General

128M is the minumum memory that you can use with the graphical desktop. Really.

If you want to upgrade a 5.10 installation to 6.06 using a CD you need to use the "alternate" install disc. The "live" install disc won't work. Otherwise you'll need to use the network, which can take many hours on a slow connection.

For old/slow machines it's probably a good idea to disable the screensaver, or at least change it to "Blank Screen Only". Some of the X screensavers use huge quantities of CPU. (System->Preferences->Screensaver)

Don't forget to install languages (System->Administration->Language Support)

If you want to install the proprietary Flash plugin you'll need to enable the multiverse repository and install flashplugin-nonfree.

Laptop Model Specific

Thinkpad 600E

6.06 installation from the live disk didn't work. "ubiquity" hung after choosing the keyboard. There was a zombie process that looked like an X keyboard selection program (but I didn't write it down at the time). Installation from the 5.10 disc worked fine, so I expect that text-mode installation of 6.06 would also work.

Sound didn't work out-of-the-box. Followed the instructions in the HOWTO below and that did the trick. Note that when I followed the instruction on some other pages to turn quick boot off that seemed to mess up the network interface.

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installation_instructions_for_the_ThinkPad_600
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Script_for_configuring_the_CS4239_sound_chip_in_PnP_mode - HOWTO get sound working
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-4BP6Q6.html?selectarea=SUPPORT&brand=root
http://www.mainsheet.org/thinkpad600e/
http://condor.depaul.edu/~jkristof/debian-tp600e.html

Dell Latitude CPi 266XT

<fn>-F1 at boot time to get into the BIOS config.

Tried to use a 3com 3C562B/3C563B network card but had no luck. Not sure what the problem was. Appeared to configure fine, but couldn't see any traffic.

Not sure if I got a bad CDROM drive, but upgrading over a network was faster than reading the files from the CD.

Dell Inspiron 3500

No sound - http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=135620

Couldn't get it working. snd_nm256 was the only driver that would load without errors, but there still weren't any devices availabel after it loaded.

http://web.archive.org/web/20040701150100/users.binary.net/dturley/linux/easylinux.html - some notes from the wayback machine