Topic awaiting preservation: Which Linux?

Hi there, I am right now writing this while using my new computer that will make all of you really jealous because it is a dream machine. Taka a look at the specs:

- cpu amd k6 200mhz, 96 mb of ram, matrox mystique video card with 4mb or ram, a 9 gb hd, a creative 8-4-32x cdrw drive, a motorola 28.8 kbps modem, some brandless 10mb net card, no a: drive.

This was I think my second computer. The first one was a 486 long time ago. This computer was in the shelf for around 5 years and I stopped using it because its hd crashed and I got a better one (a pentium iii 733mhz).

Incredibly, yesterday i plugged an old by working hd in this computer and it is working just fine, with internet and everything.

Well, I want to install some linux OS in it, so my question is which flavor or brand of linux you advice me to use, considering the specs of this dream machine? I want free stuff (I know linux is free but some branded linux seems not to be).

Right now I have just installed a fresh Win2k and it's running fine but I want linux in the other partition.

TIA

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viol said:

I am right now writing this while using my new computer that will make all of you really jealous because it is a dream machine. Taka a look at the specs:- cpu amd k6 200mhz, 96 mb of ram, matrox mystique video card with 4mb or ram, a 9 gb hd, a creative 8-4-32x cdrw drive, a motorola 28.8 kbps modem, some brandless 10mb net card, no a: drive.

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Oh please... 1.4GHz 40GB 256RAM 128MB GCard and a fairly nice casing!! As far as Linux it depends on how much Linux you'll use. If you've never used Linux before than something like SUSe, Fedora or Mandrake would be nice (dibs on Mandrake 10 ) They should give you a more 'windows' feel to your Linux in other words they just easier to use. OR you could try Red Hat if you've used Linux nicely before. I'm not quite sure on the specs part... someone else will have to help you out there.

http://www.debian.org/

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www.embege.com

Linux

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Support Justice for Pat Richard

I would sugest you go with a FreeBSD, if you go with a linux distro you will *not* be geting something that is incrediblely light weight, especially with linux's kernal design. If you are new to linux it will not be easy to install it so that you don', have a huge overhead.

I was able to run RedHat on my 400 mhz box, but it was very slow, freebsd with a fluxbox window manager was pretty fast, even XFCE went fast.

If you really do want to go with linux you should head over to distrowatch and check out some distros that specialize in a small footprint. Having your default install be really small will help a lot. Minislack is an idea. I would however not go for one of the main distro as they tend to be feature rich (designed for desktop application) and that is not what you are going to need.

Dan @ Code Town

I'm currently running Fedora Core 2 on a 450MHz cpu with 128Mb RAM and 5Gb HD. I don't notice any speed problems. It probably depends on what you want to use it for. I don't know about running it on 200MHz. That's kind of slow. You might want to get ahold of an older distrubution.

I have used SuSE, Red Hat and Mandrake. I like Red Hat best, but I think SuSE gives the smallest install.

My attitude is, unless it is your main machine, get a distribution and try it. Take the time to try to do the install and if it doesn't work try a different one. Learn from the things that don't work and from any mistakes you make and be ready to fdisk and start over.

Most distributions are available for free download or you can get a distributuin on disc for $10.00 to $15.00.



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-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.

www.slackware.org - Everything you need, nothing you don't. If you want to learn linux then stay away from fedora redhat mandrake suse.


The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. --Groucho Marx

But I like Mandrake

Well if you like it then go for it. There is nothing wrong with any of the distros I mentioned. Matter of fact suse and redhat are going in the right direction for giving support for companies.


The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. --Groucho Marx

I would seriously not install linux as a desktop on that computer if you actually want to use it. A server should be fine, but definitely not anything involving X

I have an old 200mhz computer beside me on which I installed slackware 10 (with X, using blackbox) and firing up an xterm takes roughly 5-10 seconds, firefox upwards of 5 minutes!

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Paquter Dev Inc

What makes me confused about this Linux stuff is that, first, I know nothing about it but I want to learn, and second, these distributions, like red hat and the like, they take so much space (like four CDs for red had) that I wonder how can they be good for an old machine.

On the other hand, I read about people that use these old machines, like this one I took off the shelf, with these OSs and they work just fine.

My idea is to make a web server, and probably not much more, and learn some stuff about linux or whatever. This is not my main machine, it's just an old machine that I am trying to find a use for it.

Funniest thing is that I installed Win2k, patched it to sp4, and it seems to work fine. It's obviously not fast but it's acceptable. My original idea was to install Win98SE because it's less hardware demanding.

Anyway, I am taking a look at the options you having been discussing here.

Let me be another to recommend Slackware Linux. It's probably the only way you'll get a fairly speedy system, with Linux anyway -- all the other distros I've used (with the exception of Arch Linux; though, I havn't used Debian, which is probably another good choice) are too heavyweight and designed to be Windows clones, which is not a good thing.

Slackware is very lightweight (one CD ) and, though it will take a bit of getting used to (we're all here to help, plus there are tons of resources for Slackware users, just Google your problem all over), it should leave you with a fast and very stable system.

Which reminds me, it's about time I tried Debian... I'm not sure how much I'll like it, though, since I am pretty keen on bleeding edge...

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke
"Any sufficiently arcane magic is indistinguishable from technology." -- P. David Lebling

viol,

You said you want to use the machine for a server. By that do you mean you want to install Apache and use it to serve web pages or are you just going to use it as a gateway for your LAN to the net?

If you are going to use it as a gateway, look at coyoteLinux. They make a nice compact little linux that I've been using as a gatway for about a year with no problems at all.

It should run just fine on the machine you have.



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-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.

Slackware can be installed with one disk. The disk one comes with some lightweight window managers (WM) such as Blackbox xfce fluxbox and disk two has some that are more evolved calling them Desktop Enviroments (DE) gnome and kde. My favorite is gnome but that's just opinion. You do not need a wm or a de to run linux. Disk one will let you have a server in command line interface (cli.) This is going to look simular to dos, but it's a way more advanced commandline. There are manuals (man pages) that will help you with any command you need. There is also a very good command that helps you know what commands will help you do any task. This command is 'apropos' you can 'man apropos' to learn how to use it. An example of it's use is 'apropos copy' which returns many things including:

cp (1) - copy files and directories

There are some books that will help you learn, some you can download for free on the internet. Here you can find some nice books for download though you will have to hack the URL to get them. His site is broken and I don't think he has any intention on fixing it. I recommend Linux in 24 hours It's a little redhatish, but the cli part you can't live without. Take that link as your example of how to hack the download URL's.

Hope this helps, slackware will come ready for an apache server out of the box.


The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. --Groucho Marx

Yeah, as people have said, you can install and run modern linux distributaions on basically any hardware better than a 486. The only catch is that it will only run at decent speeds without a GUI - all input will be typing in commands, like DOS. Running a GUI on Linux takes quite a bit of resources, as my 200mhz computer has shown :P

As for the number of CDs, most of the CDs are bundled apps, like web servers, web browsers, office apps, games, etc. On my 200mhz computer I installed Slackware with X, but I trimmed down the unnecessary apps so the total install is 700MB. If I hadn't installed the GUI, it would be ~150MB smaller.

If you want to use it as a server, it will work fine without a GUI, although the learning curve will probably be steeper.

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Paquter Dev Inc

gotta agree with At0mic_PC. Slackware is my favorite so far. stable as hell. Slack 10.1 came out not long ago too

Later,

C:\