IBM Thinkpad 755C and FreeBSD's minimal hardware requirements - still usable?

[Polytropon]

On Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:12:19 +0200, herbert langhans <herbert.raimund at gmx.net> wrote:
> Not a long time ago I got an old Thinkpad 600. With 300MHz and 165MB Ram.
> 
> Also the same challenge - small and fast ports for daily work.
> I run X11 with fluxbox (installed without! hal support). 

Of course. Fluxbox is a very lightweight and still appealing
window manager with very usable keyboard functionality. Other
solutions that I would have considered lightweight (but I have
to re-check the facts of today) include WindowMaker and XFCE 3.



> Recommendable ports are: Opera (smaller then Firefox) [...]

Even on my "fast" machine the preferred browser.



> [...] vim (also gvim) is my text editor - it replaces word
> processing software.

That's what I mostly use LaTeX for.



> Centerim for instant messaging (instead of pidgin).

This seems to be something like CenterICQ (just judging by name).



> Generally all the motif-programs are small and fast.

I'm using things like xpdf (uses OpenMotif) whenever I can.



> Maybe you go for a bigger harddisk? Costs a few bucks and will
> have enough space for BSD 7.2 (what I use) and some of the ports?

I'm not sure if the system will accept it. Recently, I had to buy
a 20 GB disk for my Siemens-Fujitsu Travelmate, because it did not
accept the 40 GB disk I still had (extracted from a dead laptop).



> Compiling your own kernel and cleaning out the kernel source and
> the distfiles of the ports is also a good idea..

But I think it has to be done on a separate machine.

I would imagine that I can at least prepare the hard disk for the
Thinkpad in another machine (e. g. the S-F Travelmate I mentioned).
But I managed to get FreeBSD installed via parallel cable in the
past (plip).

I'm just curious if the audio capabilites of the Thinkpad can be
made working...



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...