Linux distro for older machines, alt. to Windows 98?

[Dchakrab]

Hi all,

Totally new to Linux...i'm looking for a distro of linux that runs as an alternative to Windows 98. I basically have some older machines, along the lines of 200 - 400 mhz pentium 2's. Also a couple of 100 mhz P 1's.

I need very little out of these systems...a basic typing / office suite, a browser (Firebird would be nice), and general stability.

A chat client would also be nice, but not necessary. A media player for CD's and mp3's would be icing on the cake, though i'm not expecting much out of a 100 mhz machine.

Recommendations? What can run a GUI on machines that slow? Easy installation always a plus, since i'm a total newbie at this...

Thanks in advance,

Dave.

[Hayl]

try looking on www.distrowatch.org -- or search thru our forums using the "search" feature -- there are a number of threads asking about linux distros for low-end PCs.

[EnigmaOne]

Originally posted by Dchakrab
i'm not expecting much out of a 100 mhz machine.
As well you shouldn't.

You might want to check out Peanut Linux, as well as Knoppix.

How much drive space and memory do these machines have anyway?

[psi42]

I have a few machines like that. They all run slackware and xfce4, and run quite well.

They will run XMMS just fine.

I also remember running some ncurses CD player called ncd or nchcd... it's really light on resources. I vaguely remember playing with the source code for some reason, give me a minute maybe I will remember why. :)

The machines over 200Mhz will do well with the newest version of abiword. For the older ones, you might want to look into abiword 1.0.x

Dillo for web browsing. Grab this patch (http://teki.jpn.ph/pc/software/index-e.shtml)... it adds quite a few new features, although it does greatly enlarge the size of the program. I always pass --disable-nls to the configure script as I don't need internationalization... It still asks for the japanese version of google, but the menus are in english. :)
Dillo still has a way to go, but the developers have made a great deal of progress.

Sylpheed-gtk2 for e-mail.


have fun

~psi42

[Dchakrab]

Slackware? I just about managed to install mandrake, and from what i'm reading, slackware's not exactly known for newbie friendliness, so i strongly doubt i could figure it out in time for it to be worthwhile.

Knoppix i'm planning to try out as soon as it finishes downloading...

Will look at Peanut next as well.

The machines range from about half a G to 2 G drive space, anything from 24 mb to 32 mb RAM. One or two gems have 64 mb RAM, and 4 G drives. I think they all have CD ROM drives and i can stick a networking card in each one.

No idea on motherboards, etc...finding a species of linux that will work with seroiusly old integrated graphics cards, etc, would probably save me a lot of pain.

Thanks for the help,.

Dave.

[ph34r]

Any distro will install on those, assuming you have an appropriate amount of ram. The key will be not installing a ton of cruft, etc. and leave lots of stuff running in the background.

[psi42]

Originally posted by Dchakrab
Slackware? I just about managed to install mandrake, and from what i'm reading, slackware's not exactly known for newbie friendliness, so i strongly doubt i could figure it out in time for it to be worthwhile.


Hmm... give vector (http://www.vectorlinux.com) a try. It is a lot "easier" to configure than slackware and is aimed specifically at older systems.

:)

~psi42

[rocketpcguy]

whatever ditro u get, just put in the "iceWM" GUI or "XFCE4" GUI to make the distro faster.

[DSwain]

Slack isn't too bad as long as you read up on it, the install isn't very tough. Vector is suppose to be easier, but I found it wasn't. I thought slack was. meh, its all good.

definitely try out distrowatch.com for idea's

[Dchakrab]

Am looking at distrowatch now...definitely a very useful site for this kind of reading.

I think it's time to find a guinea pig system and start trying an install or two, after i burn a tub's worth of ISO's.

Thanks,

Dave.

[Loki3]

Wow, I'm surprised Debian hasn't been suggested already. Debian isn't THAT hard to install, provided you read and understand the installation manual prior to installation. The packaging system apt-get is rocking and you can configure debian to be super-light weight. For a window manger try my personal favorite Openbox, for an chat client (IRC I assume) try irssi, for CD's and mp3's either xmms or mplayer(will also handle videos). For super-light-wafer-thin mp3 playing just use mpg123.

I run my webserver with debian and it's a 166Mhz P1 w/ 16Mb or ram. It does apache, sshd, samba, cupds & proftpd quite well. Granted it doesn't see heavy use or have a GUI installed but just because it's old hardware doesn't mean it's not useful.

If debian doesn't seem like your thing, I think a scaled version of knoppix would work really well to. Seeing that it's based off of debian :). Just look at distrowatch and try to find something you like and then go for it. Linux is linux is linux regardless of distro.

Best of luck!

[lagitus]

IIRC Libranet was not that hard to install. I installed the free "classic" version on a machine some months ago. It is based on debian so after installation you can easily upgrade to all the newest packages by adding a debian testing/unstable mirror to apt-get.

If you try slackware you should definately google for "slapt-get" and pay a visit to Linuxpackages (http://www.linuxpackages.net/) .

I've also tried Vector Linux once. To me the installer seemed easy but buggy. It is however a good base package for an older machine and you can always put slapt-get in it to manage your packages.