What's a good stripped down version of Linux?

[chriskzoo]

I have Red Hat, but it runs a little slow on my 200mhz, 32MB RAM machine. Not terrible, but not I can hear the box grinding away to get things done.

Is there a better version out there that might run a little faster, possibly with a more stripped down GUI?

[element-x]

Use a lightweight Window Manager.

eg. Blackbox or WindowMaker

it will cut down cpu/mem usage significantly.

[kuber]

Dump Gnome (and Sawfish which I presume you are using w/ RH) and go with Blackbox!

[Bradmont]

Those are good suggestions, tho I noticed with redhat that things were still kinda sluggish even in console mode (it loads up a LOT of unneeded daemons by default). If you wanna go minimalist, try a Debian base install. I think you can get a fairly basic Slackware install too, but I've not tried. You could spend some time with redhat uninstalling all the unneeded junk, but that would take time. If you wanna be really adventurous, you could do an LFS ;)·

[FoBoT]

i am going to load peanut linux 8.4 (small, .iso was only 185mb) tomorrow
will let you know

[Gaccm]

your box is almost like mine, (p 200 64 here) i also started off with redhat, got pissed and went to debian. But if you get debian, i suggest getting blackbox becuase it is even better than the debian defualt gui. (plus, it even smaller [i think])

[Coral Sea]

Getting a "stripped down" Linux distro isn't the issue. The problem is that you have a lot of non-Linux apps running that are chewing up memory. Your windows manager and all those other services that start up will consume resources. If you don't need them, then chkconfig useless_app off (substitute the correct name for useless_app).

Also, recompile your kernel using menu xconfig and turn off things that you don't need. Having useless features compiled into your kernel will also consume resources.

All Linux distros have the kernel in common (naturally) and even the slim versions will bog your machine down if they launch services that you don't need.

[Bradmont]

Originally posted by Gaccm:
your box is almost like mine, (p 200 64 here) i also started off with redhat, got pissed and went to debian. But if you get debian, i suggest getting blackbox becuase it is even better than the debian defualt gui. (plus, it even smaller [i think])


TWM, the default with Debian (as with most X installs that have not been otherwise changed) is garbage. It is my opinion that it was made ugly & lame so people would get fed up and spend the time searching for a real window manager :).