever installed VectorLinux before, you know the installer. It hasn't really changed much over the past couple of years that we've been monitoring it. It's simple, GUI-less, to the point, and lacks advanced options. Is this a bad thing? In some cases with certain distros, yes, but in the case of VectorLinux it's not even a concern. The reason being is that this distro is so stripped down as it is, fine tuning packages and settings after the installation takes just as much time as it would during the install, and there really isn't much to it anyway.
For those of you who are reading this and have never installed VectorLinux, don't be intimidated by the lack of a pretty graphical installer. The Vector installation is completely simple, even without the GUI, and any user with a basic understanding of Linux will have no problem installing it. The only 'gotcha' I noticed (and I've complained about this in past reviews... nothing has changed) is that after partitioning the drive(s) you come to a prompt that is a bit confusing to the newcomer... it's a multiple choice screen which has the following options:
RETURN Return to the partition program. I want to try again REBOOT Reboot the system to add the new partitions RESTART Don't know how I got here but I want out
To most people (including myself), restart means reboot... but obviously there is already an option for rebooting, so what exactly does it do? Restart the installer? Well, sort of. What it means in VectorLand is continue on with the next step of the installation. I stumbled on it the first time I saw it, but can now easily navigate through it since I've reviewed this distro so many times. I guess the developers have seen this so many times as well that they don't even realize it's there. Other than that single issue, the installer is flawless. On the few machines I tested this release on, the installation completed on all of them without fail.
Hardware Detection
On all of the systems I tested this distribution on, hardware detection was almost perfect. The only real issue I had was with LCD resolution on a Toshiba Tecra 8000 laptop. VectorLinux didn't even want to attempt to set it up correctly. This really wasn't a huge stumbling point because this laptop isn't the most Linux-friendly device on the market... I really couldn't blame VASM (Vector Administrative and Services Menu, the systems configuration and hardware detection utility... which I must point out is one cool tool in either GUI or curses mode) for this. I figured that this was nothing a quick run of xf86config wouldn't fix, where I would specify my own frequencies for the monitor and manually input all of the other configuration options. Well, the whole affair seemed to go pretty smoothly until I tried to startx and it would only blink at me and then return to the console without even a minor slap on the wrist. I didn't understand this at first, but then realized that the older versions of VectorLinux used /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 for their configuration settings. Manually running xf86config had created a standard /etc/X11/XF86Config file. Easily fixed. I just renamed it to XF86Config-4 and X started without a glitch. Ahhhh, X Windows at last!
Other than the video issues, the setup and hardware detection was pretty good... not Knoppix good (hint hint), but pretty good all the same. It's all in the spirit of the distro if you ask me. Vector (to me) has a slight DIY feel to it and I like it. It keeps me sharp I guess. Distros like Fedora, Mandrake, and SUSE make me lazy.
